On Places

Source: https://admission.princeton.edu/blogs/places Parent: https://admission.princeton.edu/blogs/blogger-profile/grady-trexler

October 31, 2021

Grady Trexler '24

Hi, my name is Grady Trexler. I'm from a suburb outside of Richmond, Virginia, and I'm spending the current semester in Chicago, Illinois. I'm interested in studying everything from religion to Italian. "On campus," I've joined the University Press Club as a reporter, and I'm involved with the Office of Religious Life's Religion and Resettlement Project, through which I've done oral history interviews. I'm also a member of First College. Prior to ... Read more

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I live a segmented life of places. At home, I painstakingly arranged my bedroom so that my desk would be as far away from my bed as possible. I wanted a space for work and sleep, but I much preferred working outside my room when I could. I sat at the same seat for my family’s dinner most nights. I liked to park my car in the same spot in my school’s parking lot whenever possible. I hated reading in a new chair at the library, instead preferring to have a dedicated spot.

Although the pandemic upset this segmentation, this semester, I have been able to create new relationships once again between places and mental states or activities. This has been a delight on a campus as small as Princeton’s. Things accrue meaning as we assign it to them. Here at Princeton, each time I visit a place, it gets a specific meaning related to what I use the space for.

Every morning, I get breakfast at the same dining hall and sit at the same place if I can. McCosh Hall, where I have the pleasure of taking a “Worlds Made with Words: Old English Poems that Perform” has become a place of linguistic contemplation, a lovely morass of caesuras and alliteration and translation problems.

As a humanities student, I rarely make it down to the math and science buildings. However, this semester, I have Semantics in the physics building called Jadwin Hall which has thus become a spot for challenging headaches as we seek to create a logical system to encapsulate the way English works. Robertson Hall, where I have an introductory African American Studies class, is the place I associate with the most captivating lectures.

I know the brisk nighttime walk to and from Prospect Avenue, where Princeton’s eating clubs are located. I have a favorite place to study in the basement of Gordon Wu Hall. My single dorm room in First College has become a space of relaxation and sleep, as often as I can manage it.

Princeton’s small campus allows my mental geography to map onto a real place. I walk everywhere I need to go, which helps me grow my map visually. The walk to each class or library primes my brain to do the work I need to do there. Of course, I try to explore the campus too and break out of my routine, even as I experience and re-experience places of familiarity. But the physicality of places here is something that I try to celebrate every day.