Wednesday TigerBlog - Back To School
September 03, 2025 | Tiger Blog
It was a perfect, sunny day. The walk took about 10 minutes or so, to a large lecture hall inside the building, which sits opposite Franklin Field. Anytime he's been back on the Penn campus for a game at the ancient stadium for all these decades, he's always glanced over at the museum and remembered that day.
You know what really stands out? There was a crew paving a driveway at the hospital, and the smell of the tar was very strong and very prevalent. That smell has always taken him back to that walk.
He must have gone to at least a few other classes, since they did eventually give him a diploma. It currently sits proudly in a box inside a plastic bin on the bottom of a closet.
He also remembers walking outside of the David Rittenhouse Lab building, which is next to the Palestra, after the last final exam he ever took. It was also a sunny day, this time in May, not September. There used to be tennis courts in front of the DRL building and the Palestra, and he walked past them as he made his way back to his dorm.
As he did so, he first threw into the garbage can at the one of the courts the pen he'd just used and the notebook he had. He also vividly remembers thinking that he had to replace "go to Penn" with "went to Penn."
He has absolutely no memory of his walk to any other classroom, other than the generic "oh yeah, that class was in that building" thing. That first class and that final exam?
Those he can remember in detail — even more than 40 years later.
Who knew on that first day of school what direction his life would take? There was no way.
If you'd joined him on his walk down Spruce Street and asked him what his career path would be, he would have said, probably with confidence, law. How wrong he would have been, right?
Yesterday was the first day of classes at Princeton.
For the members of the Class of 2029, it was the first time that they would be attending any college classes. Would they come away with the same memories that TB did all those years ago?
For the returnees, it's the time to get back into whatever routine they have for classes, studying and all of that. Are they fans of early classes? Night classes? Labs?
Princeton's approximately 1,000 athletes obviously had their first classes of 2025-26 yesterday. TigerBlog watched a lot of college football this past weekend, and he remarked to his friend Duncan Yin during one of those games that back when they were kids, you couldn't watch a college football game without having numerous mentions of majors, academic achievements and the rest.
There was none of that on any of the games TB saw this weekend. There were references to where this one transferred from and what league that one played in a year ago. There was also talk of just how many news players were on each roster.
The academic piece is not completely gone from college sports. One of TB's favorite things about Princeton is that it will never be gone from here. These are athletes who are also students, in an era when the phrase "student-athlete" mostly conjures up cynicism.
Tiger freshmen have long answered the question "why Princeton?" with "it offers the best combination of athletics and academics." That remains the case today, and TB will never tire of hearing that.
Congrats to all of the Princeton students who are now back into their classrooms. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth it.
For the athletes, you are challenging yourself in a way that not everyone your age is. This is what you've chosen, and you did so for a lot of reasons. Between now and the day that you are handed your own diploma and the day of your last competition as a Tiger, you will learn lessons about teamwork, time management, integrity and so many of the other values that combine to make up "Education Through Athletics."
In other words, what you learn about yourself will be as important to your future as what you learn from your professors.