The problem with compulsory brunch at Princeton is that it more or less forces people to either find their own breakfast (too lazy to do this), stay up for several hours without eating (not very healthful, and also not that pleasant), or sleep until 11 when one really just wants to get up at a normal hour.

Washington Monthly strikes again, according to Aditya Panda ‘10 in recent post “Princeton Ranks Not First On Washington Monthly Rankings.” When I first received a copy of this publication’s rankings an acceptance package from UCLA in spring 2006 (despite repeated attempts to withdraw my application), I was convinced that it was a greasy underhanded attempt by the state almost-flagship university to snatch students out of their matriculation agreements.

The ranking on the flyer from UCLA ended at about #50 — just enough to include all of the UCs and highlight Princeton multiple times as being ranked near the bottom. The online publication this year, however, is currently doing away with its own clever façade in a not so clever way. Extending into the hundreds, Washington Monthly ranks Caltech as #109 — and honestly, I’m trying to imagine a significant fraction of Caltech students in ROTC etc., and I can’t.

And — perhaps fittingly, the rankings are accompanied by an article entitled, “Is Our Students Learning?“

So yesterday (or was it the day before?) we all received our “permanent” mailboxes, which will be ours until June 2010. While this affords a great deal of convenience — never having to change magazine subscriptions, bank statements, etc. again for the foreseeable future, the fact of the matter is that the alphabetically-assigned “3730 Frist Center” really does not have the ring of “405 Witherspoon Hall,” or “44 Holder Hall.” The new addresses are metallic and glassy, and to me they seem to lack the Victorian scent of warm stone, collegiate Gothicism, or for that matter, waffle ceilings.

Of course, the postal workers will be spared the ordeal of having to deal with addresses that look like “102 1937 Hall” and “1937 Hall 102,” but the new Frist mailboxes are in the end probably more convenient for the students who actually live near Frist. Never again will I find big FedEx or UPS packages deposited neatly before my door — I’ll have to lug them up from down-campus. I’d rather get my mail on the way back from breakfast in Rocky/Mathey than trek down to Frist; in fact it would have been actually somewhat less convenient if I had not resigned myself to some crazy 10:00 to 5:30 schedule 2 days a week in which I have no choice but to get late lunch in my 10-minute break between classes. And for sure, the Forbesians would probably rather have their mail in Forbes, rather than at Frist. We can’t even tease them anymore for having addresses in a different zip code.