Princeton, New Jersey: Sukrit Silas strolls across the Princeton University campus with purpose, these steps to the laboratory familiar by now. But, suddenly, he stops and points out a building that rises above the other ivy covered dormitories and collections of classrooms.
Shiv Mohan Dutt (left) and Sukrit Silas come to check their mailboxes at Princeton’s student centre.
“John Nash and Andrew Wiles sit in there,” he says, a look of pride breaking through the day-to-day routine he has established in almost four months at one of the world’s leading institutions of higher learning.
Wiles stunned the world in the early 1990s when he announced the proof of Fermat’s theorem, which until then had stumped generations of scholars. Nash, the Nobel Prize winning mathematician for his work on game theory and the inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster, A Beautiful Mind, is among the many renowned academicians who have called Princeton home.
Even after the mountains of school work and trials of adjusting to a new culture thousands of miles from home, Silas and the five other students, who form a record number of Indian nationals in this year’s freshman class, haven’t lost the sense of awe that they have actually made it to the place where some of their heroes walk (Mint has been tracking their journey for some months now as part of The Indian Education Dream series, which began on 27 November.)
“It’s not just guys like them,” Silas continues, on the way to the Carl Icahn genetics lab to work on his final problem set of the term for an integrated science course. “A few of my professors are under consideration for Nobels, and even as an undergraduate I get a chance to study with them. That’s not the case everywhere.”
On a recent Monday, just after the students endured their first Nor’easter, a storm that brings icy gusts of wind to New Jersey and other coastal North Atlantic states,
Mint met with three in the Class of 2011 on the last day of their first term. Besides Silas, Jahnabi Barooah and Rohan Malik also planned to fly back to India for two-week breaks. Meanwhile, Shiv Mohan Dutt’s mother planned to fly to the US instead, so mother and son could travel together, while Tushar Gupta was spending the holiday with relatives, also in the US.
As Barooah, Malik and Silas gathered at a Starbucks café on Princeton’s main drag known as Nassau Street before leaving, they said they knew the holiday would feel too short since their first set of final exams loomed on the horizon in early January.
Each said they came with big hopes of joining a lot of extracurricular activities, volunteering and taking on projects outside of school. Now it seems like all that will have to wait for future terms—after they get used to the workload and achieve the balance all have been looking for. Turns out prestigious Princeton is also really, really tough.