<p>Have any of you seen the admissions video "Beginnings" on the Princeton website? I've watched 10+ times, with my friends, family, etc. like analyzing every horrible aspect of it. </p>
<p>(especially the guy at the end with the deep voice).</p>
<p>it's so pretentious.</p>
<p>also i'm glad fred hargadon isn't the dean of admissions anymore</p>
<p>I haven't seen it, but I definitely will head over there and be disgusted now that you've pointed it out.</p>
<p>do you have the link?</p>
<p>Was it really that bad? Aren't you still applying ed? </p>
<p>The admissions dean was creepy yes, but I still loved it...of course I'm horribly biased now and can't say a bad thing about princeton.</p>
<p>I'm applying ED but I absolutely hated it. </p>
<p>I hated the following:</p>
<p>The girl who said:</p>
<p>"I'm here to find out what my strengths are, but, more importantly what my weaknesses are."</p>
<p>The girl who said:</p>
<p>"I just want to say I really loved your speech, especially the part about questioning everything."</p>
<p>The Shakespeare guy.</p>
<p>Claire, the girl who said:</p>
<p>"High school is very different. High school has prescribed molds into which you must fit." (in a wicked pretentious voice)</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>the part about doing well on a midterm and going on and enjoying yourself or some crap</p>
<p>the whole theme of "formative moments" was so forced</p>
<p>but most importantly</p>
<p>the guy at the end with the deep voice who says ridiculous things like:</p>
<p>"It's living the life of the mind, we are not always given these privileges, you have to do it when you can."</p>
<p>"Does this inscription leave any room for at the TIME of the jewish war instead of during the jewish war?" (WTF)</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>"i think what interests me about this course is reparing things in the world"</p>
<p>everything in an extraordinarily self-aggrandizing voice</p>
<p>also the guy who goes up to the admissions dean who said, "I just want to say thanks, I'm so excited! I'm so excited!" (i know it sounds normal on paper but it's like major sucking up in my opinion, like the girl above who says she loved president tilman's speech)</p>
<p>also the whole tone of we're princeton, we're the best, blah blah balh. everyone here's so talented.</p>
<p>i just wish they presented themselves better</p>
<p>Oh I see. I hated the obvious sucking up too, but I just love the shots of campus...</p>
<p>I agree with Zant... beautiful campus.</p>
<p>I watched that video expecting it to be crap like you said, but I really liked it. It reminded me about how much I love Princeton.</p>
<p>I don't think it was so horrible. Yeah, the one guy with the megabass voice was a little strange (and a little pretentious, too)...as was the hyper/'intellectual' girl....but they weren't really that off-putting. Like zant said, the campus and other parts way more than made up for it...</p>
<p>And what was with the "God only exists only because we are here to believe He exists"* comment? What, do we 'believe' God into existence? That's new....I thought it was either:
1) God exists--truly, really exists.
or
2) God does not exist.</p>
<p>How could anyone believe that we are capable of wishing/believing something into physical existence?</p>
<p>*That may not be the actual wording, but it was the gist...</p>
<p>The point is that God is a creation of man. He exists in soley because we recognize "Him". It relates to the idea that things only exist if they are recognized by man.</p>
<p>I think it's a confusion of a physical 'thing' with a conceptual 'thing'....concepts can certainly exist outside of the real, physical world. But actual beings cannot. The argument at its core questions whether God is a concept or a real being.</p>
<p>Note: by 'real being,' I don't mean something that necessarily has a body.</p>
<p>Mmm...I'm not sure that was the person's point.</p>
<p>I know that wasn't what she was saying, but two fundamentally different views toward God are the source of her argument.
If you believe God is a concept - something that can have existence in only one mind, in no minds, in many minds, or in all minds - then it is possible for you to believe He exists because we believe Him to exist.
If you believe God is a spiritual being, then you cannot believe that He only exists because another being believes Him to exist. If something has physical (or in the case of God, spiritual) being, then they exist whether or not we believe they exist.</p>
<p>Wow, I think that may come out even more confusing....</p>
<p>I really don't even think that was a defining point of the movie. Yes, it's suck-upy and pretentious. That's what admissions videos are supposed to be. I've seen far worse. Like zant, I loved the shots of the campus. I would have liked to have seen more about residential life, but the academic stuff was interesting. Different strokes...</p>
<p>I sort of understood the God thing...like, does something still exist if nobody believes it does? It goes back to that question of, if a tree falls in a forest but nobody's there, did it still make a sound? Which for God, is a different thing, because as Kebree said, if He is a spiritual being, there is no way to wish him out of existence. I guess?</p>
<p>Well a tree can make a sound, it's just that there's no guarantee anyone will pick up the waves =)</p>
<p>but that's the point. how do you know it made a sound if no one heard it?</p>
<p>I'm invisible when no one's looking</p>