<p>I have read a little about Princeton's Eating Clubs, but beyond these, or even including this, what does a typical weekend night look like for most students? I mean, do the majority all go to an eating club and drink from 10 or 11 pm on? Do most stay in their rooms ... and study? play board games or cards? Are there areas of each dorm where students can play billiards, or foosball or ping-pong or video games? Do many people go out to nice restaurants? Go to the movies? Are there dances outside of the eating clubs? What DO "typical students" do for fun? And what percentage of these activities does NOT include any sort of drinking or other recreational drugs? </p>
<p>And am I seeking this type of information in the wrong place? I can't seem to find much on these threads. Also, is there any sort of social life during the weeknights? If not, do people just study from after dinner until they go to sleep? Please enlighten me. Thanks!</p>
<p>(Also, do the answers to all of the above change a great deal depending on the grade one is in? I am most interested in freshmen, though I would like to hear about all grades).</p>
<p>WOW! Over 100 students read this (so clearly I’m not the only one who wondered about) but not one student posted! (Not referring to the one person who was kind enough to send me a private message). But can any of you READING this, hoping (like me) to receive a range of sincere answers suggest a better way or place to post this sort of question in order to illicit responses? Maybe one of you could try to reword and repost? Anyone? Bueler?? :-)) Thanks!</p>
<p>Plenty of people go to eating clubs without drinking or drinking a lot. Usually when it’s close to midterms or finals people are in studying most of the weekend. Some people go out twice a week on Thursdays and Saturdays (or more), while others never go to eating clubs or other parties. In my group of friends, I know a lot of people like to go to plays or movies on Saturdays or on Fridays. Most people don’t touch recreational drugs unless they’re at Terrace (an eating club), but most do drink. However, not that many drink heavily, i.e most drink pretty responsibly. Even if you don’t drink, you can still do practically everything, because no one is going to force you to drink. There’s plenty to do, and I would say most people have a pretty vibrant social lives for how busy they are.</p>
<p>Sorry for the rambling, I was just writing down whatever came to mind.</p>
<p>The Street is really the social hub at Princeton. The big “going out” nights at Princeton are Thursdays and Saturdays, typically all the clubs are open on those nights. But each club also has other nights during the week that they tend to be open; (when I was there a few years ago typically Ivy was open Tuesdays, TI Sundays, Charter Fridays, etc; there’s usually SOMETHING open on any given night if you and your friends feel like going out).</p>
<p>I found that Freshman year people tend to go out to more of the clubs on a given night while they’re exploring their options. When I was a freshman I might go have dinner with friends, stop by a room party, and then go to two or three of the clubs. By sophomore year I had honed in on my favorite club that I ended up bickering, and my junior and senior year I mostly went to my club and one other where I had a lot of friends. Some of my closest friends weren’t interested in joining a club but still joined us out at the clubs. Typically each club has one night a week that’s a Members Night only, but on all other nights anyone can go.</p>
<p>New Jersey restaurants are largely BYOB; which is great because it means you can take your own cheap wine or alcohol out to dinner, so there are a lot of the less expensive restaurants on Nassau St. where students go and get too loud at dinner. There’s a bar on Nassau St. called the Ivy Inn where 21+ students go for karaoke, but I always avoided it; the beer at the clubs is free, why pay for it nearby?</p>
<p>For non-street activities, there’s the BlackBox for dancing, although I never went. I did go to a lot of acapella shows, improv shows, dance shows, etc before going out to watch my friends in those performance groups. NYC is super easy to get to on the train, so people occasionally go there on the weekend.</p>
<p>You’re going to find a place for you socially. If you want to sit around a dorm and drink wine and laugh with friends on the weekend, you’ll find it. If you want to be fratty and drunk and ridiculous and play beer pong all night, you’ll find that, too. If you want to not drink at all and relax with friends, that’s just fine as well!</p>
<p>There’s a wide range. My son doesn’t drink, so he hangs out mostly with his friends, who also don’t drink. He belongs to an eating club which he enjoys very much, but doesn’t partake much in the party scene. He’s very happy. So I guess the answer is there’s room for lots of different social lives … Which I think is great!</p>
<p>You really aren’t going to find a “typical” Princeton experience. A lot of students head to the Street once or twice (rarely more) per week, and most people drink while at the Street. However, most people will not be out on any given Thursday/Saturday, and not because they’re working. The student government sponsors a couple of free movies every weekend at a theater on Nassau Street. Murray-Dodge cafe is a great late-night spot to grab free cookies and tea and play a few games of Bananagrams. There are pool and ping-pong tables in common rooms all around campus, there is almost always a sporting event to catch in the Frist lounge, the rock-climbing wall is open late, study breaks show up at all times of day, a few student performance groups have shows on any given weekend, and plenty of people just pop some popcorn and gather around with friends to watch movies on Netflix. Princeton students are masters of the Art of Not Working: going into a dorm study space intending to work, running into friends, and looking at the clock a few hours later only to realize that most of their academic work still isn’t finished because everyone simultaneously remembered how fun Sporcle is and ended up spending a long while around one person’s computer shouting out answers. Or we all wind up in a common area with our books but end up talking about whatever seems interesting until two or three in the morning. Whatever you’re into, you’ll probably find others at Princeton who are just as into it as you are.</p>
<p>I second the “no typical Princeton experience” comment. There is really something here for everyone – a lot of people go to the Street on Thursdays and/or Saturday, and a lot of people don’t. I personally have found a core group of friends here, and we’re usually hanging out / going to some performance / seeing one of the FREE movies at the Garden Theater / watching something on Netflix…etc. One of the best parts of college in general is the conversations, I think, so I spend a lot of time just talking with people. </p>
<p>I should also note that there is NO judgement / expected behavior, at least what I’ve seen. You want to go to the eating clubs? Cool! You’ll have people to do that with. You want to stay in? Cool! You’ll have people to hang out with, too, if you want.</p>
<p>Weeknights: it varies. People are frequently working, but also most club activities happen during the week, so that’s cool. I usually take a few hours on weeknights to bother my friends and we just hang out / talk, but that depends on people’s workloads…</p>
<p>Seriously, I think there’s something here for anyone.</p>
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