In a single lifetime, a person will make billions of decisions, twelve million in a year, one million in a month, two hundred forty-five thousand in a week, and thirty-five thousand in a day. Each decision, whether it is what food to eat for lunch or what to study in college, shapes the path on which you walk, however small that change may be. But with those billions of decisions in a lifetime come just as many “what-ifs.” Every decision is like a crossroads — one path is what you choose, and another is the road not taken. Sometimes, it is fate that pulls you toward one side of the fork in the road, while other decisions are the result of free will.
At PHS, students make decisions that may alter the course of their lives. Many discover new passions after bittersweet partings with old ones. Others leave the decision to luck.
For some, simply coming to PHS and finding a home here was much more luck than free will.
“I lucked out in that I had somewhere to go, [and that] I had family that lived in a place where I could go to a good school district,” said Olivia Johnson ’27 after moving from Minnesota to Princeton, New Jersey.
For others, where they will end up is more fate than it is luck. This is the case for many of the seniors this year heading off to college, such as Clara Burton ’26.
“[Picking] a college is going to be a very big, significant choice I have to make,” said Burton. “I think fate will play a big role because I think that it’s going to be a very good experience no matter what.”
Students at PHS find free will plays a much larger role when it comes to athletics, however. For Mia Abrams-Sartor ’28, this decision was purely free will, although she believes her experience would be vastly different had she made a different choice.
“A significant decision I had to make was deciding which [softball] team to join when I was moving to a new state,” said Abrams-Sartor. “I may not have met … some of my closest friends [nor] enjoyed the sport so much.” Similarly, Yasna Shariarian ’27 also made a conscious decision to quit a sport that she disliked.
“I was a swimmer through eighth grade [but] I picked up golf as my sport, and I decided to quit swim[ming],” said Shariarian. “[Had I not played golf] I probably wouldn’t have found another sport that I liked, and I wouldn’t have been able to meet the people that I now know.”
Fate and free will also dictate many of the decisions teachers at PHS make, especially when it comes to their decision to even teach in the first place.
“I was thinking I was going to go into advertising ... I did advertising for my high school newspaper. But the more I thought about the logistics of the job, of whatever advertising work I’d be doing, I was thinking ‘Gosh, I’m going to be sitting at a desk all day long, and that is not for me.’ And I loved my English classes ... I had great high school and college professors that guided me,” said Courtney Crane, an English and journalism teacher at PHS.
For Crane, both fate and free will led her down this road.
“When I moved to New Jersey, I didn’t have a job, and the only job offer I had was being an editor at a dental magazine. And then a day later, I got offered the job here at Princeton High School. And so I think there were a lot of things going for me to get me this job here. That might have been luck, but also, just the kind of decisions I made along the way,” said Crane.
Across PHS, it is clear that one decision can change one’s life. Moreover, that same decision can be viewed in opposite ways. For some, loving a sport is fate; for others, it is luck. It is impossible to know what would have happened if you hadn’t made that decision, but that decision certainly brought you to where you are today.