Adri­enne Rubin and Grzegorz

On Thurs­day, March 29th, I walked down With­er­spoon Street, made a right onto Val­ley Road, and entered the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools Admin­is­tra­tive Build­ing for the first day of my Princetern­ship with the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion. The Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion is a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that sup­ports excel­lence in edu­ca­tion in the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools and has con­tributed over $1,000,000 to the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools since its incep­tion in 1995.   I was met in the lobby by Adri­enne Rubin (Music ’88), the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion.  As we headed upstairs to the alum’s office, I learned that Mrs. Rubin is the first and only employee of the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion.  The remain­der of the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion is a group of vol­un­teers that make up the Board of Mem­bers.  I quickly real­ized that the Princetern­ship was going to be a spe­cial expe­ri­ence when Mrs. Rubin told me how work­ing for a non­profit is reward­ing by know­ing that you are doing some­thing good for the com­mu­nity and see­ing the pos­i­tive change you are mak­ing.  Although the work keeps you busy and can be dif­fi­cult, it is some­thing that gets you up in the morn­ing excited, which is what every job should do for a person. 

Mrs. Rubin set me up work­ing on a project for the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foundation’s annual Spring Gala, the nonprofit’s biggest fundraiser.  I entered donors into an Excel spread­sheet so that the infor­ma­tion can be entered into a larger data­base.  I saw that the gen­er­ous dona­tions from the sup­port­ive com­mu­nity were what kept the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion doing the great things that it was for the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools.  While the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools received fund­ing from taxes, this was only able to do so much.  The Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion helped take the Prince­ton Pub­lic Schools from ade­quacy to excellence. 

After going on a Break­out Trip where I had the incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity of work­ing with non­prof­its pro­vid­ing health care to undoc­u­mented and unin­sured patients in Los Ange­les the week before my Princetern­ship, it was inspir­ing to see how another non­profit can pos­i­tively impact its com­mu­nity.   Dur­ing my sec­ond and final day of the Princetern­ship, I had the fun task of cre­at­ing a brochure for the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, which helped me learn why the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion does the great work that it does.  A quote from a video cre­ated by the Prince­ton Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, “We all get into this busi­ness because we want to help kids, you see every kid shine,” will surely stay in the back of my head as I real­ized that by work­ing hard to pos­i­tively impact some­thing you are pas­sion­ate about you can do amaz­ing things for those around you.  I look for­ward to the moment I find an issue that I love so deeply I can also do non­profit work and make a pos­i­tive impact.

The Princetern­ship pro­gram is spe­cial because even after only a few hours, the alum made me feel con­nected to the Prince­ton alumni com­mu­nity.  I love help­ing oth­ers achieve their dreams because I know there were many peo­ple that helped me get to where I am.  I am very glad and thank­ful some­one as friendly and nice as Mrs. Rubin was there to share her expe­ri­ences and work with me.  I plan on con­tin­u­ing the great tra­di­tion of Prince­ton alumni by help­ing future Prince­to­ni­ans fig­ure out their pas­sions when I am an one day an alumnus.