When walking past the construction site that will be Hobson College, Allison Jiang passes a sign along the fences: \u201cPrinceton Builds Access. Access Builds Serendipitous Collisions.\u201d The wording has become somewhat of a joke among Princeton students \u2013 two years ago, every senior member of the Tower eating club used the phrase \u201cserendipitous collisions\u201d in their thesis.<\/p>\n
But for Allison, the meaning rings true.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to stick with that idea [of serendipitous collisions], because I feel like a lot of the friendships and connections you make here, they just kind of happen, you happen to be in the right place with the right people,\u201d she told The Roth Report.<\/p>\n
In fact, she says she has made most of her friends at Princeton through random, chance encounters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first got here, I had the mentality of \u2018I\u2019ll meet people through classes and clubs,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBut strangely, I found that most of the people that I talked to have kind of just been random and in passing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That hasn\u2019t always been true for Allison, though. She was raised in downtown Chicago before moving to Shanghai with her family at eight years old. She went to a British International School before going to a boarding school in Massachusetts, the Groton School, for high school. Though she says that she made lifelong connections at Groton, Allison says that with about 80 people in her grade, there weren\u2019t enough people to have those chance encounters.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The social environment was] almost like everybody knows somebody, or there are a lot of students who like their parents or teachers at the school,\u201d she told the Report. \u201cSo I felt like everybody was very interlocked.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Princeton is large enough to foster those chance encounters that turn into lifelong friendships. And most of those have to do with a shared love of music. Allison has played violin since she was four years old, and she sings as well. She is part of multiple music groups on campus, including the chamber music group OPUS, the a capella group Shere Khan, and her own band, Pocketbook.<\/p>\n
In fact, Pocketbook \u2013 made of Allison, keys player Simon Marotte, and drummer Ryder Walsh \u2013 started because of a serendipitous collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in a freshman seminar with [Simon], and we had randomly jammed out once in NCW common room too but reconnected during a music class,\u201d Allison said. \u201c[I] started singing with them and it stuck!\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon agrees that it was serendipity that brought the band together.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat encounter at the piano was pretty serendipitous. We both loved this song called \u2018Best Part\u2019 by Daniel Caesar. I’ve always loved playing on piano, and she sang it really well. And I think that was really serendipitous and like a motivating factor for me in wanting to work with her. But also, I feel like it’s kind of in the spirit of jazz to like the spontaneity of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pocketbook is slated to be the in-house band for Princeton\u2019s late-night show, All-Nighter, this year, which the band is especially excited about. They perform original songs, covers, and improvised songs.<\/p>\n
Another one of her serendipitous friends, Sophie Zhang, says seeing Pocketbook perform is one of her favorite memories of Allison.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember, me and my friend were there listening to the song, and our jaws both just dropped because it was so unexpectedly amazing,\u201d she told the Report.<\/p>\n
Sophie and Allison knew each other tangentially from OPUS, but became close through a series of what Allison says are random events.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe overlapped because one of their friends is in my writing seminar, and then we started hanging out more,\u201d Allison said. \u201cAnd then we texted a little bit, like to grab a meal, completely separate from that club. And now we kind of like randomly happen to be in the same dating club, so we’re hanging out more, just kind of a random turn of events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophie also said that their friendship came about through a serendipitous collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always thought that she would be the type of person that I would want to be friends with but we never really got a chance to connect,\u201d Sophie said. \u201cWhen I first met her, we just slowly got to know each other well. And I don’t even know how it happened, but, we just kind of bumped into each other, decided randomly to start talking to each other, and we really enjoyed each other’s company. So we see each other pretty often.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another close friend, Shravan Suri, also says he got close to Allison through random encounters after first meeting in Shere Khan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ran into her a lot randomly, and so I think because of that, we just got closer through running into each other often,\u201d Shravan told the Report.<\/p>\n
Shravan says he and Allison also grew close on a Shere Khan tour in addition to getting meals together. They plan to spend Thanksgiving break together in Chicago \u2013 all in a friendship that happened through random encounters. Shravan says the change encounters outside of Shere Khan have been instrumental to their friendship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have completely different majors. We don’t have too much that would have brought us together in the same way that like acapella has,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n