Jareth Holt ’09 was good at math at his high school in Los Angeles, so in his first semester at Princeton, he took “Analysis in a Single Variable” with John Conway, the John Von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics.

He was hooked.

“It wasn't like any math I'd been introduced to before; it felt like calculus, and covered the same material, but was so much more subtle, elegant, fascinating,” Holt says. “This class really conditioned me for what studying math would be like at Princeton, and the structure of classes here in general. As for Professor Conway himself, he was, and still is, an extraordinarily enthusiastic lecturer.”

When Holt found himself thinking about math all day, applying it to real life situations, he decided to major in the subject.

“The department has been wonderfully supportive so far. There are not many math majors, so there’s a lot of friendship between us, and a lot of interaction between students and professors,” he says.

In addition, Holt is completing a certificate in teacher preparation. In Los Angeles, he tutored fellow students at his high school, which made him interested in education. He now volunteers as a tutor at Princeton High School through the Peer2Peer tutoring program and has tutored incoming freshmen at the University's Freshman Scholars Institute. “I think teaching is something that’s really important in society,” Holt says. “So far, all of my experiences in tutoring have been really positive.”

Holt also has been able to take advantage of opportunities outside of his chosen fields. He met many of his friends during Outdoor Action at the start of his freshman year, and also bonded with other students during a fall break trip to California with his physics class. The group went to Joshua Tree National Park, Palomar Observatory and Mount Wilson Observatory for some stargazing. Then they visited Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to discuss astrophysical research and internship opportunities.

“The observatory was opened up for a night, so as a class we got to go and look at stars and galaxies. At Caltech, we had short talks on cosmology and string theory,” Holt says. “It was a really great trip.”