How To: Weekend At Lawrenceville

Weekends at Lawrenceville tend to provide a pause from the frantic energy produced in a six-day week. While many day students venture home to have a day of normalcy, boarders are left on campus and must decide how to spend their precious weekend. While some choose to take it easy, others may find joy in jampacking their free time—the options are endless. 

Most boarders have developed a healthy weekend routine that balances productivity with social activity. While boarder Bryce Langdon ’24 likes to spend time with friends on Saturdays, he uses Sundays to catch up on or get ahead of work and still finds some time to relax. Langdon, along with many other Lawrentians, prefers to do his work in the Bunn Library on Sundays since he generally gets distracted while in his room. The library serves as a quiet setting to complete assignments, but also doubles as a social center, allowing collaboration among peers. After rewarding himself for the time spent at “The Lib,” he always plays some video games with his friends or watches a few YouTube videos before hopping into the shower and heading to bed for school the next morning. Langdon believes that “it doesn’t feel like a real weekend when there is only one night during the whole week where [he isn’t] stressed about work,” but also contends that “the Saturday classes make Saturday night more rewarding.”

Maddie Rygh ’23 is into her fourth year at boarding school, so she has weekends down to a simple routine. Rygh usually travels home for a portion of the weekend to work as a barista at a local restaurant in her town. After work, she comes back to campus and always finds time to sleep, as this is how she winds down and relaxes. While it may seem as though there is no time left for her to complete the piling homework assignments that come with V Form Fall, Rygh actually does her work “three days before the due date at 5:00 AM.” Her early rising prevents the frantic stress one might have when attempting to complete all homework due on Monday and allows her to do her favorite weekend activity: sleep. 

Along with the majority of Lawrentians, a common weekend for Lily Hager ’24 is spent doing homework, spending time with friends, and catching up on sleep. When Hager is not going on runs or watching TikToks in her room, she takes advantage of the school’s close proximity to Princeton, visiting key landmarks of the town like Halo Pub, a local ice cream shop, or browsing for clothes in Urban Outfitters or LuLuLemon. For special occasions, Hager and friends dine in Teresa’s Cafe or Witherspoon Grill for a nice off-campus meal to celebrate the completion of another week. Hager also notes that she finds “virtually no time to actually relax” on campus due to the overwhelming cycle of Saturday sports schedules and Sunday’s overload of homework, however, when given a few free hours, Hager finds joy in just “doing nothing.” 

Eloise Widener ’26 has only had a handful of weekends since she began at Lawrenceville just over a month ago, but she already knows how to spend her time. Widener likes to go home to New York City on the longer weekends with days off, but if it is an ordinary one-and-a-half day break, she will remain on campus to hang out with friends at the social events that Saturday evening. The following Sunday, if Widener chooses to return home, she usually completes her homework on the hour-long train to and from campus. If she stays on campus, her Sunday work begins around 1:00 PM and the rest of the day is spent relaxing, which for her, is “using [her] phone way too much.” Overall, Widener likes weekends because she is “able to socialize with [her] friends and [she doesn’t] have a structured schedule which allows [her] to spend time at home when a getaway is needed.”

For West Violich-Mecklenburg ’25, weekends are taken as an opportunity to unwind and relax before the upcoming week. Violich has enjoyed spending the sunnier days this fall playing tennis and golfing with friends on campus, while still finding the time to complete homework assignments in the library. When day is done, Violich relaxes by watching football and other shows with his Housemates, including a House favorite: The Bachelor. Violich may enjoy the weekend, but he voices that he is “not a huge fan of Saturday classes” and hopes that they are excluded from the future schedule so the weekend can be more relaxed.