My Beloved World: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Princeton seems like something out of a science fiction novel because most of Sonia’s classmates seem to come from another world. One afternoon, as Sonia chats with a girl from Alabama whose father, grandfather, and brother went to Princeton, the girl comments that “unusual” people come to Princeton—while gesturing to Sonia’s roommate Dolores and another friend. Both Dolores and the friend are Latina. Sonia immediately begins chatting with Dolores in Spanish. Dolores and Sonia take a while to get to know each other—Dolores is afraid of Puerto Ricans because of West Side Story and Sonia thinks Dolores is a shy country girl, but they become close friends.

Sonia is quiet most of the time. She’s shocked when she hears people talking about being invited to weddings where they don’t know the couple and have to send gifts—this isn’t how Sonia’s community does weddings. Sonia takes refuge in the library and during her first week, she reads up on different subjects before committing to classes. Since there’s no official pre-law curriculum, Sonia is free to choose all her own classes. She decides on introductory surveys and is thrilled with her choices until she returns to the dorm. She worries she’s wasting her time when she hears that her classmates are taking upper level courses, and she fears she’s not smart enough.

Sonia discovers that the surveys involve just as much work as upper-level courses and, importantly, help her learn to engage critically with a subject, as Miss Katz tried to teach her, instead of just regurgitating facts. Later, as a lawyer and a judge, Sonia has to become an expert in whatever a case requires, so this skill proves very useful. During a psychology lab, she has to overcome her fear of rats, which terrify her. She does well until the final weeks, when she finds her rats eating one that died. She runs from the room screaming. After this, she can’t bring herself to go back. Her professor credits her for her attempt to overcome her fear and her grade barely suffers for not being able to finish.

Sonia has to participate in the work-study program as part of her scholarship. Since she can type, she gets a job in the Computer Center doing data entry for grad students and researchers. She earns twice what she would at the cafeteria, and she can set her own hours. Sonia holds the job for her four years at Princeton. During her senior year, she has the idea to enter the text of her thesis on punch cards like they use for data entry. Her boss is intrigued and assigns another operator to type the thesis—so it’s possible that Sonia submits Princeton’s first word-processed thesis.

Freshman year, however, Sonia struggles. She gets a C on her first paper in history class, even though she loves the class and the professor, Professor Weiss. Professor Weiss explains that Sonia’s paper is full of facts, but there’s no analysis. She realizes she’s lost until she runs into Kenny one day and remembers Forensics Club. She realizes that she needs to treat her papers like debates by mapping out her position and persuading her reader. This isn’t easy, as Sonia also realizes that her written English is weak. The following year, she discovers that this is because she uses Spanish grammar structures. Over the summer, she works on grammar and vocabulary.

Sonia comes to realize that she’s not unintelligent; she just doesn’t come from money. She had no idea until arriving at Princeton that she grew up in a bubble, and she constantly discovers things she doesn’t know about. At one point, she enters data about how people pay for college. She freezes when she sees that people have trust funds and million-dollar incomes. Mami, in contrast, makes less than $5,000 per year. Sonia vows to be a student for life and says she doesn’t regret this, even now that she doesn’t have to try so hard to fit in.