Princeton University’s 2016 valedictorian surprised her friends when she announced her engagement to a Princeton professor, who is 46 years her senior.

That professor is Lee Clark Mitchell who will be 72 years in June, according to a report from the NY Post.

The former student, Cameron Platt, is now 25 years old and just finished her master's degree program at the University of Oxford. It was back in September 2018 when the brainiac finally got the courage to ask her mentor out on a date.

Screenshots of Platt's Facebook post were shared on the NY Post's website.

The 25-year-old said that Mitchell was a "devoted mentor," who she first met during her sophomore year (in 2013), and says "he captivated me with his brilliance, sensitivity, and passion, but his lectures changed forever the way that I think."

Platt was was surprised how much she still thought of the professor while she was at Oxford, so she made the first move.

"And so, this September, I asked him out," Platt said she was encouraged by friends to make the move on the gray-haired professor.

"Lee spent most of our first date trying to figure out whether it was, in fact, a date," she joked. The couple "broke through," and she says "something sprouted from a seed neither of us had known we'd planted."

The 25-year-old former student acknowledged that the pair had concerns about coming together, but says "eventually it became impossible to deny how fully we feel meant for each other."

The NY Post says that Mitchell is on an academic sabbatical from the University, "which was requested long before his relationship with Platt," according to their reporting.

Meanwhile, the college itself won't comment on relationships that take place outside of the university.

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