Don't be afraid to be yourself

Rise and shine freshpeople! Every day we’ll be checking in with you as you greet your first Columbia mornings. To aid us in this quest, we’ve dug up some of our most valuable archival treasure, Senior Wisdom, from throughout the ages. Have something to contribute? Try us (including you ’15ers!) at tips@bwog.com.

Cynthia Jennings, Director of NSOP, had this to report:

“As of 5 PM yesterday, we had 1168 first years who had moved into housing. We are waiting for 234 more to arrive.

Today is the move in day for our Transfer, Visiting, and Combined Plan students. We had a handful of those students who moved in yesterday, but we expect most of them will still be arriving today since this was their originally scheduled move in day.”

Wise words of the day, courtesy of Justin Grace, CC’09

Most of the lessons you’ll learn in life have already been summed up better by rappers your friends only like ironically. So don’t do that. Also, it is going to hurt a whole bunch to learn how uncool and unspecial and completely and totally dumb you are. It’s worth it. (Plus I think it never stops?)

Favorite NSOP memory, from George Olive, CC’08

I unwittingly participated in an attempt to burn down Hogan my first week of college. During NSOP, my RA recruited a group of us to help retrieve and carry a stolen fridge back from Hogan. When the negotiations soured, a hot-blooded member of the retrieval party set the offending suite’s name-placard on fire, unbeknownst to me (seriously). When the fire alarm went off and we realized what had happened, my RA freaked out and instructed us to leave immediately without telling the security guard, which we did. This, specifically, is what I got in trouble for. The RA and the excitable student were suspended and kicked out of housing, and I ended up with a year of disciplinary probation. At the time, I thought I was going to get kicked out. In my sentencing hearing, I remember feeling both genuinely terrified about this prospect and curious to know whether Kevin Shollenberger was sitting on a booster seat.

Bwog circa 2009 via Wikimedia