From left: Bwog, Tanay

The commencement bleachers have gone up, we’ve posted our call for Senior Wisdoms, and in one short week it will be May. For many seniors, this means that the time to say goodbye to Columbia and the relationships formed here is quickly approaching. One senior, Tanay Jaipuria, SEAS ’14, decided that he wants to make the most of his last few weeks here and has set up a website—Tea with Tanay—to help him do just that.

The website allows anyone who so desires to sign up to get tea—and hopefully enjoy some good conversation—with Tanay for half an hour.  The site is aesthetically simple and thus very welcoming, which we later learned was a deliberate choice by Tanay.  For those who aren’t easily convinced, he links to his Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles to reassure you that he is in fact “quite normal.”  He even gives you conversation ideas, from speakeasies and Marcus Aurelius to Taylor Swift (kindred spirits) and selfies.  Enthused by his techniques, we sent our resident tea teacher Eric Cohn to talk to him.

Bwog: What gave you the idea to start this?

Tanay: A big part of it was that I’m a senior…and I realized that I’m not going to see a lot of these people again, especially the ones moving away from New York. Also the fact that I made some of my really good friends in senior year.  And I realized: what if there are more people like that, who I would never get the chance to see again?  Most people have a group they hang out with, and, especially once you’re a junior or senior, you won’t really go out of that group that much.

B: How has the response been so far?

T: Last I checked, there have been like a 110 responses.  About fifty are complete strangers, like people on campus I have never seen before.  Another fifty are acquaintances and some of my really close friends who signed up to support me early on.  And then there are about ten or thirty random Russian ones which I think was just spam because they randomly found it.

B: Has it been mostly seniors?

T: It’s been like 50% seniors and 50% others.

B: How have people felt about the tea afterward; have they shared any of their thoughts?

T: One thing I’ve really liked is that a lot of the people who did this thought it was fun and might drop by again, and since they had the link to schedule it, I just told them whenever there’s a free spot to just feel free and stop by again.  A lot of them also like the idea of the group, which initially came out of the the fact that one day I set up like three or four individual sessions back to back, and then I found that people were staying so long—so the first person stayed until the end of the third session—that it automatically became a group of four or a group of five.  So instead of it being a thirty minute thing it became like an hour and a half thing where people would just stay in groups and chat about stuff.

B: So what’s the most interesting session you’ve had with anyone?  Have any of them particularly stayed with you?

T: The first one I mentioned where everyone kind of stayed in a group—it was supposed to be three thirty minute sessions back to back, but instead it ended up being like four people till 5:30 and then two of them stayed till 7 so we just kept on talking, and that was really nice.

B: Are you keeping in touch with any of the people you’ve gotten tea with?

T: So a few of them I was already friends with, and so we made plans to hang out again.  And then a lot of the other ones friended me on Facebook, and they’ve said that they’d come back.  A lot of them signed up to come back again.  A couple other ones I made plans to hang out at other times.

B: Have you seen anyone else try to do something like this?

T: Not at Columbia, but the idea also came from my friend at Penn who did a similar thing in his senior year.  I linked it in the website so you can look at that for more context…and then there was a version at Princeton last year which was coffee.  Also, a couple people asked me why I went for tea over coffee, because they felt like coffee would’ve gotten more signups—and for me the reason I went with tea is that in general, I feel like coffee has the connotation of work or business meeting, or something that’s transactional, or you know, you have coffee when you have a lot of work to do, so it’s something more fast paced with a sense of urgency, whereas I wanted this to be more like you’re taking time out of your busy schedule to sit and talk for at least thirty minutes. So I think tea was a better way to express that, because of the connotation of afternoon tea and taking time to relax and slow down and chat.  With this, it’s more about juts enjoying the moment and having good conversations in the moment, rather than for some particular purpose––rather than trying to gain something out of it.  You have coffee chats with people you’re trying to impress or who you need something from.  And then obviously the name with tea works better.

B: Had you been planning on doing this for a while now?

T: I saw [my friend from Penn’s] thing last year, and I had a document like a bucket list, and I randomly opened it one day, probably a year after I had even touched it, and I saw this, and I was like, oh shit, I have a month left; I should do this.  One night I just decided to go about it.  I was kind of a bit worried at first, like what kind of response I would get, would it be super awkward having tea with strangers.  And so I was actually quite nervous for my first few, but after that it’s become pretty easy—it’s not that hard to chat with strangers.  What’s also been nice is that a lot of people who signed up also wrote in their thing that this wasn’t something they would normally do and thought it would be awkward, but they decided to give it a go and really enjoyed it.

B: Have you noticed anything common across the people you’ve talked to?  Have you learned anything overall just talking to everyone?

T: Basically that everyone is interesting and has something to say, and it’s more about you asking the right questions to get to that point where you find out what’s interesting about them and get to that point where they feel comfortable sharing the stories about them that are interesting, so that’s been one thing.  You kind of realize that everyone has something, so it’s about whether you can bring it out from them.

B: Have you gotten better at figuring out the right question to ask?

T: I think so, because everyone also comes into this with different level of comfort.  Some of them are also really nervous and just signed up because they thought it would be really cool to get out of there comfort zone, whereas some of them are signing up because they can just do it and think it will be fun.  So for some of them it takes a bit longer to get information, to get them to start opening up…and as a host, especially with the group ones, it’s your job to make them feel comfortable.

B: Has there been anyone particularly interesting or surprising that signs up?

T: There’s been quite a few people who I met during NSOP or ISOP—who I haven’t talked to in like three years—who I was really surprised to see.  And also a lot of my friends signed up from other cities also signed up because they might be in New York.

Overall, Tanay seemed like a really cool, interesting, and approachable guy, and the conversation was easy and low-stress.  Although we didn’t really get as far as talking about TSwift, we still had a great time and encourage anyone who can to sign up to grab tea with Tanay.  You have nothing to lose.