You, ready for your first day as a Columbia University student!

Yesterday’s schedule of cart-hauling and forced social interactions is thankfully behind all of you first-years, but don’t think having your stuff all settled in Carman means that you’re free for the week — formal NSOP programming begins now. Your OLs will only up their pep, you will find yourself in more icebreakers, and you might tonight still be scrambling for some inebriated fun with loosely titled “new friends”. Happy first Monday of college, and we here at Bwog hope all of you over-eager NSOPers continue to exert yourself enough that everyone you meet sends along all the ridiculous/pretentious things you say at tips@bwog.com. And if anyone still sees a lingering dad offering the best set up for their kid’s room or running across Broadway with a fan, we want him too. 

Today’s Highlights:

• Convocation, 2:30 – 4:00 pm, Low Plaza. Your first formal event with all 1,500 first years in the same room will consist of sweating together in Low while unfamiliar though business casual-clad people talk up Columbia and all of your possibilities on this here campus. We will be impressed if you ever see who you sit next to on campus ever again. This session is followed by more sweaty awkwardness as everyone splits into their OL groups. We will be impressed if you open GroupMe once this week.
• Cookout Dinner, 5:30 – 7:00 pm, Hamilton Lawn. This cookout dinner kickstarts the various free outdoor meals you’ll be served this week, all of which are purposefully and significantly better than anything you’ll be served in the dining halls. Don’t get used to the seafood selection that might appear later in the week, nor an seemingly endless supply of mobile Popsicle freezers stationed across campus.
• Class Act, 7:00 – 8:30 pm, Roone. The string of performances during Class Act have the goal of showcasing all of Columbia’s fun and funky traditions, but be mindful that that only takes an hour and a half. “We have a lot of campus traditions” is really just an exaggeration of the approximately four or five traditions that the administration prides itself on.

One Thing To Do Before Graduating: Find the mythical and surely legendary outlet that Alma Mater is rumored to boast. We think it may only exist in our dreams, but the Columbia University Admissions stats tell us that you might be just the right first-year class to solve this mystery for us.

From The Archives: Field Notes: The First Weekend, which will familiarize you with our weekly Field Notes, and make you less likely to be notoriously CAVA’d during NSOP weekend.

Thumbs up for NSOP (NSOP!) via Shutterstock