24 Comments
Name, school: Ginia Sweeney, CC
Claim to fame: Spec editor for a while, enemy of athletes (for literally years!), head of Postcrypt Coffeehouse and one of the founding fathers of the now-annual folk festival.
Where are you going? I’ll be living in Brooklyn and working full time in children’s book publishing for at least the next year, and in the meantime putting my Art History degree to use by writing a trashy thriller about a Titian painting. After that, hopefully traveling and grad school in Art History.
Three things you learned at Columbia:
- The administration cares about money far more than students.
- If you work hard and enjoy your classes, even hotshot professors will love you and pay attention to you.
- Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I regularly Gchat with Tony Gong.
Any war stories from the War on Fun? Oh, yes. First and foremost, the long battle with the administration over Postcrypt, well documented in both this blog and the Spectator (curse you, anonymous Bwog commenter!). Also, I was written up for a noise violation after hosting a party attended by a number of folk musicians. As evidence of the debauchery he witnessed, the RA wrote in his report that he opened my door and “three people were holding [acoustic] guitars.”
Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I spent a month teaching English in rural China (read: population 100,000, no cheese), and—especially as a vegetarian—a month without cheese was fairly torturous.
Any advice for the Class of 2014?
- Push your limits. Do something that takes you out of your comfort zone, be it taking a class you’re not sure you’ll like or modeling for Artist Society. You’ll learn something about yourself and increase your self-confidence along the way
- Join a lot of clubs and activities and then whittle them down to the ones you love.
- Get off campus. These might be your only four years in this city, so take advantage of it while you can.
Any regrets? Not taking computer science classes sooner. Who knew this die-hard humanities girl would love programming so much?
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24 Comments
@yeah why all these people with their panties in a twist? ginia is a lover and a fighter (for folk) and one of the best people i’ve ever met. viva sweeney!
@Anonymous Ginia is one of the nicest, most interesting, most down-to-earth people I’ve met at Columbia. You can always count on her for an amazing time. Great choice for senior wisdom!
@... and I’m happy you guys took suggestions, even if it means having lots and lots of senior wisdoms–I think it does a better job of representing our student body and the people that read bwog than just the people Bwog editors would nominate.
@Anonymous Ginia is great! I can’t believe these comments are so negative. If she seems bitter, it’s with good reason — the University gave Postcrypt a lot of really unreasonable trouble, all because of one little Bwog comment.
Anyway, Ginia <3333 !
@like it was really based on a bwog comment. i’m sure the administration just wanted to shut down postcrypt, and the bwog comment was just an excuse. you think the administration really pays that much attention to what we say?
@hm smokin’ pic of ginia wowow
@tip hey bwog,
Apparently a ton of people’s ID’s (by apparently I mean it happened, by ‘a ton of people’ I mean enough that the woman at the housing services desk referred to it as a “schoolwide lockdown”) reset at midnight and left people locked out of their suites/rooms.
fun times, columbia. way to fix a problem that happened last year, too.
@RA This shit happens every year. Housing is garbage. You need to go to hospitality and have then give you access. This means they will be giving swipe access to hundreds of random people over the next week, so lock your doors, lol.
@the only thing i remember about this girl is her ridiculously big feet. seems nice enough though, if not a little weird.
@Fun Postcrypt sounds pretty fun. I wish I went. I was never into folk music (does early Jewel count? lol) but I like to drink coffee and talk to people.
@jesus bwog cant you tell its too late, nobody are reading these anymore. As I told you – YOU WAITED TO FREAKING LONG. a capstone to a extremely subpar year on bwogs part.
@Eliza O hai! We stopped running senior wisdoms last year a few days after graduation, and we will wrap up tomorrow evening so that they’re all done by class days. We started running SWs the same week as we’ve started running them for the four years of Bwog’s existence, and we ran ~15-20 more this year than we usually do, taking in a flood of suggestions for the first time. If you have suggestions on how to improve Bwog in a more general sense, I’d love to hear your thoughts! You’ve certainly been commenting often enough to show that you’re an avid reader. As always- eliza@bwog.net.
@Anonymous I wouldn’t waste your time. This person obviously has nothing constructive to say, and even if s/he did, s/he doesn’t seem to have a strong enough grasp on the English language to communicate it in any understandable way. Also, I do not think this year was in any way subpar for Bwog. You guys do good work :)
@Eliza Thanks so much!
@word Last year was pretty horrific, but this one was a good return to form, maybe even better than the Lydia years. Good job bwog!
@Anonymous sorry, nothing beats the lydia years. nothing.
@WHATS GUD
@yes i agree
@granted i don’t know this girl personally, but she sounds unfriendly, bitter and incredibly boring. enemy of athletes. ugh. not something to be proud of.
@123 man you freshman are retarded get off bwog, seriously
@to be precise a rising junior actually
@Anonymous I have to agree with the “enemy of athletes” thing.. Seriously. It’s like saying, “Oh, by the way, I hate half you guys, so have a good rest of college!” Why her, bwog?
@Anonymous I agree. Not only is this girl’s Op-Ed (see link) wrong, it’s terribly insulting to athletes. I have often heard people bemoan the sense of community here and this feeling directly correlates with our (traditional revenue) sports teams sucking. I’m not saying this is the only factor. Being in NYC doesn’t help “community” any. But the truth of the matter is, at schools where athletics are good, there is a better sense of community. About the athletes themselves, I have had many in my classes and I have never felt like the prof had to “slow down for them.” Profs don’t give a shit. They are going to keep going exactly how they want to. This is not to say that they are insensitive to the needs of athletes, but there’s a limit to how far they are willing to go. They have never adversely affected my classroom experience. Shitty professors (and TA’s) adversely affect my classroom experience. Ginia is wrong and so is the entire Ivy League. Recruiting is a good thing. I’m not saying admit people who can’t read, but give athletes scholarships at the same admissions standards (or slightly lower). Athlete attrition will go down, school spirit will go up and everybody will be happier for it.
@ridiculous I think Columbians respect our athletes, while at the same time refusing to worship them or base our sense of community on athletics. As Ginia wrote, Columbia is first and foremost a pretty intellectual and academic place. There is no reason at all for athletes to be “recruited” separately from all other students, and there is certainly no reason to give athletic scholarships when Columbia doesn’t even give merit scholarships; it’s only fair that aid be based on need. I would never argue that certain students don’t deserve to be at Columbia; that just creates hostility. But in the future, it would be better if Columbia consider athletics to be PART of what makes an applicant a good fit for Columbia, instead of allowing athletes to be recruited through a wholly separate process. That would be the fairest way to do college admissions of athletes.