Name, school: Akiva Bamberger, CC

Claim to fame: I’m all up in the interwebs. I wrote a tech column for the Spectator, helped found the Application Development Initiative and was president of the Association for Computing Machinery. Also, I was a tour guide and am graduating a year early.

Where are you going? I’m going to be at Google this summer for an internship and am still finalizing my plans for next year.

Three things you learned at Columbia:

  1. The best things in life are most often spontaneous and unplanned.
  2. Nobody really wants to get half the emails they subscribe to. I was once part of the CCO listserv, and all these people started telling the listserv “Please remove me from this listserv.” I received at least 100 emails that day saying only that. It was terrific.
  3. New York City is brimming with new experiences. This past semester alone, I helped organize and attended the first NYC intercollegiate hackathon (hackNY.org), befriended moot (the founder of 4chan) and the founder of Hype Machine by chance, and went to the New York Philharmonic to listen to Schubert.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I have a particular way of gyrating to popular music that I think is well appreciated by others.

Any war stories from the War on Fun? Freshman year, I tried to get into O’Connell’s with my first fake ID, an STA travel agency ID that said I was 21. They refused my ID and I ended up ripping the entire thing into pieces out of frustration. Now I can’t even get discounts when I travel. It was a terrible loss, and I blame the War for driving me to madness.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I’m 12 and what is this? I don’t even…

Any advice for the Class of 2014? Read the Iliad before you come to campus with a full commentary. It’s a phenomenal book, and the only people I know who hate it are those who had to read it the first week of school. I think other good advice includes: befriend those who work at Spec (they are the only people I know who really use Google Buzz), don’t miss many classes, join and become very involved in a Columbia organization, and stay active by playing an intramural sport or signing up for extra P.E. classes. Also, take COMS 1004 or 1007.

Any regrets? Not yet. We’ll see how this “graduating in 3 years” thing pans out!