Bob Vulfov

Tonight’s Senior Wisdom: Bob Vulfov, Nickelodeon fan and the second wise senior in a row to mention apples.

Name, Hometown, School: Bob Vulfov, Moscow, Russia, Columbia College

Claim to fame? One time, I ate a frozen apple in a bizarre, Russian art house film. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s called Белый Праздник. Another time, I convinced my friend to kill for pizza.

Where are you going? I’m gonna stealthily squat in a series of lavish brownstones on the Upper East Side and continue to curate my LinkedIn profile until I drown in job offers. Because I’m pretty sure that’s how things work.

3 things you learned at Columbia:

• 1. Flex is made-up Monopoly money that will not work in the real world. Trust me, I tried to pay off a gambling debt with it, and now a stocky man named Arturo wants to break my knees.
• 2. You can play life like a Mississippi fiddle if you find and exploit its loopholes. For example, if you’re drinking champagne at nine in the morning, you’ll likely be labeled an “alcoholic.” However, if you add a little orange juice to the champagne, the whole thing magically becomes an “early brunch.”
• 3. Even though going off-campus is healthy and important, there is great value in spending the latter parts of your Columbia career engaging in as many on-campus activities as possible. It might be simultaneously clichéd and depressing for me to bring this up, but as you get older, it will become more difficult to surround yourself with the intelligent and interesting peers that this campus readily provides.

So, based on my limited personal experience, I’d really recommend sipping the sweet nectar of campus life before the flowers close up. Go meet up with your freshman year floor-mates and drink some Yuenglings on the steps (then go home and nap it off, you look a little drunk). Go take a free class from CU Bellydance and sweat out the beer. Go to a strange Hoodie Allen concert just to snag a free t-shirt. Soak it all in like you’re a goddamn sponge before everything evaporates away into the real world. WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA? YOU DO; SOAK UP!

Back in my day…. Season 1 Daenerys Targaryen had no army, no loyal subjects in Westeros, no khalasar, no dragons, and most importantly, no acting chops. Times have changed.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I workshop and re-workshop my Facebook posts before presenting them to the general public. I also learned English by watching Hey Arnold!. Two Nickelodeon references already? TOO BAD.

Write a CU admirers post to anyone or anything at Columbia: @Eli Grober, I will smother you with a pillow as you sleep, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest style. Because if I can’t have you, nobody can.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Well. At one point or another, I’ve definitely gotten lockjaw from both. Only one, however, has given me high cholesterol. So, fuck off, cheese.

One thing to do before graduating: Please don’t let anybody – especially me – tell you what to do! What I did before graduating was I tried to find a few things that I both loved doing and at which I was relatively competent, then continued doing those activities during my time here. I guess you can do the same sort of thing. Unless your activities are racist – in which case you must immediately find new activities.

Any regrets? It’s tough to pinpoint specific regrets because this four-year mess has been thousands of boots and rallies. The main thing is that I wish I went more out of my way to meet more of you people. Oh, shit. I just said, “you people.” Uh. I didn’t mean it like that. I can fix this. You people know what I meant! SHIT. It happened again. This is now my biggest regret.

Also, I guess I regret not pursuing a lucrative career in experimental Russian cinema.