Eli Grober

Today’s Senior Wisdom, evening edition: Eli Grober teaches you UWriting, and most likely does a better job than your actual UWriting professor did. 

Name, Hometown, School: Eli Grober, Somerville/Andover, MA, CC

Claim to fame? It’s hard for me to take things seriously. I get motion sickness very easily, so I spend a decent amount of my paycheck on Dramamine. I wrote “Barnard Boy.” My friend Dylan and I wrote this article about graduating. And I only buy Snapple bottles for the facts.

Where are you going? I don’t really know where I’m going. Hopefully a writer’s room for some comedy or variety show. Everything’s up in the air right now. Which is okay! So. I’ve worked out where I’m not going:

• An immediate, full-time job
• Expensive hotels
• Any taxi (motion sickness, see above)
• Outer space (again, motion sickness)
• Any roller coaster (ibid)
• Back to your mom’s house! (writer’s room, see above)

3 things you learned at Columbia:

• 1. On weekdays, between the hours of one and six in the morning, you feel way lonelier and less hopeful than you actually are. On weekends, between the hours of one and six in the morning, you feel way funnier and better at different forms of gymnastics than you actually are. It’s important to remember both of these things.
• 2. Some really good alone time in the bathroom can put a whole day back on its feet.
• 3. At our age, it is very easy to feel nostalgic about things that are currently happening, especially when graduation is in sight. It’s that feeling that you only want moments. You just want that moment everybody stayed up all night together to see if the sun rises in New York. You just want that moment you drunkenly stole a construction sign with your best friend and told everybody it fell from the sky, because God gave it to you, because of drunk. You just want that moment in your suite with everybody talking about Jumanji and how there’s no way that’s a kids movie, it’s scary as fuck. But. Don’t get caught up in only wanting those moments. Stephen Sondheim wrote, “If life were only moments, then you’d never know you had one.” That dude knows what’s up. And Jumanji, right? Jesus.

Back in my day… There was a student magazine called C-Spot. I think it went out of print because it took a lot of gumption to read it in public. Also because it was a little bit porn.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I don’t know about justification, but here are two facts:

When I was learning to ride a bike, I fell over the handlebars and the bike ran me over.
While life-guarding, I saved a nine-year-old girl. She comforted me after because I was so shaken up.

These are good metaphors for my life. Especially the part where how much is 30 words.

Write a CU admirers post to anyone or anything at Columbia: @The steps on the north side of Philosophy Hall, the big ones. I’m really glad you got built for that one super tall kid who lives in EC.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I guess I’d give up oral sex. Because if I have to, I can give myself cheese.

One thing to do before graduating: Well, probably don’t listen to me. But if you’ve already fucked that up, here goes: In my University Writing class freshman year, we read Walker Percy’s The Loss of the Creature. Sorry this is suddenly a class. Hear me out. The piece is about preconceived notions. Basically, you see a postcard of the Grand Canyon and you see how fucking awesome it is, and then you get there and it’s not as totally rad as it would be if you’d never even known it existed. I think this extends to people we meet, especially in college. Try to shed the postcard images you have of people you see around campus, or the people you are introduced to, or the people you find out about through their worst enemy (especially then).

Any regrets? That I said earlier we stole that construction sign. We actually just found it next to a dumpster somewhere. Sorry. Way better story if we stole it. Still drunk, though! Still claimed it was from God! I hope we’re okay here. Didn’t mean to break that trust.