Senior Wisdom: SB

Less than a week of class left, so let’s keep moving! Tonight’s Senior Wisdom is SB, who took this opportunity to write a novel.

Name, Hometown, School, Major: SB, Santa Monica, California, CC, History

Claim to fame: Two Time Trivia Champ, I’ve been tweetin’ at ya from @1020tip

Where are you going? San Francisco!

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2018?

1. Find your people, but look harder than on your floor. I think a lot of people (I definitely did) come to school believing that they have arrived at the place they are meant to be, and will be surrounded by people who will get them. For the first few weeks after NSOP, this even seems like it might be true: everyone has a new best friend, you’ve made fast friends with your floor, and best of all, you live with all these people so you see them all the time. It can also feel incredibly lonely when you feel, weeks or months in, that maybe you haven’t found your people, after all. It’s important to keep seeking out and being open to relationships after those first few weeks.

Almost every Senior Wisdom I have read over my four years here has had some version of “the people you’ll meet here are incredible!”— because it’s true! But, during my first semester, though, that was hard to believe: everyone was great, but I had loved my friends and life at home, Columbia felt different and isolating. If that sounds familiar: keep searching! My soulmate, best friend, partner in crime happened to be down the hall from me all along…I just didn’t realize it until almost after Spring Break. Those late night conversations revealed that people I had initially dismissed or filed into boxes were passionate about all sorts of things I didn’t expect: settler colonialism, race, class warfare, immigration, housing policy. My sophomore year, I lucked into living in Wien (yeah, lucked!) and wormed my way into a group full of people who had transferred after freshman years elsewhere: they continue to be some of the most interesting, exciting, and adventurous people I’ve ever met. I also lived next door to the RA…an old friend from a summer program, who turned into my Ride or Die best bud. I also rushed ADP, and met a real family: people who have gone out of their way to help me in ways big and small; people who I have discovered myself with. By senior year, I pretty much thought I was done: I knew and loved all the people I could reasonably fit into my life! But, then I met more: the people in my (almost insurgent) thesis seminar were smart, and funny, and kick ass scholars; I’ve nearly died of laughter in the back of the bus with people in my Hiking class.

There have been moments of rupture while meeting all these people—they didn’t know each other. They didn’t study the same things I did. They didn’t always get along with each other (or each others friends). There is an overwhelming to compartmentalize your life in a school this stressful, to stick to the group that you found first or the one that doesn’t challenge you. Don’t fall prey to it: life doesn’t exist in compartments. Get drinks with your friends from class; invite the people you live with. Introduce people you think would get along. Play 1020 trivia with everyone.

2. Study something you love/ nerd out about it. On an obvious level, you’re going to spend a lot of time in the library doing work…you might as well be passionate about it. To go deeper, you are at one of the greatest centers of learning and scholarship in the game—you owe it to yourself and your peers to make the most out of that. This advice functions on a couple of different levels, actually: do the reading (or, most of it)! Talk in class! Engage with the material! Take small seminars! If you find that you couldn’t care less…. you need to study something else.* I’m not nerdy enough to think that the love of learning and the bright glow of academia is always going to be enough to get you outta bed (or keep you outta bed)… sometimes you just need to blow things off and sit in the sun. But, when you finally get down to business, you should have that heart-pounding-excited-to-learn feeling more often than not. It’s worth it to find something to study that gets you going like that, because for four magical years you have so many resources. You’re surrounded by brilliant professors, insightful peers, and have access to actual millions of books. Get into it.

*I studied History (with no special concentrations in sight!) and will be graduating with a job…it’ll all work out, if that’s what you’re worried about!

3. Get out of your own way. You are smart enough, cool enough, and capable enough to do the things you want to do and meet the people you want to meet. It took me a while to realize that coming to Columbia from a huge public school isn’t different because I was less prepared (I wasn’t, I kicked ass) or had less to say (I definitely didn’t, hasn’t changed), but because I truly didn’t understand the scope of what you can reasonably ask for here. Intentional or not, Columbia sometimes adopts an insidious institutional aloofness to people who don’t know how to ask for what they need. In cases like this, learn to be the squeaky wheel: you deserve to be here, and deserve access to every single resource this school has to offer.

“Back in my day…” P&W Sandwich Shop existed. I can say with confidence it was a better time for my soul, stomach, and sanity.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: 90% of individuals polled have described me as “the baddest.”

Write your most memorable note from the field: “So, you all wrote like, 60 pages each and only half of you get honors?” “Yeah. But we won 1020 trivia our first try.”

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I made a large pro/con list, but feel that the true stakes and bounds of this question can be summed up on these two axis: