Next up for a Senior Wisdom: Sarina Bhandari, who “could have been a guest on MTV’s Catfish.”

Sarina Bhandari

Name, Hometown, School, Major: Sarina Bhandari, Los Altos Hills, CA, Sociology (which I love) and the Business Concentration (so I can get a job).

Claim to fame: To this day no one really knows whether my escape from arrest was an April Fools joke. I also co-founded 4×4 Magazine and at one point in my life could have been a guest on MTV’s Catfish.

Where are you going? So nosy, Bwog! Haven’t you heard? It’s quite uncouth to ask a senior what xe’s doing after graduation.

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

1. I pulled off my greatest GPA the semester I took seven academic classes. My secret was–please don’t shoot me–I slept 10 hours a day. I realized that I hated life and was also really slow at doing work when I was sleep deprived, so I decided to just sleep instead of keep working whenever I was tired. When I would wake up, I’d be energized enough to do whatever work I had left the night before in half the time. Plus, my attention and quality of work were much better when I had slept enough, hence the higher GPA. A lot of people think that at Columbia it’s not feasible to do all your work, sleep enough, and maintain a social life. To that, I say unless you’re premed it IS possible if you catch up with your sleep before you catch up with your work. You may still face an occasional all-nighter, but for most of the time you’ll at least be a real human.

2. Columbia can be a very judgmental place. Change that. Try not to judge, and don’t make decisions based on others’ judgment. Maybe someone you know needs to take a year off, has a career path in mind that you would never follow, likes what you hate or hates what you like. Whatever it is, send genuine love, not passive aggressive vibes. Everyone has a unique path to happiness; you can never assume you know what is best for another person.

3. It’s easy to blame Columbia for whatever’s wrong in your life. You’re not sleeping enough? It’s Columbia. You’re not happy enough? It’s Columbia. You haven’t eaten anything but ramen for five days? It’s Columbia. Well, it’s possible Columbia really is to blame. But, my bet is a lot of it has to do more with you. I tried to study abroad to get away from things I didn’t like about Columbia, only to realize that all my issues followed me right to Spain. Alas! If you don’t like something about your experience here, you can improve it–but it helps if you first accept that you need to be the one to change, not Columbia.

BONUS ADVICE: When in doubt, don’t post. I know you know you don’t want to be on here. It can be really tempting to chat up all your classmates before you meet them, but have faith that your best friendships will almost always unfold in person first.

SUPER BONUS ADVICE: Go to class.

“Back in my day…” every dorm came equipped with a ROLM phone. If you don’t know what that is, you probably weren’t alive in the 70s.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: Someone I didn’t know well once told me that I tell really weird stories. They only get weirder the better I know you.

Write your most memorable note from the field: [Insert apology here for taking this so literally] but below is a quote from an interview I conducted with a Kundalini Yoga teacher for my thesis.

“[In America] we might have a lot of religion but spiritually we are very impoverished. We are not taught to be spiritually abundant. If we were, we would be in a very kind society, a society that made sure nobody starved, that everybody had healthcare if they needed it. […] We hope yoga will make society better, and this change starts with the individual. A society is only comprised of a million little dots put together. In order to change the big picture you need to change the single little dots. So if you want your society to change, you need to start with the man in the mirror. […] You can implement rules and regulations and that will regulate people’s behavior, but in the long run, they will fall. That’s what you’re seeing in Ukraine right now. Uprises and rebellions everywhere. With rebellions sometimes there’s bloodshed, sometimes they’re quiet. Enough people start doing yoga and changing their minds, and it’s a quiet revolution. No bloodshed, no nothing. Just a shift.”

As a sociology major, I especially love the quote above because it suggests that grand societal change is carried out at the individual level. To me this says: don’t wait for society to be better so your world is better–improve yourself first and society will peacefully follow.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? No.

One thing to do before graduating: Figure out your passion! But don’t ask me how, because I have no idea. Still trying to accept that this is okay.

Any regrets? Not going to NYU. I regret how often I’ve worried about whether I’m doing college right. I’ve worried about whether I’ve met enough people, whether I’ve taken cool enough classes, whether I’ve explored NYC properly enough, whether I’ve been taking too many Buzzfeed quizzes a day, etc. It’s exhausting to live like that. I wish, looking back, I could have just been happy with wherever I was instead of doubting. And here I am now, worried about how much I’ve worried. Yuck! Screw regret, I’m trying to live in the present.