Our next Senior Wisdom comes from Radhika Gupta, and she shares your deep affection for HamDel’s grilled cheese sandwiches. This seems like an excellent way to judge a person’s character. So go ahead, read her wisdom and bond over sandwich preferences! 

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Radhika (Rads) Gupta, Columbia College, Economics, Orlando, FL

Claim to fame: ABC Treasurer, former queen of Schapiro Hall, record-breaker for amount of notes taken as ABC Secretary, shameless small talker in elevators, gratuitous email sender, and compulsive frolicker.

Where are you going? Back to the sunshine state, on various couches around the world, and then right back to this lovable concrete jungle starting in August!

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2019?

1. There is nothing that you ever “should” be doing — including coming to Columbia. Once you realize that your life can be wide open, you think a lot more about what you actually want to do and how you personally want to weigh practicality and doing what you love. At the end of the day, people take all sorts of conventional and unconventional routes to where they end up and end up being at similar levels of happiness in the long run. So sleep early if you want, go out and cuddle with people, don’t do an internship if you don’t want to or don’t join that club – whatever floats your boat as long as you can give yourself a reason for why you want to be doing it rather than doing it because it’s something that you *should* be doing.
2. Be kind to others and, most importantly, yourself – we are not machines, though sometimes we think we are. It took me 2 years to realize it, but I just learn more and can handle an even busier schedule when I eat and sleep (which are basic human needs tbh). Also, burn out can be very real and, though it’s hard to resist the urge to feel guilty, there is nothing wrong with a good vegging session to reset yourself. You might not be happy every day that you’re here, but working on making yourself feel best is important enough to spend time on.
3. Ask questions – I spent so much time not asking questions because I assumed that I was already supposed to know the answers, but we’re college kids and we don’t know everything. If you’re genuine about wanting to understand things, people will try and help you.

Back in my day… Southfield was a thing, Bacchanal didn’t try to charge for tickets, preferred names weren’t an option on your housing application, and Ferris had caterpillars in their salad.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: I got one macaron of each flavor at Ferris once and took one bite of each before deciding which order to eat them in. #data

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Developmental Economics with Professor Anna Musatti

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? There has been at least one occasion where I have fallen asleep cradling a HamDel grilled cheese sandwich and woken up with an empty wrapper.

One thing to do before graduating: Speak up for something you believe in – even if it is an unpopular, minority opinion. Sometimes it can be hard because we as an aggregate campus tend to be very liberal, but as long as you truly keep an open mind to hear what an opposing party has to say, there is a lot of power in being able to form your own opinions.

Any regrets? At the time – yes. In retrospect – no.

Picture provided by the Wise Senior herself