Hello, God? It’s me, Lucas.

Name: Lucas Vargas Zeppetello // School: SEAS // Major: Applied Physics (Minor in Religion) // Hometown: San Francisco, CA

Claim to fame: No claim no fame no pain no gain no flame no shame no feign no sane

Where are you going? I’m going to spend the summer working on an old school bus to try and turn it into a mobile home. If all goes well, I’ll take this project up to Seattle with me when I move there in the fall to start a PhD. program in atmospheric physics at the University of Washington.

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2020?

1. There is no war on fun. One of my mom’s best lines is “if you’re bored, it’s your own fault” and that is more true here at Columbia than it is anywhere else. This is one of the most fun places to be, but the school is not going to hand it to you in a way that people apparently expect it to be. There is an incredible universe of amazing things to explore but you have to put yourself out there and get into it.
2. Your classmates are fucking amazing. Talk to them. Learn from them. People will inspire you on a daily basis if you let them.
3. Check in with yourself more than you think you need to. This place is a pressure cooker and it was really important for me to take steps back at times to make sure I was doing alright. I think people have some expectation that everybody here is supposed to be happy and successful all the time, but once I acknowledged that I was going to have bad days and good days and that’s all part of the experience of being here, I felt more relaxed on campus.

“Back in my day…” Back in my day, everybody loved Macklemore, everybody hated Justin Bieber, and you could just walk into Bacchanal from the dorms without a god damn ticket.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer. I can’t. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Can’t pick one, so I’m going to write about one class that involved reading and one class that involved math. Unfortunately those have never overlapped while I’ve been here. My favorite non-physics class was called “Vampires” and was taught in the religion department by Gil Anidjar. The reading list was incredible, and we discussed everything from medicine to colonialism in the context of vampires. For my final paper, I wrote an entire essay about why Kanye West is a vampire. He is. I’ll send that paper to anybody who will read it.
During my sophomore year I took my first class in atmospheric science with professor Lorenzo Polvani. This was about a year after hurricane Sandy happened and I had been trying to keep up with the scientific dialogue that went on around the storm. This class exposed me to a new way of thinking about data and climate change that completely changed my path through Columbia. Without that class, I don’t think I’d be where I am today, and so I’m very thankful for that class and everybody in it.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Pleasing over cheesing.

One thing to do before graduating: Take a class in something you know nothing about. Nobody I’ve talked to who has done this had an experience that didn’t make them happy in some way or another. It can be scary to put yourself out there in a place where everybody seems to be so smart, but it’s so so worth it.

Any regrets? How could I not? Columbia and New York are both such big places and there’s no way I could have done everything I wanted to do. I missed nights when I could have hung out with friends or gone to a free show because I was working. I screwed up on tests and turned in crap papers because I was out the previous night. For me, the better question than “any regrets?” is to try and find out how you manage here with the understanding that you cannot do everything perfectly. Loosening up a little bit was key for me, and once it got under my skin that I was going to miss stuff, I started to not worry as much about things I was missing. As long as you can justify to yourself what you’re doing at the moment, whether it’s homework or going out, worrying about all the things you’re missing out on shouldn’t bother you.

That Hair via Lucas Zeppetello