Our first Senior Wisdom of the day comes from Jack Snyder, hyperlink extraordinaire and star of a fairly successful meme. 

Name, School, Major, Hometown:  Jack Snyder, GS/JTS, Jewish Literature and MESAAS, the beautifully lush and green city of Seattle, WA

Claim(s) to fame: For a brief stint, I helped a friend run @touching_me_touching_you, an instagram account devoted to touching random things. We have since lost the password. (Sidenote: check out @no_dogs_no_masters–no shortage of random touching videos AND I still have the password.)

“That dude with the hair” who you thought was a vegan…(I’M NOT!)

Oh, I was also featured in this moderately successful meme.

Where are you going? OFF TO GREAT PLACES! Kidding. Taking a much-needed break from NYC for the summer but coming back in the fall to work at a restaurant.

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2023?
Listen!!!
Learn to enjoy time spent in your own company.
Israel is an apartheid state

“Back in my day…” m2m existed and it was GLORIOUS. H Mart is vast, but they don’t stock my favorite type of onigiri (unagi).

Favorite Columbia controversy? Well really it’s my least favorite controversy, but when Columbia students and alumni mobilized en masse to protest the placement of a sculpture in front of Butler. It was pretty absurd to see the power wielded by students aimed at a sculpture instead of supporting some of the many campaigns brought forth at the time over issues of climate justice (CDCJ), survivor support and campus sexual assault (NRT), and Israeli Apartheid (CUAD), to barely scratch the surface.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: Honestly, seems like only God knows how to do that.

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Either “Major Texts of Islam” or “Central Questions in Islamic Law”–anything with Wael Hallaq. You might not walk away with the trivial knowledge you often expect from text-based courses, but Hallaq connects academic texts to the real world in ways that I never could have imagined. (Alternatively, if you have the attention span to read 400 page academic books, you can read his most recent work “Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge”)

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Bourdain said it best: “To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.”

Whom would you like to thank? #1 is of course my parents. Aside from them, everybody I have learned from–friends, enemies, teachers, past relationships, bosses, and all of the wonderful people that I have had the opportunity to live and eat with in the Bayit these past three years (the Barnard/Columbia pluralistic Jewish food co-op.)

One thing to do before graduating: Go to Dream House! Just do it while you are still in NYC. It’s a cool sound and light exhibit that messes with your perception but is shockingly relaxing.

Any regrets? Never reaching out to that one random group of people I hung out with during NSOP for like two hours in Carman then never spoke to again.

Mood via Jack Snyder