From stolen MAGA hats to overall dresses.

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Sofia Petros, Columbia College, American Studies + Education, New York by way of New Jersey by way of New York.

Claim to fame: Busting Yale SAE for misogynoir during fall break freshman year and getting all over the news (and some frat trolls), being WAY too involved in every major campus organization…and then running their diversity programs, yelling about the earth and environmental racism to anyone that would listen, talking a lot about large mammal migration and even more about elementary education to people that wouldn’t.

Where are you going? The end of the earth because Columbia nearly broke me. (In all seriousness, Chilean Patagonia (where my mom’s family is from!!) to decolonize my life and write curriculum for a nature based community school while I apply to grad programs).

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2023?

1. Sit on the steps more. Efface the idea that you need to be productive all the time, or at all, to be worthy. When you work, give it your all. When you take your breaks, take them fully!!
2. Ask for help. Get that extension, go to CPS, tell your friends what you need and how to support you. Speak up. Silence won’t get you to the things you need. Find your voice and use it.
3. The money is here, go get it. It’s squirreled away in small, obscure pockets and departments. It’s poorly advertised. Sometimes it takes more than a few tears in the financial aid office. But it’s here — and your adventures, passion projects, big intellectual and personal questions can get answered when you have it. And especially if you’re low income…don’t let people make you feel bad for getting after it. Why be at a school so rich in resources if you’re not going to take advantage of it? Get your piece of the pie.

“Back in my day…” you felt a rush of panic while sitting on the floor of your friend’s John Jay room wine drunk at 12:45am realizing you had T-minus 15 minutes to run downstairs and collect all the fries and Jamba juice you could from JJs before IT CLOSED AT 1am. Kids these days will never know.

Favorite Columbia controversy? Any and every meeting of CCSC I was a part of.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: Sophomore year I stole some guy’s MAGA hat from Ref and a Public Safety officer had to track me down. We took a selfie together, hmu to see it.

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Rules were made to be broken so here are four: (1) Climate Change, Global Migration, and Human Rights with JC Salyer and Paige West. DO it. (2) Sociology of Schools, Teaching, and Learning with Teresa Sharpe. Even if it’s not this course, do yourself a favor and take something with Professor Sharpe….and then sit in way too many office hours petting her dog and getting invaluable life direction. (3) Freedom and Citizenship with Roosevelt Montas. You’ll leave this class way too attached to Reinhold Niebuhr, with a fondness for tiny seminars that feel like intellectual dinner parties, and an abiding belief that service work is indeed scholarship. (4) Social History of American Public Health with James Colgrove, the only man to keep all of Havemeyer 309 awake at 8:40.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Cheap question for vegans.

Whom would you like to thank? A non-exhaustive list: My therapist in CPS for ALL FOUR YEARS BB, my lovely suitemates, Fausta’s greetings, Pati, the program coordination assistant for the education department, my mom, not the financial aid office at all.  

One thing to do before graduating: Try to pack up my room without sobbing.

Any regrets? A guy I was sleeping with told me it made him uncomfortable that I might be smarter than him and I fucking apologized to him. Studying in Ref for the first two years of my college career. Spending too long letting white people and rich people make me feel small. Leaving both Music Hum and Art Hum till my senior spring. Foucault and overall dresses are gifts granted to me by my Columbia education.