Lauren’s Senior Wisdom features a free recipe, cat appreciation, and a throwback to the real Columbia Dining.

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Lauren Wilkins, Columbia College, Psychology, Trabuco Canyon, CA

Claim to fame: Dancing, flipping, and death-dropping against medical advice after knee surgery, having to get more knee surgeries as a result.

Where are you going? After this, probably to Schermerhorn… but after graduation I will be U-Hauling (let’s go lesbians) to New Jersey to start as a lab manager for a psych lab at Princeton!

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2026?

  1. Your experience in a class is determined much more by the Professor than by the material. If you get bad vibes from a Professor in the first few classes, it will not get better. Save yourself while you still can and use shopping period to shop different sections and different classes until you find one you vibe with. 
  2. Talk to the grad students in your department. They are cool and they know things.
  3. Oats + sugar + butter + cinnamon + apples = delicious apple crumble you can make almost entirely free with ingredients you can steal from ferris

“Back in my day…” Columbia dining was ranked #1 in the nation, actually had variety in their food options (vegan pancakes and açai bowls), was open 24 hours a day, and Chef Mike wasn’t the SUBject of all Columbia Dining news-blasts.

Favorite Columbia controversy? Columbia lying and cheating its way up the US News rankings and getting called out by a math professor

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Thinking and Decision Making (PSYC 2235) with Professor Fox-Glassman and Abnormal Behavior (PSYC 2620) with Professor McCaskill. Hands down two of the best classes in the Columbia psych department. I love both of these classes and professors so much that I have TA’d for both of them and would do it again in a heartbeat. They made me want to continue studying psychology after undergrad!

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Well, I am lactose-intolerant asexual so this is what one would call… a bit of a pickle.

Whom would you like to thank? My pandemic cat, Rey, for keeping me alive and (mostly) sane plus forcing me to take breaks by sitting on my computer.

One thing to do before graduating: Go to the Pupin observatory and take a cool picture of space through the telescope.

Any regrets? Roommates…

Portrait via Lauren