Clad yourself in mesh and malice.

Name, School, Major, Hometown: CRDB, Columbia College, Anthropology. Springfield, Missouri. 

Claim to fame: I’ve done it all. Clad in naught but mesh and malice I have broken my enemies on the pong table, and I have done so gleefully. With verb alone I have convinced the eligible masses (~25 of a random Thursday’s choicest nerds) to date my mom. With the sword (and also mainly verb) I have vanquished the ignoble John Jay Society and revived Disco. With the aux, I have brought forth ska and techno upon the unsuspecting revelers of college walk, the night carnival, and innumerable other fetes. I am a ruin and I am ruinous. 

Where are you going? Off to Washington! (for the Summer). I have an internship with the Smithsonian, but after that? I’m not sure. I’m working on getting grad school paid for and generally still figuring out what comes next. I do miss home, though, so I’m hoping I can spend some time back in the Ozarks before I figure that out. 

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2027?

• There are a lot of unlocked doors out there.
• Don’t be afraid of talking in class. Even if you didn’t do the readings, you’re probably not alone and nobody listens after the first five seconds of you talking anyway. So get what you can from trying to put things together out loud and engaging in the conversation. 
• Go to office hours. Talk about classes and future stuff, sure, but also talk about k-dramas and music and whatever else. Your profs want to like you and feel liked, and some of them are pretty interesting. So take advantage! 

“Back in my day…” My freshman dorm still looked like it did on The Sopranos

Favorite Columbia controversy? That time where everybody (not me though) cheated on the FroSci final and nobody confessed. So then everybody passed (yay collective action)  

What was your favorite class at Columbia? The working class

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? Life is too short to pretend I can’t have my cheese and eat it too. 

Whom would you like to thank? I very seriously appreciate everybody (my professors, my friends, my advisors, all of them) who’s shown me even an ounce of patience in my time here; I still don’t really know how a lot of things are supposed to work in college or life in general, but I couldn’t have made it this far without a lot of reinforcement from those special people (and my family back home, of course). 

One thing to do before graduating: I highly recommend people watching in the little Broadway medians at night (ideally with a friend). Oh, and the benches in Riverside have some crazy deep inscriptions that’ll change your life.

Any regrets? It took me a really long time to realize how many little scholarship or fellowship opportunities are out there (funded by Columbia or otherwise), and I wish I’d learned about those sooner. Things are hard, but there are a lot of ways to get things paid for out there.

Portrait via CRDB