Some people are smart, but some people are *smart*. Barnard Senior Emily is one of the latter group and has some Jonah Hill-worthy tips on how to be as much of a moneyBALLER as possible during your time at school. Hint: smoking hookah in Hillel immediately ups your baller status 100 levels.

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Emily Blady, Barnard, Applied Math major, from North Woodmere, NY

Claim to fame: I’ve worked with DSpar and the Barnard administration on landing Barnard a new computer science chair (#womeninSTEM) and expanding the quantitative academic programs on this side of the street. Founded Barnard Quant, the Columbia/Barnard chapter of the Association of Women in Mathematics, and the Barnard Shaft and helped run Challah for Hunger!

Where are you going? I’m moving to Detroit right away to work for the Detroit Tigers in Baseball Operations & Analytics (aka I’m a sabermetrician/moneyBALLER/I’m basically Jonah Hill).

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

1)  Stop telling yourself you can’t. I almost didn’t major in math because I thought it would be too hard and that I wouldn’t survive it. I was wrong. I almost didn’t take a number of classes because I thought the curve would squash me. I was wrong. I almost didn’t try programming because I heard that it was hard. This would have been a bad choice. I almost didn’t apply for my dream job because I thought I’d never get it and that the baseball industry wasn’t a place for an Orthodox Jewish girl. But I got it, and I’ll have the chance to see if I was correct on the latter part. My guess: I was wrong. There are a ton of things we all theoretically want or wish we could do. Telling yourself you can’t do it won’t help you get there. A little belief in your abilities will go a long way.

2) Create your own opportunities. When I first came to this campus I hated it. The opportunities I was looking for didn’t exist, and all I did was complain about it rather than try to change it. It took me 2 years to realize that if I wanted a computer science department for Barnard, I could go talk to someone about it and help substantially in the process of getting one. If I wanted a community of women mathematicians on campus, I had to go create it. And if no one else was covering Barnard housing, well, I’d go do it myself. You can be unsatisfied with what happens here or you can try to change it for the better. I chose the latter, and now, I love this place.

3) Combine passion and hard work. Remember one of the things you came here to do: explore and master an academic passion. Some of us are lucky enough to find a major we love so much that all-nighters aren’t so bad. Some of us know what that major would be but decide against it because it’s too hard/impractical/won’t make them enough money. Stick with the academics you LOVE—the stuff that blows your mind, helps you see the universe differently, grabs your brain and won’t let it go. And then work hard at it—you never know what your limit is until you’ve pushed yourself to that point.

“Back in my day…” Hillel’s second floor had tents and hookahs, Hurricane Sandy gave us a mini-vacation while the rest of Manhattan had no light or heat, Barnard graduated 2% of its class in a quantitative major (now we’re up to ~5%!).

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer.
1. One time Nate Silver told me to email him.
2. During the Orthodox Jews’ yearly game of assassin I hid in churches.

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Number Theory & Cryptography: it was the most difficult class I’ve ever taken and I’ve never had to work harder, but Number Theory turned out to be absolutely incredible. I walked out of the class every day saying “I’m not sure what just happened, but it blew my mind.”

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I can’t give up cheese because mac and cheese is one of the three food groups I eat.

One thing to do before graduating: Take a math/stats/programming class EVEN if you think you can’t do it/aren’t smart enough/it’s too much work/etc. –-push yourself harder because you have no idea what you’re capable of.

Any regrets? Not following my own advice earlier.

Mathballer or moneyballer? via Emily Blady