On Friday night, a few Bwoggers went down to NYU to hang out with our good ole’ friends at Local. Our night of revelry was in full swing until a particular NYU boy and his friend asked, “What, exactly, goes down at Columbia?” Well, we thought, there was only one way to find out. Here is the story of a night in the life of a displaced NYU boy— told from his perspective. 

“So what do you guys even do up there for fun anyways? Like, study and shit?”

The two girls grinned ominously.

“If you really wanna find out, come uptown with us!”

I looked at my buddy who was visiting me from back home. Well, I thought, what the hell did we have to lose? So we agreed, stubbing out our cigarettes, while one of the girls called an Uber for way uptown.

Once we all climbed in, one of the girls asked (rather aggressively and drunkenly) for the aux cord and proceeded to sing along to Chance at full volume. We were whipping up West Side Highway on minute 18 of the ride when I finally asked myself… where the fuck is Columbia? How far away from NYU are we even going? I mean, shit; I’ve never been north of Times Square.

Finally the car turned onto 114th street (I didn’t even know the streets went that high!) and we all crawled out, walking up some stairs and through a gate into some sort of back entrance to campus. But it wasn’t long before we could see that famous statue of that Greek goddess sitting in front of the giant dome building.

“WOOOOAH, BRO! CHECK IT OUT!” My buddy and I were ecstatic! This is, like, a real campus! Grass! There is grass!

“Can we go up there?!” I asked, referring to the statue.

“Duh!”

I muttered to my buddy, “Bruh, isn’t this sick? We’re all the way up at Columbia with these girls. This is awesome.”

We spent a good 15 minutes sitting on the steps around the giant lady statue, smoking more menthols, and just talking about life. This is sick, I thought. What are we gonna do next?

The girls walked us over to their dorm where we all went up to one of their rooms. The resident of the room ended up inviting a few more people to come up to the room too. We all sat around, drinking and smoking, admiring the view (of a brick wall) and listening to some groovy music.

This is dope, I thought. Damn. I mean, NYU is cool, but this is something else.

I looked over at my buddy to see him majorly hitting on the resident of the room. Hell yeah, bro!

I looked around the find the other girl we were hanging out with, hoping to maybe get some action myself since my bro was otherwise occupied. But shit… the other girl was dead asleep in the bed. I looked back at my friend to see him making out with the girl. It was in that moment I realized I was alone. And fucked.

“Hey, dude,” my friend said. “I think I’m gonna crash here, bro. Your couch sucks and this is way better!”

“Yeah, for sure,” I said, half-pissed, half-proud.

I couldn’t spend the night, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to work on time the next morning. I looked at the sleeping girl, sighed, and said goodbye to my friend and the other girl. We combined forces to wake up the sleeping one and drag her out of the room. In the elevator, she groggily asked if I was staying, and I politely declined.

I found my way down to the lobby, actually remembered to pick up my ID from the guard, and walked out of the dorm. I had to wander around a little bit before finding my way back to Broadway and the 116th street subway station. It was 3 am. I was grumbling as I made it onto the 1 train.

At least 25 minutes passed before I realized something was wrong. Oh FUCK, I thought. I accidentally got on the 1 going the wrong way! I rushed off the train at the next stop. 181st street. You’ve got to be shitting me.

If there’s one thing I never, ever want to do again, it’s ride over 150 blocks alone on the subway at 4 am. The sun was rising by the time I got back to my dorm. I was tired, pissed, and couldn’t shake the feeling of having been severely displaced.

NYU logo via NYU Tandon School of Engineering