Who is transferring away from this face??

It’s everybody’s favorite time of year: Senior Wisdom season. The season when, instead of being rained on by water, you’re rained on by the witty and wise words of Columbia’s graduating class. Our first wisdom this year is from Alex Della Santina, former poet of the marching band, Spec columnist, and resident of a destroyed EC suite (yeah, that one).

Name, School, Major, Hometown: Alexandra Marie Della Santina, SEAS, Electrical Engineering, Towson, MD (same place as Michael Phelps. For a brief period between the Athens Olympics and the Phelps bong hit scandal, my high school address was 69 Michael Phelps Way.)

Claim to fame: This is a tricky one. Before Bored@Butler was deactivated, my claim to fame was that there was a whole thread devoted to whether I was really attractive or ugly enough to make people want to transfer schools. There was no in between. Now all I’ve got is while performing Orgo Night Spring 2016, a guy in a Charmander onesie holding a boombox started to heckle me and I yelled at him. Because of that, Spec referred to me as the “CUMB Queen”. Still don’t know how they learned my old summer camp nickname.

Where are you going? Moving from NY to Philadelphia as part of my goal to live Tina Fey’s life in reverse. As a side project, I’ll be building helicopters with Boeing.

What are 3 things you learned at Columbia and would like to share with the Class of 2021?

1) You’re probably going to get some really really bad grades. And it’s completely normal. The first time I got a C+ my parents started to bug me about considering transferring to University of Maryland because “it’s just not like you to get bad grades”. In the end we learned that college is just hard. You’re not necessarily going to be the best in your class and that’s ok. C’s are ok. You aren’t a failure. Just keep on truckin’ and don’t take any wooden nickels.
2) If you fall down an air duct and get trapped inside a wall, there are better ways to let people know the situation besides wordless, guttural moaning. Try saying things like “Help I’m trapped in a wall”. You will get discovered 11 hours earlier. Stop turning my life into Stranger Things.

3) This is specifically for female engineers: the next four years are gonna be rough. Do what feels best for you. There’s a weird unspoken expectation that a deserving female engineer has to be better than all the boys in her class. That’s absolutely not true. You can be the worst in your major and you still deserve to be there. On the flip side, if you want to drop a major, that’s ok too. When I dropped BME, I felt like I was letting down all the other girls who wanted to be future biomedical engineers by giving up and playing into a stupid stereotype. You’re not a disappointment if you change your mind.

“Back in my day…” Orgo Night was in Butler 209 where it fucking belongs.

Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer. Once Jon Stewart said I was smart and engaging, so he thought I was worth existing 3 years ago. I’ll be using that reason until I die.

What was your favorite class at Columbia? Probably a three way tie between Intro to Electrical Engineering with Vallancourt, Intro to Applied Math with Tippet, and Ancient Roman History with Harris. I wouldn’t be an electrical engineer if it wasn’t for Professor Vallancourt. If you ever have an opportunity to take any class with him at all, you better do it. He’s everything you want in a college professor: cool, engaging, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and rides a motorcycle. Talking to him made me feel excitement about engineering and that’s something you desperately need if you’re going to do this for the rest of your life. Professor Tippet has some bad reviews on CULPA, so I wanna take a moment to solidly refute them. Tippet was an organized lecturer and always super nice when I went to office hours. The people who left those reviews don’t deserve to be here. On Earth.

Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? People who answer this question with a joke are the worst kind of people. The serious answer for me is to give up oral sex. Which isn’t anyone’s big loss. I’ve been told my blowjobs are second-rate.

One thing to do before graduating Pan fry a chipotle burrito with Kevin Chen. One day I’ll be successful in getting him to eat something other than soylent. One day.

Any regrets? Yeah, I regret starting every assignment ever way too late. I also regret being born in November because I never got to do Beer o’Clock at football games.

bye bye b@b creeps via Alex