A Bwog writer shares some very practical ways to recreate daily Columbia realities from wherever you are now.

With classes online for the rest of the semester, you may feel more like a student at Zoom University in the Confines of Your Bedroom than Columbia University in the City of New York. Below are some suggestions for how you can recreate the feeling of being at Columbia from home.

• Introduce yourself to strangers (from 6 feet away) with your school, year, and major.
• Touch your ID to the door of your home and bedroom to simulate dorm security.
• Put random vegetables on your pizza (like an entire corn cob) and pretend you’re at Ferris.
• Mix some dirt from your lawn with hot water and savor the nostalgic taste of John Jay coffee.
• Find the smallest bowl in your home to eat a full meal out of like you’re at Hewitt.
• Gather all the teddy bears in your house. Line them up. They have now formed a club and you want to join it. Write two essays and have interviews with two separate teddy bears. They reject you. Welcome back to Columbia club culture.
• Let toddlers and dogs run loose in your front yard and pretend you’re watching them enjoy the lawns.
• Assume any object near where you plan to sit and study (a stray sock, a pen, a ball of lint) means the seat is taken and spend an hour looking for somewhere open to sit to feel like you’re at Butler.
• Sit on your front stoop and play a YouTube video of “crowd ambiance” through headphones. Enjoy the sun and imagine you’re on Low Steps with your pals.
• Run into oncoming traffic to simulate the experience of crossing Broadway.
• Wear shoes in your shower.
• Change all your social media handles to your uni.
• Zoom into your classes with pants on as if you were really there.

Image via Bwog Archives