Location, Location, Location

Columbia encourages its students to make the most of their time in New York City and heaps scorn on those first-years who have not yet emerged from Morningside Heights. But despite the cultural richness of the surrounding city, my college life remains grounded in Morningside Heights, and my memories are of times on campus, not of times spent trawling about the city.

My college experience is centered around five locations: a lawn, a restaurant, a city in China, a street, and a swath. It was these places, not midtown or the East village, that served as the template of the subsequent adventures of my college life.

On Hamilton lawn I strolled around campus in white zebra pajamas, as Justin absconded with hundreds of soda cans into his pillowcase, courtesy of Bollinger's inaugural bash. For the past four years, Jared, myself, and a wide cast of characters played quiz bowl Wednesday night in Hamilton Hall. Requiring hair trigger buzzer fingers and knowledge of Aztec war deities, it truly is the sport of champions.

At nights my friends and I would emerge from John Jay with a Coke bottle filled with Georgi (the Pride of Russia), and stumble about the lawn. We pretended to be Hungarian princes hailing from the town of Yata-guta-min. "Yah, hullo!" we shouted, stumbling around the campus, bragging of how we swam under the Iron Curtain to freedom from Hommunism.

As Georgi grew messy, I discovered Columbia Cottage, where boxed mellifluence flows like wine. While not exactly on campus, the Cottage and its wait staff supplied that essential component of a night of drinking: soup dumplings.

Other than the Cottage, the only other non-Columbia part of my campus is Harbin, China, an industrial northeastern town where I spent my second semester junior year abroad. Through ice sculptures, chewy dog, a little Red, and marching through the streets screaming, "Meiguo! Fuck Yeah!!", what protrudes the most is that ubiquitous Chinese song of "love you, loving you, like the mouse loved the rice."

While some say College Walk is the street of Columbia, I see it as 114th street, home to not only AEPi and River, where I lived four out of my seven semesters, but also that inscrutable dumpster residing on the street between Broadway and Amsterdam. Sophomore year and its fabled slump crumpled me a bit. I sat in my frat with my roommate Dave, who would listen only to the first fifty seconds of a song, but many hours of my kvetching.

Beirut has its moments, as does lolling and sputtering. Sometimes it is nice to just sit. Once Oren and I played Chinese Chess in the foyer, savoring a sober Saturday night. Sometimes the best nights are ones where all adventure and excitement lies behind you, and you sit about a place and suck on old flavors and memories.

My River suite, where I live now, is phenomenal. A couch sits in our lounge, donated by one of my suitemate's brothers (sorry about the screwdriver), and a stack of silly magazines, like People, lay on the kitchen table. It seems foolish to make new friends senior year, but these bonds are all worth it.

The grand location of Columbia, though, is that center chunk-Low, the fields, and Butler. I have sat on the steps and watched my life change, and huddled from the rain under Low with someone who loved the rain.

When I turned in my thesis rough draft, Blair and I frolicked on South Lawn, our eyes foaming from too many words, careening about the field and yelling deliciously to an athlete who had recently awoke for practice. On Halloween some months back a two-headed demon lugged himself around the campus perimeter, trudging through Butler then to Ollie's for Cantonese chao fun soup with wonton, laughing all the way.

Incidentally, sushi is the perfect projectile, as it throws satisfyingly but does not hurt, and unwinds with each toss, leaving only crab pieces to lodge in Sydney's hair. And the soft bushes of Columbia! What a toss. And then she, Max, and I sat on the sundial, exhausted, and shouted rumors that were magically realized.

One of these days I will be the codger strolling on campus with my chubby son, pointing to the buildings of my college days. "Those were the times," I will say, shaking my head to no one in particular. For many years from now, with us graduates spread across the Earth and the campus inhabited by cagey-eyed students of the future, the geography will anchor me and my memories.

Isaac Stone Fish is a Columbia College senior majoring in EALAC. The Sounds of Isaac runs alternate Thursdays.