What Spec Has Given Me

I almost did not write this column.

I did not devote enough time to Spectator to deserve it, I thought, though I held two editorships, am leaning toward a journalism career, and am fortunate to count numerous exceptional Speccies among my closest friends.

Nor do I have enough to say to fill an open-ended space, I thought, though anyone who knows me can tell you that despite claiming a journalistic absence of opinions, I'm chock full of them.

And I don't have enough talent, the inner monologue persisted, to capture my college experience in any way that could ever do justice to four years and, most crucially, to the people who defined them.

Enough, enough, enough.

I've long struggled with the idea that it's okay to take up space in the world. Children do it naturally-they jump, squeal, and shimmy. They wave to strangers. But at some point the self becomes moderated, and often gendered. Women sit compactly on the subway, legs crossed, though many men think nothing of extending themselves across several seats.

But I'm a Barnard Woman, as well as a successful Ivy League student and a Spectator byline. I took this space because refusing it would be a denial of all that I learned from each of these parts of my Columbia experience, and I feel so lucky to have had them.

Before joining Spectator, I'd wait an hour for a restaurant check rather than risk irritating a waiter. Reporting kills tentativeness, though, and then kicks it for good measure. Last summer during a scavenger hunt, I was cajoling two greasy-haired men in a Duane Reade into posing for photos in ugly plastic hats when an editor-friend who taught me loads about reporting took gleeful credit for my current lack of shame.

Good journalism requires acting with the belief that one is entitled to be a force in the world, poking around, asking questions, and talking to everyone. Spectator, for all its (many) shortcomings, will prepare people who invest the time to be professional reporters.

The perfect place to begin talking and questioning is Columbia, which doles out four years of non-stop intellectual activity. Picasso and Pollock are free with a CUID. Everyone who's anyone zips through New York, and many of them stop at Columbia. I've listened to people ranging from the president of Pakistan to the founder of Human Rights Watch. We pass Nobel laureates on College Walk and read books written by the folks who open their minds and their office doors to us daily.

Everything here seems attainable-I look around at this class of 2007 and see our future leaders and laureates among them. Columbia opens our minds to ideas that stretch us until we must take up more space to hold them all. And we do.

These four years, I was a Speccie and a member of the Columbia community, but most of all, I was a Barnard student.

I emphasize this because it was at Barnard, dedicated to re-conceptualizing all that womanhood can be-and Larry Summers gave just one recent indication that the pursuit remains relevant-that I discovered strength to forge space for myself. One way I did this was by joining Spectator. My words blanketed campus. It was thrilling.

But Barnard students learn not only that our words and thoughts have power but also that our bodies have value.

The other day I was chatting with a friend in upper level McIntosh (may it rest in peace). A professor relaxed a few tables away, engrossed in conversation.

This professor is a warm, brilliant bundle of energy. She suddenly reacted to something her companion said by laughing so hard that she curved back into her chair and her feet rose off the floor. I glanced at her, amused. She smiled back and then lost her composure again. I was delighted to witness a woman whose intellect I so admire demonstrating that life continues beyond the cortex, to the tips of our toes.

This knowledge can help us change a stubbornly unfair world. And we will.

I almost did not write this column. But I can't disappear. After just four years in Morningside Heights, my mind and my heart cover too much terrain.

There is a 1976 New Yorker cover called "View of the World from 9th Avenue." A westward span of Manhattan from 9th Avenue to the river fills half the page, and the other half notes that Jersey, Vegas, and Japan might exist out there too.

My New York stretches physically from Milbank to Schermerhorn, but my view extends to wherever the people I've loved here will be-the Upper West Side, Washington, D.C., California, Dallas, Dubai...

I think I'm going to need a bigger page.