“Chapter 1. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.”
Woody Allen, neurotically searching for his own opener in the best film he ever made.
“New York was his town, and it always would be.”
At this point, you’ve probably heard way too much about the city from University pamphlets. But New York City needs no introduction—it’s a melting pot whose spell is almost irresistible. And though it might seem banal to say so in an introduction to orientation, the city comes first—for ultimately it remains the one nonacademic common denominator between anyone reading this (Hi Mom). As Woody Allen might have known, New York’s your town, too.
The same goes for Columbia. I don’t have much straightforward advice for you, except: Try out some but not all of NSOP’s programs, don’t wait until senior year to go to an athletics event, and remember that this school is as much yours as anybody else’s. Oh, and make friends with the good folks at Hamilton Deli.
Now that you’re here, you might start worrying about how to add a few more brush strokes to the grand, perhaps oily portrait of your academic career. It can sometimes seem like you’re stuck in Butler Library while confident and driven peers step out and carpe the shit out of diem.
It’s 6:28 a.m. as of this writing, and those Columbia students will probably wake up in two minutes. They’ll open their GPA-crusted eyes and gaze at Low Library, its holier-than-thou steps glistening after the night’s rain, from which all but the most screwed student (sadly, usually GS) will have been well sheltered. They’ll mentally go over their busy day—the many brushes and colors they’ll need, the fellow painters and masters they’ll communicate with, some of whom they’ll learn from and some of whom they’ll ignore. It’s no easy task, faced with the pseudo-impressionistic, semi-narcissistic pastiche of a well-rounded Columbia education. They may worry their work is too constrained to one style. They may worry about their palette.
For others, including me, it’s a (slightly) different story. At this hour we’ve just finished the next day’s homework in yet another hallucinatory nirvana of brain-damaged oblivion.
I remember when after one 72-hour sleepless bout with finals imminent, I sat shaking on the Sundial contemplating a philosophy exam. I looked on my shoulder and saw a small alien—pale, translucent green, with five or six legs—I can’t remember. White, beady eyes, staring into mine, unblinking and all-knowing. We sat there for what seemed like hours, my caffeine-rocked body swaying to the alien’s ease. Finally I glanced back at Butler Library and the ancient names etched across its mantle. When I looked back at my shoulder, the insect-alien was gone.
That little critter seemed so wise at the time. It’s one of those College Memories I won’t forget. You try to remember what you learned in class, you try to capture every moment and splash it on Facebook, and ultimately you remember hallucinations of aliens.
To lend this column some sense of purpose, clearly all that remains is to examine our University motto. Our motto—no simple crimson “Veritas,” but rather “In lumine tuo videbimus lumen.”
In Thy Light We Shall See the Light...this could mean “Attending elite institution equals ticket to heaven.” It could mean something else. Ultimately, though, you may decide for yourself where that light is and how to see it. Columbia can make you feel much older or much younger than your age—often because of how autonomous the school wants you to be, and because of the intellectual vitality of the place. With that vitality comes competition, angst, success, hangovers, lifelong friendships, loneliness, personal epiphanies, and world-changing discoveries. All can make for a memorable collage or landscape painting if you put your mind to it.
You can also eschew the borrowed metaphor entirely. Dave Barry may have put it best in a column he wrote in the guise of a graduation speech: “If you set your goals high, and you never, ever give up, I guarantee you that one day you will find yourself working for a huge impersonal corporation run by morons. Everybody does.”
It’s all up to you, of course. One thing for sure: Columbia’s motto does not rattle through the tired mind at 6:28 a.m., when you’ve parsed through all the truths and trash you can handle in one night and the cold and lucid dawn calls you to bed.
