The Sisyphus Cycle of "Monster Columbia"

Transferring to Columbia was not easy, especially as an international student who grew up in Austria and went to college in Miami. I’m not even referring to the seemingly never ending months of preparing for SAT and TOEFL, writing and editing the 1,500-word essay again and again, organizing transcripts to be sent to an address of a length which disabled every computer in the clerk’s office from printing it on an envelope, annoying high school teachers for secondary school records and recommendations, or torturing my parents with requests to research, print, sign, scan, and express-mail, while still trying to make the deadline—basically, putting together a perfectly legitimate yet flattering application.

The process of transferring was painful due to more than the application stress or the maddening weeks of waiting for a reply. Ironically, it actually started on the day I finally received the liberating phone call announcing my acceptance to Columbia. Over the following weeks, documents were to be signed, checks to be sent, phone calls to be made, flights to be booked, housing and scholarship applications to be filled out—in essence, all arrangements to be made in order to guarantee a smooth transition to New York. Or so I thought.

Transferring to Columbia felt like an academic version of the Sisyphus myth. First, I went through the nightmare of applying, expecting to enter nirvana once I was done. But soon after having finally completed my application, I found myself so busy trying to arrange everything for school to start that my to-do list seemed endless.

A few weeks later, I was ready to start my summer holidays in Austria, believing everything to be settled for the fall semester. However, two weeks into my vacation in Vietnam, I was faced with urgent scholarship and housing issues which I had no idea how to handle from the distance. After days of running around disoriented, trying to find access to Internet, printers, and fax machines, I eventually found a way to solve them and entered a stage of relief I wouldn’t have thought possible.

Now, feeling confident that I had taken care of everything, it only took another week for more problems to emerge. Suddenly my flight coincided with my academic planning session, and the International Students and Scholars Office hadn’t sent me my documentation, causing another week of anxiously awaiting e-mail replies, making long-distance phone calls, and believing my future in New York to be jeopardized.
Yet again, somehow I managed to find a solution and was looking forward to my day of departure—not knowing that another day of horror was expecting me.

My relief of finally arriving at LaGuardia cannot even be described after hours of torture due to statements such as “we can’t check you in, we don’t have access to your ticket,” “there is a hurricane in Miami, you may not be able to fly,” or “we seem to have lost your suitcase in London.”

Unfortunately, relieved as I was, I had simply reached another step of my Sisyphus Cycle, which I realized only a few days later, when I was still waiting for my suitcase and learned that I hadn’t met all requirements to register for classes.

After more long-distance phone calls about my vaccination records, I felt ecstatic for one day—no, wait, I felt ecstatic for a few hours, because then fellow students let me know that “Monster Columbia” had caused students to leave Butler in ambulances, that our families and friends wouldn’t hear from us for weeks at a time, and that many people had already started with the readings for their classes—and I was not even registered.

Having finally registered for some classes I didn’t want to take, I was excited to participate in “shopping week,” hoping for someone to drop the classes I wanted, and looking forward to visiting numerous different courses. Naturally, my excitement only lasted for about a day—until I realized that there were homework, quizzes, and reading assignments—which made me want to die—given during the first week of class. All this while I was still fighting for some of my courses.

After this traumatic journey, I realized that we are caught in that cycle, with no hope of leaving it anytime soon. Once one problem is taken care of, another one appears—hence we will simply have to find a way to cope with it.

While everything I heard during orientation week elongated my to-do list substantially, holding me in one Sisyphus Cycle desperation step after another, looking back at it, I am grateful for the advice of all the devoted faculty and staff members and fellow students. Had it not been for them, I would probably not be registered for classes by now.

I do believe that we will get used to Columbia’s expectations and appreciate them. Maybe the school will in fact swallow us whole, but on our graduation day, we will be sorry to leave “Monster Columbia.”

The author is a student in the School of General Studies.