On beauty and Columbia

I am sitting across from Zadie Smith. It is Monday morning—the day my senior column is due, and the second-to-last Monday of classes—and I’m headed back uptown for my early PE class after having spent the night at home. I am supposed to be drafting my column in my head since I am on deadline, but all I can think about is the fact that one of my favorite writers is sitting on the opposite side of the same subway car as me, that she probably already saw me glancing at her three times between 23rd and 28th streets, and how to best look like I’m not really curious about what she will reveal after rifling through her tote bag. My mind wanders away from Columbia memories and to how this is awesome, but also how it sucks, because I wish I could talk to her, but don’t, because it’s mad creepy and, also, because I happen to be dressed like a 9-year-old.

But I must focus. This should be easy, since I have been doing the “writing my senior column through internal voice-over” thing since I was a freshman on the Spectator op-ed staff and learned they existed. But this time the nostalgic wisdom is flowing less clearly. This time, the musings don’t seem as obvious as they did back when I was still drunk on the idiosyncrasies of the Columbia experience and could not imagine how or why that feeling would ever go away. Now, most of my attempts to make conclusions about my Columbia years are devolving into lamenting all the friendships I didn’t make and the classes I didn’t take or try hard enough in. The past year should have been the wonderful conclusion to an amazing college experience. Instead, it was lonely and difficult and has made the good parts seem too distant to draw upon.

*

Zadie Smith looks beautiful. She’s wearing a black dress and espadrille wedges, her hair in a tight bun that reveals big gold hoops reaching her shoulders, and I can’t wait to describe this to my friends. I type out a text that ends in “OMFG” and I address it to the many close friends who all happen to be some of the biggest Zadie Smith fans I know.
There’s no signal in the dark space beneath Times Square, and so I put my phone away because what if she can tell that I am typing out a very detailed description of the Tropicana orange juice she just produced from her purse and is now sipping with a straw? I’m in a better mood now, so this might help me think of what, if any, magical Columbia memories or optimistic life lessons I could draw upon to write my final Spectator piece.

I feel the pressure, mostly springing from the history of love I have for this newspaper. The stuff I’ve written for this op-ed page, more than any of the papers I’ve written for any class, defines what Columbia meant to me for most of my time here. I grew up on this page, met future boyfriends and mentors while laying out this page, cried over feedback I’ve gotten about my columns on this page. (<3 you, Bwog commenters!), and began whatever semblance of a career I could one day hope to have by becoming involved with this page. I fell in love with Columbia when I arrived, and was lucky enough to have this page to document the process.

*

I start taking notes around the 103rd Street stop. Maybe I will write about this subway ride for my column, about the great friends I have to share this with, or about the way Zadie Smith somehow reminded me of the first few Spec-filled years during which I was so unabashedly optimistic and channeled that into romanticizing every Columbia experience.

Zadie Smith and I get off on the same platform, but we exit through different doors. I walk ahead of her, lest she think I’m full-on stalking, and emerge onto the sunny campus. The steps are half-covered in blue plastic chairs. (It begins!) I’m even closer to deadline, but I have a few extra minutes until strength training starts. I take out my notebook, and scribble something about “if I had taken a cab I would have missed this” and “the beauty of art and New York.” I’m amused by my own regression (or is it evolution?) into the girl who would sit on the benches outside Butler with a pen, listing the Columbia-specific details that made her feel so lucky to be here, at once exhausted by the workload and inspired by the variety of possibilities. Zadie Smith passes me, and I think I see her glance over at me. She has no idea, but with a week left of school, she somehow prevented me from writing a bummer of a retrospective senior column. And with this, I move on, impossibly with more love for both Zadie Smith and the years I spent at this complicated place.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in history. She was a columnist as a first-year and sophomore and was deputy editorial page editor for the 131st managing board.

Tags: Opinion, Fernanda Diaz, Spectator, Zadie Smith