To a prospective student:

Pre-frosh, are you grinning
For your grown-up life beginning?
Is Columbia so beguiling
That it finds you ever-smiling?
Well, as your days on campus lengthen
So will your wondrous joy unstrengthen.
You dreamed of college with a sigh,
With gleaming eyes did you apply,
Yet here you won’t dream, and here’s why:
While you proved yourself so clever,
Here, sleep finds you nearly never.
Butler, Child, know it well,
For in its catacombs you’ll dwell.
Those friends you’ll meet in NSOP rites,
What love you’ll find by drunken nights,
Will dwindle by your Spring semester,
And so Fall’s indiscretions fester.
With Winter blows a bitter chill,
Frosting o’er that first-year thrill.
This is the dream you worked so hard for.
It is the blight that you applied for.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in English and film studies.