Thawing out of Dante’s Inferno

It was the summer of 2004 and I was mere days from closing on an apartment in Montreal’s McGill Ghetto. I was doing everything I could to tell myself that it was fine to leave New York, even though the city was the place where I had changed everything that had plagued my high school years. Two years of flawless college work at UMass-Boston and The New School didn’t matter to New York University, and I figured a past full of roadblocks and detours would be ignored by the Columbia College admissions office. With nothing more than a mindless internship at City Hall, and transfer application deadlines long passed, I was out of options.

One night, I was wandering alone after a concert in the Village and began to tear up at the prospect of leaving New York. I couldn’t bring myself to study and, more importantly, live anywhere else. Even if I wasn’t getting much of an education at The New School, I was learning far more about the world just by living in a tiny studio on the corner of 100th and Broadway. I discovered an application to the School of General Studies collecting dust next to the twin bed that took up probably half of my apartment. With nothing left to lose, I scheduled a meeting with the dean of admissions. I thought there was at least a chance that someone in GS would listen to my story, understand how serious I had become about my academics, and see that I wanted Columbia more than anything in the world.

I don’t want to dwell on my high school years. Even at 22, it’s a time I already look back on as ancient history. I will say, however, that I bounced around between a few places, basically dropped out of one school and left another a year early for college. I dealt with a nervous system disorder that left an intelligent kid on a Section 504 plan for students with disabilities in a public school with an unaccommodating principal. My standardized test scores didn’t break the bank, and I was never even assigned a class rank. It was only after leaving the small town suburb for the big city that everything suddenly fell into place. After spending an hour explaining my past to the dean of admissions, I was strongly encouraged to apply to GS. Everything said in that meeting went into what became a 17-page admissions essay. A week after submitting my application, there was a FedEx package sitting in my lobby.

I’ve been dreading this column all semester because, in part, I haven’t mentioned GS once in anything I’ve previously written for Spectator. I’ve always thought of myself as a “traditionally-aged” Columbia undergraduate with a unique background that found a school willing to listen to me in General Studies. It was in GS that I finally met others who shared similar stories and, at different points in their lives, demanded this kind of education. I am probably biased, but I think some of the most interesting and dedicated people to study here come out of GS, and they’re not the old men in the back asking obnoxious questions. They are the majority of GS students, who nobody ever hears about, who know what they want out of this place and strive to attain it on a daily basis.

Columbia has been one of the greatest gifts in my life and there’s very little I would change about my time here. I could have written about all the little things that bother me about this place, but that would only serve to expose a false insecurity of being unable to seek out solutions. There was nobody here to hold my hand. I made this place work to my advantage and, ultimately, learned so much about the world and about myself. This was the place that forced me to question everything so to discover some new truths. It reminded me that it’s more important to share my talents with others than withhold what I know in the hope that they too will do the same. It reinforced the value of independence in keeping true to what makes us unique. It allowed me to have great conversations with people so unlike me in almost every way and to become a more tolerant individual. As my days here wind down, I only now realize how short and precious my times here was, and understand how essential it will be to share as much as I can attribute to this University with the rest of the world. I am a better person today because of Columbia.

This column should at least partly be a celebration of the past few years of my life. I got to listen to, look at, and read the great classics of Western civilization. I researched fascinating topics and produced admirable term papers. I found some people that share similar interests and made a few great friends that will stay with me long after I leave the gates with a diploma. Above all, I got to do it at one of the greatest schools in the greatest city in the world. I still don’t know what I want to be in life, mostly because the door is overwhelmingly open now to anything I can make of it. If the band is breaking up, so begins the long solo career. This was the best job ever. Thanks, guys.

Jarid Maged is a student in the School of General Studies studying political science. Frozen in the Ninth Circle runs alternate Fridays.
Opinion@columbiaspectator.com