Senior Column

Admittedly, I joined Spectator freshman year for the opportunity to help manage an autonomous company, rather than because of an interest in newspapers. The publisher at the time ran me through her long list of day-to-day responsibilities and concluded, “That’s what I can think of off of the top of my head, but the most exciting stuff is ad hoc.” I was impressed.

This is a strange time—and Columbia, a strange place—to be practicing print journalism. “Consolidation” and “do more with less” have become grudging newsroom mantras, while papers have struggled mightily to establish a robust presence on the Web. Student newspapers may be better insulated against this sort of flux than their professional counterparts, but not entirely, and not forever.

As journalists, we figured, we should try and see as much as we could firsthand.
Working at the paper wasn’t always easy. I would sometimes come home from 2875 Broadway frustrated and exhausted. There were moments that broke my heart and mistakes that I ache to go back and fix, coffee dates I shouldn’t have forgotten about and friends I should have called back. In the end though, I can’t imagine college any other way, and I don’t want to.

Three years and a bunch of friends later, here I am writing my last column for the Spec.

Spectator wound up being more than just an outlet for my bizarre fascination with grammar. It was in the space around the words that I met some of my favorite people at Columbia.

But it seems almost insane to attempt to distill four years of college—more than a few all-nighters, far too much overachieving, and countless cups of coffee—into one, brief column for the opinion section of the Spectator’s final week of production, the last of my undergraduate career.

I’ve spent more time worrying about what to write in this column than the 50-plus pages of academic writing I have to do in the next two weeks.

During my time at Columbia, various parties have made efforts to improve what some see as a lacking athletics program.

Storytelling is a tool like any other, useless in isolation, relying on other material to serve its purpose. One needs a story to tell. Thus, we must be two things at once—as described in the text of my first Lit Hum assignment, each of us must be “both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.”

Spec made me push my own boundaries of what defines wisdom. I learned more outside the classroom than in it during my time at Spec.