Undeclared

Here we are, at the other side of the first year—all these decisions have become part of us. How do you picture yourself now? How do you judge yourself, look at yourself, trust yourself? I bet your answers aren’t the same as they were eight months ago.

Columbia College doesn’t have a theater department. Both Barnard College and the School of Arts offer wonderful classes, but that does not make up for the lack of a central community of theater students and professors who are invested in and educated by my school.

Everyone will tell you that “rank” is no way to choose a school—it sounds obvious. But the thing is, I mean it, even if it means not coming to Columbia. Once you’re away from your pre-existing impressions, your new reality is going to start hitting you in the head in a way you had no idea it could.

Hello out there, you with your 13 class credits and one-club commitment. How’s life? Pretty nice, I’m sure. Sitting with friends in John Jay for hours, never missing an episode of Project Runway, organizing your schedule around your friends—ah, I remember the days.

No other Ivy League school comes with a tagline—let alone one as loaded as ours: we are Columbia University, in the City of New York. Trying to take advantage of both the academic education we are in the midst of, and the education this city can provide, leaves us in an overwhelming situation.

It seems as though the former ideal for writing is becoming obsolete. It’s being replaced by writing which is neither deep nor necessarily true, but which gives the appearance of being both.