Amy Gong Liu

Two weeks of class remain until The End for me—after a slew of final papers and the stupid swimming test, which I’ve been pushing off until the last possible moment, I will be done. Graduated. Equipped for the imminent future with a shiny diploma in hand and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Several underclassmen friends have begun asking me for advice re: their own futures—most of them have asked me how to properly soul-search in the nebulous mass that is the future and create a sense of immediacy and certainty. They want the what-where-how-when-whys, the “who am I?”s, and most importantly, the “who will I be?”s. I’ve been asking myself the exact same questions in the past couple of weeks. The truth is that I don’t have answers for them. I don’t know what or where I am going to be in two months, two years; I don’t have an idea of home or away—how can I even begin to deliver any bits of certainty to anyone else?

Several weeks ago, as I watched a film for class about the acquittal of Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, two men who were charged in 1982 with the murder of Vincent Chin, I felt an undercurrent of rage—the kind that burns coldly, devastatingly, irrevocably—settle through me. I noticed that it felt familiar: The past couple of weeks, and the past couple of years at that, have been filled with moments that have invited and even necessitated it.

Going to school (at Columbia, a place that budgets a significant amount of money for the simple purpose of lawn-manicuring) 2,000 miles away from home (a place whose only claim to fame is Debbi Fields of Mrs. Fields cookies) has been quite the experiment in emotional liberation. For the first time in my life, I’ve found the freedom to fully feel. I bask in the many opportunities that this city offers for experiencing and emoting; I am captured by things like the beauty of architecture. On my way to class I say things like: “The slope of ceilings! The slope of ceilings and the way the rust on them just glows!”

I’m going to make the bold claim that if you’ve taken Contemporary Civilization, you probably skimmed through Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Perhaps you didn’t mean to; perhaps you had planned on reading the last chapter at the very least to make sure that you would have at least something of value to say in class. Perhaps, when you found yourself at a back cover, you read the conclusion again with such generous care that you punctuated breaths between words: Thus. We. Do. Not. Comprehend. The. Moral. Imperative. But. We. Do. Comprehend. Its. Incomprehensibility. What was the moral imperative again? Shit. I’m lost. Or, perhaps I’m wrong, and you woke up early to camp in Ref, and as the sun rose and set (and probably rose and set again, knowing how long it must have taken you to actually get through the book), you stayed. Perhaps, even then, you still had no idea what the moral imperative was.

Victoria Hou is a sophomore in Columbia College attempting to study political science and economics (like every other student at this school). Her claim to fame includes a few posts that reached over 1,000 likes on columbia buy sell memes and her being the reason why the class of 2021 got T-shirts at the New Student Orientation Program. To all sophomores: You’re welcome. H Mart keeps her sane, but trips down to Koreatown and Chinatown keep her happy. You can find her pretending to study in Ref, likely on Facebook and ranting about Asian American issues. You can also send questions, secret admirer notes, and hate mail at vh2279@columbia.edu. Chop Suey runs alternate Mondays.