Crystal Lua

You step into a small classroom, one typically peppered with easels and assorted art paraphernalia. Today, though, the room is dim, illuminated only by fairy lights, a makeshift stage up front with people packing the room. Onstage, a student sings a folk-tinged melody into the mic, strumming his guitar while the synthesizer sits to the side, playing a looped melody. He’s following a half-hour performance that blended together flutes, vocals, and electronic beats.

In honor of the archives issue, we dedicated this week’s Blinks to answering the question: What’s the most interesting story you’ve found in the Spectator archives?

For this week’s Blinks, we asked our staffers to dig out the tiny traditions that have taken shape in their own day to day lives. The little pieces of repetition or habit that hold greater meaning. From paper submissions to salads, and late emails to libraries, here are the results:

This semester, a transfer student who applied to Columbia with straight A's and Dean's List honors under her belt was only able to take eight academic credits. "I wasn't able to afford any more than that," says Yasmeen Ibrahim, a first-year at the School of General Studies currently studying psychology and business here after having transferred from Northern Virginia Community College in Washington D.C.

The Manhattan grid system is many things. It is the cause of dreaded wind tunnels in winter, the impressive result of meticulous urban planning, a godsend for first-time tourists fumbling their way around New York City's hectic streets.

In 1962, the Great Books Curriculum course Humanities A was officially designated Literature Humanities—the course we students have come to see as definitive of the Columbia College experience. Upon the 75th anniversary of the Core Curriculum in 1994, Jacques Barzun, widely regarded as the father of the Core, remarked, "The truth is that in learning about the West, one learns an enormous amount about the rest of the world. … It is on the contrary the present fad for courses about separate regions and peoples that is too narrow."

Columbia College first-year Izzy Hellman has called eight places home. She may only be 18, but the Massachusetts-born world traveller has lived in the United Kingdom, United States, Indonesia, India, Kenya, and now has returned to New York. She, as closely as anyone can, fits the parameters of the evolving 21st century concept of the third culture kid.

Three years ago, as 16-year-old Alex Kissilenko watched the clouds give way to a city from a plane window, she felt the thrill of anticipation as the interweaving streetlights slowly unveiled themselves in the darkness below. She was just like any other holidaymaker landing in Granada, Spain—except she was alone.

At 18, most Columbia College students were attending convocation as newly minted first-years. Meanwhile, Alan Lin remembers learning how to assemble a gun instead.