Harmony Graziano

It felt like such a big deal when I realized at 13, falling hard for a close girlfriend, that “gay” was a good word to describe how I felt. The idea was a fine-tooth comb run through knotted hair, an early watershed realization that bifurcated my life into before-I-knew-something and after-I-found-out. Liza Minnelli is Judy Garland’s daughter, a lime is not just an unripe lemon, and I was probably a lesbian.

In seven semesters at Columbia, I’ve been paid to take notes for five different classes. The email comes a week or two into the semester from the Office of Disability Services, offering $250 ($100 at Barnard) for a semester’s worth of notes that the office then sends weekly to a student in the class who needs them. When one such email landed in my inbox two days into my Elementary Latin I class in the fall of my first year, promising hundreds of dollars for something I already planned to do for myself, I sprinted to Butler to scan my notes and apply.

Last semester, I wrote about my experience growing up in Hawaiʻi, where I was deeply in love with—but always on the periphery of—its culture, and the difficulty of having to represent Hawaiʻi to my “outside world” while feeling, as a white person, fundamentally unqualified to do so.

As my last year at Columbia begins, I’ve been thinking back on the tiny chance encounters I had early on that came to define my time here. The random classmate who, after noticing my interest in our Latin coursework, suggested I check out a major I’d never heard of—linguistics—which is now what I study (and the only thing I talk about). I made my very best friend on the first day of school in Literature Humanities. A fortuitous roll of the registrar’s dice put us in the same Pupin classroom that Tuesday, and now I cannot picture my life without him.

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.

In anticipation of moving my belongings into storage next month, I recently decided to clean out my closet. The task sent me into a four-hour-long trance that resulted in ditching almost two-thirds of my entire wardrobe: I got rid of my skinny clothes.

In November, recipients of the Columbia Grant received an email inviting them to the Dean’s Scholarship Reception, a mid-February gala in Roone that paired financial aid recipients whose tuition was at least partially covered by the fund with donors who had contributed to the endowment. (The Columbia Grant is awarded in financial aid packages with no strings attached—it is anonymous, free money that need not be repaid upon graduation, like a loan would. The grant is the primary fund for financial aid.)

For the last four months, I have been the willful owner of an LG B470 flip phone, the most basic model AT&T offers. Allow me to list the capabilities of a phone like this. There’s T9 texting, programmable speed dial, and imperviousness against water, impact, and most nuclear weapons. It boasts a 1.3-megapixel camera that makes every picture look like a bad photocopy of itself.

I came to Columbia after being born and raised in Hawaiʻi. And I’ll be the first to say that the rumors about Hawaiʻi are true: The weather is gorgeous year-round; beaches are free and beautiful; the healthcare system is comprehensive; it’s routinely rated one of the happiest states in the country. People flock on vacation from all over the world for a taste of what is, to many people, an everyday reality.

Over winter break, I was up late one night playing board games with a few friends. We moved through Pictionary, Hearts, and even Monopoly (apparently, we’re very good friends) before turning our efforts to Scrabble.