Natalia Queenan

After admission to this great university, you walk through those looming iron gates, establishing your personal residence on an island of academia. In the foreground, Butler Library asks you to choose from the wealth of knowledge it contains: Homer? Plato? Vergil? From which (old, white, and male) philosophical perspective will you construct your opinions—that is, until you discover a flirtier, more intersectional lens (read: bell hooks)?

Each time my 10-year-old sister calls me, I jump a little. She’s not old enough to have a cell phone, I think, and I hope that it’s going to be a casual conversation. Usually, she tells me about her essay assignments, asks me to clarify certain points of Greek history and geometry, and complains about our little brother. Most nights, our mother is still coming home late.

The first time I saw a Facebook birthday fundraiser, I nearly dropped my phone. My stomach turned over and goosebumps covered my arms. You may be thinking this is excessively dramatic—you’re probably right. Still, for some odd reason, a post which ultimately benefited a good charity still made me feel gross. I’ve thought about it, and concluded that this gross feeling was caused by the performative friendship that our generation gravitates toward.

I’ve been searching for the definition of “home” for a long time. There is, of course, the surface-level definition, which poses “home” as synonymous to “house.” It simply classifies a home as a permanent place of dwelling and removes any emotional connotation. The adjective “homey” implies warmth, comfort, and an intrinsic sense of familiarity. Yet, describing a home as homey is repetitive—so what specific characteristics attach us to our living spaces? How does a place provoke intrinsic feelings of comfort, familiarity, and warmth?

Everyday, I walk by St. John’s on my way to campus, and the pure, driving force behind cathedrals never fails to fascinate me. The stained glass is scientifically impressive, the flying buttresses are architecturally interesting, and the high ceilings are an HGTV dream. The physical features of a beautiful church are incredible on their own, but the building process is truly enigmatic. So many people, working tirelessly and altruistically to construct a specific, extravagant shrine they never quite see to fruition. This work is a product of faith, a selfless declaration of belief and morality; it is incredibly difficult to translate to the modern, secular world. Perhaps, this resonates with the difficult placement that religion finds in contemporary society—our culture believes strongly in empirical data and individuality, which disallows blind faith in something larger than humanity.

In Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Biology at Barnard, we learned about two theories that attempt to explain the evolution of eukaryotic cells. The older, more traditional view was discovered by a man, and is founded in aggression; it tells of a war between mitochondrial cells and cytoplasmic cells. The mitochondria were absorbed into a larger cell after a struggle for power. Somehow, a symbiotic relationship was accidentally produced from this initial narrative of conquest. However, this theory overlooks necessary details in the cells structure—it fails to explain the system as a collective whole.

Every Thursday afternoon, I pick up a four-year-old from preschool, take him home, and make him dinner. I say I do this for the money, but I really do it to stay sane. You see, kids are unapologetically passionate and independent. In his case, despite my protests, he runs his shark gloves along the walls of both subway stations, repeatedly jumps from couch to couch when we get home, and sneaks “granolie” while I’m making dinner. I pout, he laughs. Once, when talking about my molecular model kit, I said, “Guess what? We play with Legos in my chemistry class.” He replied, “Legos aren’t even fun, Natalia.” No judgement, just honesty.

One Valentine’s Day, I wrote a love poem about a boy, comparing him to the sun. I have now realized that I should have written a love poem about the sun itself. There are days in mid-August when I melt into the excess of sunshine that spills from the skies. I thrive when I’m covered in an abundance of warmth—more like a second skin than a blanket. In August, when the sun departs and night settles over unyielding heat, I look at my arms and see that my skin is darker; some of it is dead and all of it is different. I have given a part of myself to something I love—I willingly continue to do this until the sun loses its intimate warmth to the winter.

I woke up to a blanket of snow on the Saturday before finals week, and it was like a deliverance. My eyelashes caught melting crystals as I walked to Butler, wondering if there was an open seat. My cheeks stung, turning red from the intensifying cascade of white. It was a pure and temporary experience, a kind reminder that my current stress would pass. For a whole five minutes, the intense anxiety to secure a 4.0 GPA seemed fleeting, like it could melt just as easily as those snowflakes.

Alexa Roman is a sophomore in Columbia College studying English. She works with the First-Generation Student Advisory Board to address prominent issues in the low-income community on campus. Additionally, she works with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to improve outreach to underprivileged groups. This column serves as a continuation of Alexa’s prior work detailing the experiences of FGLI students at elite universities. Outside of her work, Alexa can be found worrying her mother about the college experience and romanticizing Koronets despite its subpar quality. She would like to remind you that you are still not middle class. Alexa can be reached via email at alexa.roman@columbia.edu, but only if it’s something nice. Her column You’re Still Not Middle Class runs alternate Mondays.