I’m not a senior. But more on that in a bit.

I woke up on a hospital gurney three days after Christmas. This was 2018: I was younger (a given) and dumber (another given). I had worn a black dress and heavy eye makeup to go out the night before, which was now horrifically smudged, and the state of my face suggested that I’d taken a narrow strip of sandpaper to it. I came to slowly, with a growing awareness of the heaviness of my limbs, in a ward full of people older and sicker than me. Eyes open, I didn’t move for the next hour or so. I wanted to fade back into oblivion. I knew full well what I, in my lightly blood-spattered black dress, looked like to the elderly man with the fractured arm in the bed next to me.

It’s early June, and the clocks are striking 13. These past two weeks have been blissful, dusky, and honey-soaked. Saccharine, whatever that means. And I reckon I’ve got about three more days before the panic truly sets in. You see, I don’t have gainful employment lined up for this summer. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

“THE MCBAIN FACADE IS UNSTABLE AND UNSAFE,” the poster read. Then, in bold underline: “SO AM I.”

Welcome to the third season of The Ear, The Eye’s podcast dedicated to documenting, detailing, and excavating Columbia’s history!

In December 2013, a Columbia administrator placed an envelope in a mailbox in Low Library. It was for a student who had left a voicemail a few days before, saying she was an urban studies student doing research and asking if she could look at Columbia’s direct investments. After all, it was for her thesis on development.

It was time for dinner after a long Monday but the doors to the Diana Center dining room were locked. Through the glass walls, students were speaking passionately but wordlessly, or so it seemed to those of us outside.