Waking up early in college can seem like the hardest thing to do. Staying up late, having a mountain of assignments, and pulling all-nighters can feel productive in the moment, until you realize it’s doing more harm than good. Use these tips to get your sleep schedule on track and help you wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead.

One month into the semester, you’ve probably only said two things to your roommate: “Bless you,” after they’ve sneezed, and “Can you turn off the light?” if they’re closer to the door.

As the school year begins, a new batch of Columbia undergraduates embark on the journey that is the Core Curriculum. We at Spectrum fondly noticed someone poring over Tablet IV of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” in the Milstein Center. Sadly, early enthusiasm rarely survives the semester intact. It seems counterintuitive that the antidote to the Core-induced reading slump happens to be reading more books, but together, we hope these recommendations tell a cohesive story about what the Core is trying to do and how you should approach it.

The Performative Male, once a prevalent subspecies of the Columbia population, has entered a period of apparent decline. Fewer tote bags have been spotted on campus, Labubus have stopped multiplying, and the continuous “mansplaining” of feminist theory has, miraculously, come to a halt.

As the four of us sat down at a little square table in Cathedral Gardens we couldn’t help noticing the cozy ambience of the living room and the posters that dotted the walls. Ella Ahner, BC ’26, laughed as she chatted with us about our trek, and Francesca Eisenberg, BC ’26, giggled as we read their poster: “THE REAL G SPOT, GUINNESS.”

New York City has had a very long winter, with two heavy snowfalls and alarmingly low temperatures. We don’t know about you, but here at Spectrum, we spend all winter looking forward to a good old snow day. It’s one of the few times during the year that Columbia students emerge from the depths of Butler to actually enjoy the outdoors.

Getting into Columbia is statistically unlikely. Even more so is trying to get into Lion Fund or 116th & Partners. But none of them are statistically improbable. What’s impossible is finding a washing machine in any residence hall that is simultaneously empty, functional, and not currently being hogged by some desperate freshman trying to write their Lit Hum paper on “Inferno” (which they now viscerally understand, surrounded by tumbling machines that sound like tortured sinners) while waiting for their Roar-ee plushie to dry out.

With finals season upon us, a vague air of desperation and hysteria hangs around campus. Butler feels like an extravagant jail cell for the glum Barnumbian. The internet is full of gurus promising instant IQ-boosting pills and obscure—and obscenely expensive—AI programs that claim to become your best study pal.