opinion: columns

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Having grown up in predominantly Jewish communities, I was blissfully unaware of the realities of modern anti-Semitism for a very long time. To my eight-year-old self, anti-Semitism was black-and-white Holocaust movies, yellow stars, and the elderly survivors who spoke at my Hebrew school every once in a while. Everything changed when I got old enough to start reading the news.

So I’m graduating this coming May, which is thrilling and unfathomable; apparently, graduation is this single day that splits all of time as I conceptualize it into before and after. In before, I live on various cozy blocks around Morningside Heights, crank out a bachelor’s degree, and understand each day as a single tick on an ultimately finite timeline. In after, I’ve moved to anywhere other than New York, somehow totally invented a life for myself, and developed an informed opinion on 401(k)s, or something.

In an ill-advised move one cold March night, I found myself dragged out of my warm Claremont room and out onto the streets of New York, badgered into submission by suitemates as we searched for alcohol and debauchery. “I’ll go, but I’m not going to look cute,” I grumbled and headed out to 1020 without changing out of my Script Ohio t-shirt and worn jeans.

There’s a Facebook group that’s taken the Asian community by storm. It’s called “subtle asian traits,” and if you’re an Asian American, Canadian, or another child of the Asian diaspora, you’ve probably heard of it by now. (And if you’re not Asian, you might have heard of it too.) The group essentially consists of memes, jokes, and shitposts usually written out in Pinyin or romanization of other Asian languages. A majority of the content is about food, the emoticon uwu, Pikachu, boba, and more food—often in the form of debates over the best kind of Asian noodle or the best boba chain. (There truly is a lot of food content.)

Over my first few months on campus, I’ve noticed that Columbia students don’t seem to feel a strong sense of belonging to our school—we lack an “esprit de corps” that is far more prevalent at other universities. And to be clear, by belonging I don't mean the superficial “university sweatshirt and bumper sticker” sort of school spirit that is often talked about. Rather, I’m referring to a genuine feeling of attachment that persists long after graduation. As former columnist Robert Godfried similarly noticed last year, this is especially evident when looking at Forbes’ ranking of alumni give-back rates: Dartmouth comes in first, Princeton comes second. Yale takes 14th, Brown 16th, UPenn 20th, and Harvard 26th.

I recall sitting in Butler’s Blue Java Café with a budding friend. We were discussing our sleep habits, and I mentioned that I go to sleep around 11 p.m. and wake up around 8 a.m. most days. Suddenly, the mood shifted, and she looked me in the eye with a mixture of frustration and jealousy.

It’s cold, school’s just about to ramp up with finals around the corner, and the stacks can get lonely, so you’d think the average sleep-deprived, stressed-out college student would seek warmth and relief in what artists, from Shakespeare to John Lennon, have gushed about for centuries: love.

As the daughter of a lifelong educator, stereotypes about the public school system never rang true to me because I grew up with a first hand perspective of the elaborate inner machinery that kept the system running—all through my mom’s daily life as a high school counselor. She transformed my rudimentary understanding of the public education system—which is, of course, not a monolithic one—into a consciousness of the complex realities, tragedies, and triumphs that many public school students and educators face across state lines. Most importantly, she taught me to never expect less from a public school student.

We’ve all been there. It’s the morning after Thanksgiving, we feel like we ate a whole turkey, and are beginning to regret that fourth piece of pie. (There were so many pies! I had to try to the bourbon pecan and the wild blueberry!) With shame and regret, we do a quick search online to see how many calories the average American consumes on Thanksgiving and cringe at the result. It looks like we might actually have to start burning off the turkey fat. There’s only one problem: Exercising on campus sucks.