Senior-profiles

Aaron Smithson, CC ’19, is heading to Columbus—but not the avenue. Columbus, Indiana, is a 47,000-person town that sits halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville, which might seem like an odd vacation destination. But for Smithson, who was raised on the Upper West Side, it’s actually a pretty natural choice.

For Robrenisha Williams, BC ’19, attending the Sadie Tanner Conference for Economics in February helped her discover her ability to advocate for her own community, to educate and be educated by women who she admires.

When asked about her best Columbia memory, Jennifer Blandón, GS ’19, said it was a hard tie between her involvement with MilVets and staying up late with friends, both during study breaks and walking around campus at night to soak in the memories.

Jed-Joan Edziah, SEAS ’19, knew that with her scientific inclination, she could become someone important. Her trajectory was set—she would change the world, cure cancer, and earn a Nobel Prize.

The winter break of her first year, Emily Sun, CC ’19, represented Columbia on Jeopardy! College Championship. Paired with her fresh-faced aura, she felt that her undeclared major status weakened her sense of self—otherwise, she would have been able to speak into the camera screens more eloquently.

If everybody likes you, you probably aren’t doing good journalism.

As Shreya Sunderram, BC ’19, sat in the living room where she holds her most valuable college memories, she thinks to how often the one-on-one interactions with her friends, peers, professors, and students have shifted her understandings of the world.

In the summer before I started at Columbia, people kept telling me about how I would find myself in college. When I arrived at Spectator, however, I instead found that myself wasn’t there. I was the only Black person in my section, and I was one of the only people at that time who had dedicated themselves to writing about the Harlem community around Columbia, a place which reminded me so much of my own neighborhood in Los Angeles.

When she first entered Columbia Women’s Business Society to explore her interest in business and consulting, Kiana Mendes, CC ’19, noted that it was not as diverse of a space as it could have been. Ever since joining her sophomore year and then formally joining the executive board her junior year, Mendes’ platform centered around pushing for genuine diversity and inclusion efforts within the club.

When he first came to Columbia, Samuel Castro, SEAS ’19, noted how the transition to college was especially difficult as a Los Angeles native, which would require moving thousands of miles away from his family and existing networks.