Writing

I’ve recently contracted carpal tunnel, which seems like a divine joke a week before my thesis is due. It’s the latest episode of bodily decay in my descent from college student to centenarian. First, my stomach rebelled, taking my love of garlic along with it. Then came the anxiety induced nausea and acid reflux. At some point, for reasons unbeknownst to me and my general practitioner, I contracted chronic back pain.

“John,” my mom says slowly to my dad, her lips starting to twitch. “Maeve set her own hair on fire.”

It’s 11 p.m. the night before your 10-page research paper is due, and you’re sitting in the stacks, bleary-eyed, with a cup of Blue Java coffee, wondering how you’re going to turn the two pages’ worth of incoherent ramblings in front of you into a coherent essay by tomorrow morning.

When Jet Harper, BC ’19, who identifies as nonbinary, took a Women and Culture class three years ago, there was not a single nonbinary or trans author on the syllabus, nor were these perspectives addressed or included in any class discussions. As a result, they often found themselves pushing back against the biological definition of a woman used by their professor throughout the class.

According to Barnard’s Student Government Association, a presentation given at last week’s meeting inaccurately reported student satisfaction regarding writing and speaking fellows, raising concerns among fellows that students would be dissuaded from using their services.

Bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, I enter 310 Philosophy Hall, the crowded room which houses the Columbia Writing Center. The tables and chairs slot together like blocks in a game of Tetris. Writing consultants and students meet at adjacent tables or in chairs pushed off to a side. At the center of the room, a cluster of students—the ones who, unlike me, followed through on their plan to wake up early and reach the Writing Center just before it opens—sit around a clipboard. I can see they’re about as happy as I am to spend their Monday morning waiting for an appointment. There’s a small sheet of paper covering the sign-up sheet.

I’ve written six columns for Spectator this semester. That’s, give or take, about 6,000 words. I believe, very strongly, that those 6,000 words are the only meaningful writing I’ve done since since August.

As the semester begins to wrap up, assignments and papers from the gazillion classes you take have probably begun to pile up on that never ending to-do list. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

I first saw Liam Cloud slouching across the room from me in U.S. History junior year. It was my first day at a new high school in Virginia, almost 500 miles from the town where I’d grown up. Liam was wearing black from head to toe, and told the teacher during roll call that he’d like to go by “Cloud.” That day, I learned that like me, Liam had grown up in New England. We both felt out of place on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line.

First, do no harm.