All memories from graduates in the 2000s.
My favorite teacher while I was an undergrad at Columbia is Carol Dweck, because I used her course materials (for her course in personality development psychology) when I later became a teacher after graduation!
Columbia College 2000
With an MS in Clinical Therapy, many might think I have strayed from the path. With a series of Anti-Self help books (Shut Up! And Listen To Yourself, Vinnings Press), I have been...
School of Social Work 2000
During my one and only summer vacation at Columbia (I only attended graduate school at Columbia), I took an internship working with the Central Park Conservancy. The internship involved cleaning, patinating, and waxing all of...
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 2000
Thomas Roma, even though he wouldn’t know my name, was by far the best teacher that I had during my tenure at Columbia. I spent five years in the school of the Arts doing my MFA...
School of the Arts 2000
When I hear someone say “I wish I were in 21 again; life was so easy,” I always respond: “You can take 19-23. I’ll stay who I am now!”
I came to Columbia-SEAS at...
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 2001
I was in my apartment, one block from Ground Zero, when two planes destroyed my neighborhood. My husband and I (who, incidentally, had gotten married in Columbia’s Chapel) walked uptown seven miles to his mother’s house....
School of the Arts 2001
The first thing I heard when I stepped into my suite at Carman Hall was the album Stakes Is High by De La Soul. The last thing I heard at Columbia,...
Columbia College 2001
When I was an undergrad, a lot of my mental energy, maybe too much of it, was expended in search of the perfect place to study. As an easily distracted student, I was always looking for...
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2001, Columbia College 1998
Ah, the memories of freshman year on Carman 10. We were an eclectic group of athletes and computer geeks. East coast sophisticates and west coast bunnies. There were econ majors and philosophy minors....
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 2001, Columbia College 1998
What I remember most about my first Columbia winter was how it stopped me in my tracks. Spring break 1993 became “stay-in-the-dorm, give up on travel, and sleep” time. But it fulfilled all those magical...
Columbia College 1996, Graduate School of Journalism 2001
It was a cold, rainy day in Novemebr. I stood at the corner of 115th, heading to noon Mass at Notre Dame church. My cell phone rang. I answered it. A woman from DCFS was calling asking about...
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2002
I don’t remember who wrote it, but it always made me laugh when I saw the posters for the Bad Poetry Contest with the previous year’s winning poem. I can’t remember the title, but it was...
Columbia College 2002
I was only a senior in high school, visiting my future alma mater. It was pouring, but the steps were packed with black umbrellas and plastic ponchos. And there was Busta Rhymes jamming in front of...
Amidst graduate seminars at the Casa Hispanica, Teachers College, and SIPA, I worked at Community Impact’s adult education program where I supervised Columbia volunteers in ESL classes in Washington Heights, taught ESL and Spanish GED Social Studies. It’s...
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2002, School of International and Public Affairs 2002, Teachers College 2002
Religion, spirituality and the Columbia EMBA program are words few string together. Ironically, a humbling realization of the dedication and unimaginable sacrifices made by program participants and educators alike, in retrospect, has brought me profound clarity. The...
Graduate School of Business 2002
I identify as Protestant and was very happy to find an event entitled GradPraise during my first week at Columbia. GradPraise turned out to be a meeting that occurred each semester and involved students from all...
School of Social Work 2002
All our states of elevations
They lead to our creations
They’re a festival of life
In which we show appreciation
But if we live for elevations
That come from our creations
Our lives move back on the...
School of General Studies 2002
3 months before graduation, I was stressed out and worried. The only college I wanted to attend still hadn’t gotten back to me. Then early one Saturday morning, my 13 year old brother threw a gigantic UPS...
I completed my degree in 2002, but spent most of my Columbia experience at the university in the mid-70s. Air-conditioning was not a ubiquitous pleasure then, and finding a cool and quiet place to study...
One of the coolest art experiences that I had while at Columbia was seeing John Zorn at Miller Theatre. I had heard some CDs of his, so I was ready to hear some far-out music,...
It was painfully obvious from the first day that I met my first-year roommate that we were different. She had a shaved head, had piercings and tatoos all over, and drank out of...
Barnard College 1998, School of Public Health 2002
When my play (which was actually my writing/directing thesis at Columbia in 2002) was being produced in the Upper West Side, Liz Gill Neilson, my college roommate in Watt, invited me to be her roommate...
I was studying in Russia when I got the news that I and my friends had managed to snatch a suite in Hogan Hall. Ah Hogan, the King of Dorms and lucky Seniors’ pride! My own...
It was back in 1957, when I was on campus taking my MS in Mechanical Engineering. I had some time between classes and decided to explore Butler Library from top to bottom.
I took an elevator...
Graduate School of Business 1967, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1958, Graduate School of Journalism 2002
My husband Daniel Lifton and I, May Yamada-Lifton, went with a series of Business School grads in 2002 to a wedding in Turkey of another CBS grad, Ralf Elhadef. It was a Sephardic Jewish wedding on...
I live in Ohio’s snowbelt, now. In my memory, New York, with streets on which the snow seemed to melt like magic, was warmth itself. All fall, I loved taking the...
86 square feet. There is really no way to understand the true meaning of the size without spending a year in my sophmore-year dorm room. During...
September 11, 2001 will go down in American history as one of its most tragic days. But despite the all the horrors witnessed, the tears shed, and the fears we felt that day, I witnessed a moment that...
Columbia College 2003
“Define ‘American,’” Jai said. “Why do many of you call yourselves ‘American’ and not something else?” A few people tried the easy way out of tautology: “A citizen of the U.S. is...
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 2003
One of the highlights of my Columbia housing experience was sophomore year when an acquaintance from a Barnard linguistics class asked if I would be interested in joining a Japanese special-interest house. I had just started...
As I put myself through Columbia via loans, work, and other forms of “creative financing,”* I had relatively limited resources with which to keep myself warm during the long, cold, and dark...
School of General Studies 2003
I began my Columbia tutelage on John Jay 11, room 1127, to be exact. I will always remember move-in day - maneuvering those bulky, orange moving bins from the elevator to my little slice of Columbia....
It was a cold February afternoon. Actually, as all Columbians know, there are few February afternoons around campus that are anything but cold. So it’s probably sufficient to say that it was a February afternoon.
My most “artsy experience” was in the summer before my senior year, when I ended up taking a class called “The New York Theater Experience.” I was hoping that it would be an easy way to see...
I was entering the second year of the Master’s program at SIPA when my life was suddenly changed - once and forever.
During the summer, my internship brought me to Africa. Sitting...
School of International and Public Affairs 2003
The teachers at CBS - and especially those from professional practice - had such a profound realistic idealism. They encouraged us to dream, but encouraged us to perform our due diligence as well. These professors taught us the...
Graduate School of Business 2003
Arriving at JFK in January of my first year at Columbia, just back from the winter holidays, the flight attendant announced that it was -35 degrees with the wind chill in New York. At first, I...
I still vividly remember the freezing November morning that I spent on the steps in front of Alma Mater. It was around 4 a.m., and we were still working at Avery Hall, researching and designing. By 5...
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 2003
After a once-in-a-decade snowstorm in the heart of New York, my teammates and I decided (brilliantly, I might add) to venture with our ski gear out to the Low library steps. After all, we...
I spent two summers taking classes on campus: the first time, between my 2nd and 3rd years, so that I could spend the following fall in Paris and still complete my two majors; the second...
Columbia College 1999, School of Law 2003
My study abroad experience in the Middle East can be divided into three phases: The “Wow - look at the pyramids!” phase; the...
Overall, I’ve found my Columbia education – liberal arts impracticality and all – to be invaluable. I look at a movie, a building, a worm dying on the ground and...
My first winter at Columbia was a big shock to my system. I was a Freshman all the way from Texas, and had absolutely no idea what I was in for. I was...
Columbia College 2004
Strokes - Is This It
Blackstar - This Is Blackstar
Steinski - Nothing to Fear
Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow
Black Eyed Peas - Empire
The Band - Last Waltz
Bob Dylan - Highway 61
Spoon...
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 2004
I am the only college-degree holder in my family. Having battled the odds at an early age, I broke away from traditions and customs and managed to get into one of the best institutions in the...
School of General Studies 2004
Conversation on late October night outside Alpha Delta Phi brownstone on 114th St., between fraternity member and NYPD officer:
Cop: We’ve been getting noise complaints from neighbors about the band playing upstairs. It’s time for...
Coming from Chicago, I was pleasantly surprised at the mildish winters in NY. It got cold, but not the bitter icy winds of the midwest. The best part was that when it actually snowed,...
During my junior year (Spring 2003), I left for what would eventually become a life changing experience. I had originally been scheduled to study in South Africa, but at the suggestion of a couple of friends,...
Ask Class of 2004 residents of the seventh floor of John Jay Hall about JJ7 and a wry smile will quickly adorn their faces. JJ7, as we affectionately called it, was our introduction to Columbia–and...
Columbia College 2004, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 2004
In the architecture program, everybody has to stay up late to meet impossible deadlines. The result of that is a bond among fellow students that makes the studio atmosphere so unique. You spend every...
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 2004
New York City is known for its diversity in people, places, and styles. When moving here, after growing up in a small town in the midwest, I thought that learning about all the different ways of life...
“Perhaps this is old news but I heard the West End was at last closed down. V&T’s is still around, I hope? And what of the Hungarian Pastry shop next to it?”
I received this question through an...
My semester at Reid Hall in Paris seems like a fog, with twinges of red wine and cafe cremes. The short five months blur together in my memory. All that remains are fleeting images of dinners...
The soundtrack of my Columbia experience was definitely country music, which is strange considering NYC doesn’t have a single 24-hour country music radio station. As an intern and then host of the 40s...
A daily endeavor in the New York winters. Layering…that was the key. Hopefully, the snow was new or maybe if I was lucky there would be no snow at all. Because if it was one of those...
School of Dental and Oral Surgery 2004
1am on a weeknight will find most working people either asleep, preparing to go to sleep, or wanting to go to sleep. For the people of John Jay 7 it was different: 1am...
Columbia’s reputed “traditional” core curriculum was one of the things that drew me to the school. Throughout Lit Hum and CC, I fully appreciated that we were engaging with texts that...
The book that meant the most to me would probably be Boccaccio’s Decameron. It was the only book that I actually read from cover to cover in Lit-Hum (which was also the only time I read more than...
Columbia College 1993, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2005
In my Contemporary Civilization class, a student interrupted the professor’s train of thought:
Professor: So, reading Rousseau, we have to ask ourselves, what is the state of freedom like?
Student: New Hampshire?
Columbia College 2005
During my summer vacations at Columbia, I tried to do anything that would be good for my future career. But since my goals changed every summer, I wound up doing something different each time. After my...
My strangest and possibly my fondest memory in the Columbia library took place late one night during the cold month of February. I was studying in the large room in the back for my orgo test the...
It was an early spring-like Saturday morning in the fall of ‘04. I was brand new to June Cross’s news reporting seminar. I had always heard stories...
Graduate School of Journalism 2005
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my beloved Columbia University.
I was drawn to share my anecdote when I read the question, “What’s your favorite part of campus?”
I started thinking.
As a...
Columbia has a beautiful campus. In particular, the view from the windows of the East Asian Library looking out at night onto the lighted trees in winter is breathtaking.
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2005, School of General Studies 2002
I have fond memories of morning coffee on the back porch of the Monell Building for international climate research at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). On one occasion, I spent a few moments with two...
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 2005
At Columbia, when you have an hour and a half before your next seminar, there is always a place to go. I imagine Universities–of Nebraska or Main or Iowa or New Mexico–and think their “places to...
School of the Arts 2006
To me, Columbia is most beautiful at 7:30 in the morning. During my time at Columbia, I spent many a weekday morning up at 7 to get to some Manhattan internship by 8:15 am....
Columbia College 2006
The best Columbia sports moment I ever saw was Lion football beating Princeton at the Tigers’ homecoming in 2003. It was the Lions’ first victory at Princeton since the Truman administration, I think. Last second, long...
Several of my undergraduate friends, including people I lived with Freshman year in John Jay 15, will be attending my Phoenix wedding. Guests include Veru Narula, Dimitri Christopolous and Rasheq Zarif. I am currently a...
Graduate School of Business 2007, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 2003
David won’t read Howl
But what does he know
He never piled up papers and spun
His head the way I do
He says he’s gone this long without
Reading Howl, he’s not just gonna
School of General Studies 2007
If I could relive one day in my experience at Columbia it would be a day in February 2003 when school was cancelled because of a heavy snow storm. I think the central campus was more active...
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2007
