Memories tagged “Culture”

A Book by Lionel Trilling I was an MA then – a PhD student in the 1950s. One book of special importance to me was The Liberal Imagination, as amplified in several of the courses Lionel Trilling taught during my...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1962

A Happy Baby at Columbia It’s funny I’ve been asked this question as I was just thinking of it the other day. My favorite place to relax on campus, and I did it A LOT, was at the…(can’t remember the...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1991

A Mole My favorite teacher at the GSAPP was Richard Plunz, whose role at the time was akin to that of a mole. He dug deep into architectural history and politics at a time when it was much more fashionable...

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1986

A Perfect Match Made in the Dormitory Back in 1960, the Carman Hall dormitory had just opened and was still known as New Hall. The college and the dormitories were all male and the rules did not allow unchaperoned women...

Columbia College 1964, College of Physicians and Surgeons 1968

A Season in Ruggles I arrived at Columbia in September of 1971. My room was in Ruggles Hall, behind John Jay Hall, across 114th St. from Butler Library. I had contracted for the cheapest room available. It was 9 feet...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1980

A Sensitive Topic While studying anthropology at Columbia University I learned to think. In the late 1960’s remarkable human beings such as Joan Vincent, Abraham Rosman, Marvin Harris, Margaret Mead, and other smart, bold, kind, and devoted men and women...

School of General Studies 1970

Acorns and Tai Chi I have a few Furnald stories. I remember once making my bed late one morning and finding an acorn in the sheets. Thinking nothing more than, “That’s weird,” I threw it out the window and shut...

Columbia College 1990

Art Reflections I planned my class schedule to have Fridays free to visit art gallleries with my friend Cecilia, who was in the MFA program. Pieces that were affordable then are selling in the millions today.

School of Social Work 1973

Arts While at Columbia A long time ago, the physical therapy degree program was all-consuming, with classes at 168th Street and internships all over NYC, but I found a few hours, once in a while, to enjoy the arts in...

Program in Physical Therapy 1958

Artsy Experience So, I was trudging through the MoMA looking for the assigned works of art for Art Humanities, preparing for the final. As best I remember, the only bench in the whole museum was in front of Guernica, which...

Columbia College 1966

As La Rosita Goes, So Goes Morningside Heights I arrived on Manhattan’s Morningside Heights 27 years ago, a Baltimore suburbanite with little experience of urban living. I immediately fell in love with the place, embracing its grunginess with much enthusiasm....

Columbia College 1983

Back to “Seven Storey Mountain” This will be brief. Some time at Columbia (two years at Barnard), around 1944-46, I became acquainted with the writings of Thomas Merton. I read “The Seven Storey Mountain” and particularly enjoyed his recollections of...

Teachers College 1959, School of Nursing 1949

Best Lecture The best lectures I had at Columbia–among many competitors–may well have been Richard Wollheim’s aesthetics lectures, in which he walked us rather philosophically naive undergraduates through his own theory of criteria for the identity of artworks. He was...

Columbia College 1986

Best Library Moment Sophomore year I was living with my ex-girlfriend and my best friend, Vince, in a 3-person suite in East Campus. It was close to mid-terms, and the tension in the suite was rising as exams got closer....

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1990

Best Teacher Ever As an impressionable young freshman in 1979, I had the distinct pleasure of attending Joseph Bauke’s CC class. It was more than a class. It was a wake-up call to what higher thinking was all about. We...

Columbia College 1983, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1986

Blasting Through the Core When I began my jouney through the CC Core, I was a student raised amid urban gang warfare in East Harlem. I responded with enthusiasm to the journey I undertook in the Core and subsequent classes,...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1962, Columbia College 1959

Bookish 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 what...

Columbia College 1993, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2005

Boucher and Brecht As a student in Arts Humanities, I was sent out to compare a couple of paintings, one by Boucher, at the Frick Collection. As I stood studying the work, in front of the ornately upholstered chair that...

Columbia College 1958

Calling Cambridge One day in the late 1960s the folks in Carman Hall, Suite 604–the suite right behind the open area in front of the elevators–got a private phone connected. Later that day someone came to use the campus phone,...

Columbia College 1969

Clean & Sober Graduation My graduation was an unforgettable moment: I sat amongst the thousands in a sea of light blue cap and gowns. I had completed my three-year M.F.A. degree in Directing at Columbia’s School of the Arts. The...

School of the Arts 1990

Closing Broadway The Columbia football team was fighting a four-year losing streak. The joke was they should play Macalaster (a college in my home town, St. Paul, MN), the other (much smaller) college with the four-year losing streak. I missed...

Graduate School of Business 1998, Barnard College 1991

Columbia Books to Live By Many books from my Columbia days have had profound impact on my appreciation of Western and Eastern civilization and on my worldview. One of these was a book from Professor Robert Thurman’s class, Buddhist Ethics,...

Columbia College 1990

Columbia Universtiy and Orhan Pamuk Columbia University and Orhan Pamuk October 24, 2006 Columbia Universtiy in New York City became home to two new Nobel Laureates early in October this year when Prof. Edmund Phelps won the prize in economic...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1964, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1970

Compare and Contrast I was a sophomore, taking the Art Humanities course, and had little prior exposure to great paintings. Halfway through the semester, we were assigned papers and given an instruction sheet. The sheet gave us some points to...

Columbia College 1966

Dormitories then, apartments now Furnald, in the early 1960’s, had the wood panelling, the fireplace, the overstuffed lounge chairs, and the red brick elegance of McKim, Mead, and White, along with a view of resident comfort which is absolutely stark...

Columbia College 1966

Dormitory Life After a period of commuting, my parents changed our apartment and my brother opened a dental office in my bedroom. It was a good reason to move into the dormitory. I shared my room with a classmate who...

Columbia College 1951

Encountering Lionel Trilling When I entered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, then known as the Faculty of Philosophy, I registered in Lionel Trilling’s course in American Literature. And I came to read The Liberal Imagination, which was published...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1951

Experimental Art at Prentis Hall One memory sticks out beyond others in my Columbia experience: a series of crazed, semi-unofficial parties in Prentis Hall on 125th St. Home to Columbia’s world-class computer music center as well as the industrial sculpture...

Columbia College 1995

Facilities Manager I spent my first and only summer on campus after completing my freshman year. I had decided not to return to Cleveland, so as to avoid working in the mall or at a restaurant waiting tables. Of course,...

Columbia College 1998

Farewell to Student Life It’s one of my definitive memories of graduate school. I’d been struggling for a week to complete my final master’s essay to get my M.A. in English (as a part-time student, I had always intended for...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1988, School of General Studies 1985

Favorite Place (Not) to Study My favorite place to relax was the gardens at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. I would bring my books along to seek some solace in the serene greenery of the gardens, the occasional...

Columbia College 1990

Finding Columbia University In Bulgaria It is strange how going to an art museum in Sofia, Bulgaria makes one think of Columbia’s Henry Krumb School of Mines…. I have been coming to Bulgaria for almost 20 years. The late Prof....

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1973

First Mother at the J-School Can youthful dreams come true? In my case, yes. When I was a student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, I heard of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and dreamed of going there. But...

Graduate School of Journalism 1960

Fluffy Little Clouds . . . So I’m living in Furnald Hall during my sophomore through senior years (which was a feat in itself, since everyone seemed to want the large rooms in Furnald!) between 1989-1992, and typically had a...

Columbia College 1992

Frankenstein Plus My junior year, I took a course in Gothic Literature. I was trying to save money on books and discovered that many of the novels we were reading were available in Butler – and nobody else seemed to...

Columbia College 1992

Freshman Week Hosting: Opening a Door At the start of my senior year, my Freshman Week host duties mainly involved meeting each night with several dozen fresh-faced denizens of an upper floor of Carman Hall. At 11:30 p.m. they were...

Columbia College 1972, School of Law 1977

Graduation Memory After my ceremony, we went somewhere to get the envelope with our diplomas. When I opened mine, there was no diploma, only a bill for a library fine. For a book I had returned and for which I...

Columbia College 1966

Great Mind In your My Columbia section, you asked what book, read while I was at Columbia, had the most influence on me. When I read Plato’s Republic (the dicourse on Justice), I realised I was in contact with one...

School of General Studies 1965

History 10 Professor Bernhardt was teaching the second course in the basic American history course, which I loved with a passion. He assigned the students to write book reviews, and mine was James McGregor Burns’s (I hope I have this...

School of General Studies 1960

Intellectual Honesty “The best lecture I ever heard at Columbia.” That stopped me in my tracks. I heard so many good ones, so many entertaining ones, even several that I remember in detail. Names crowd in, names of faculty and...

Columbia College 1972, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974

Ivy and Sherlock Arriving at Columbia from the south, I was curious about what “Ivy” might mean to me day-to-day. One thing I noticed quickly was that searches for referenced papers and books were essentially always successful. I considered it,...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1961

John Zorn at Miller 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, even...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2002

Junior Year Abroad in Rome “What are you going to DO with it?” is a question all Latin majors hear a hundred times. All I can reply is, at age 56, I’m gainfully employed and have never missed a meal....

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1971, Columbia College 1970

Krum Elbow The part of the Columbia campus that I most enjoy remembering was the Columbia boathouse at Krum Elbow. It was, it seems, inaccessible by land, sited in an isolated rural area across the Hudson river from Poughkeepsie. The...

Columbia College 1950

Laundry Here’s a glamorous and exciting memory. When I think of relaxing on Saturday night at Columbia, I remember doing my laundry and then watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on the TV in John Jay. (It was the only...

Columbia College 1977

“Little Mermaid Message” Sorry to quote myself, but I did like my short simple introduction to my mom’s message, which i sent to Jeff Rake, who sent it to ten people, who sent it to ten people, and so on...

Columbia College 1990

Look Up My spiritual experience at Columbia was, in a word: awful. Before becoming a student at Columbia I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. I grew up in Huntington, Long Island, New York. This was a great...

School of General Studies 1978

Memorable Lecture In my 1939 freshman chemistry class, Professor Urey came into the class to tell us about the discovery of the neutron, which was not yet in our chemistry book.

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1939

Mr. Stade The guy was tall, lean and looked a little seedy. His walk seemed a cocky amble. His face took on aspects of pain, fatalism and bemusement. His hair seemed more a perverse steel brush with long bristles than...

Columbia College 1967

My “Artsy” Experience In my 7 years at Columbia, my “artsy” experience both on and off campus was significant. On campus, I had a memorable classes in art history, music and in Shakespeare. I also took a class in textile...

Graduate School of Business 1974, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1971

My Best Teacher Even though it has been over 50 years since I was graduated from Columbia College, it took me less than a split second to come up with my “best teacher” nomination: Professor Boris Stanfield. Why? More than...

Columbia College 1955

My Favorite Campus My favorite times to hang out on the Columbia campus were in the summers. From the times when the South Field was slippery with the dew of the humid mornings to the times when the night sky...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

My Favorite Game That I Saw at Columbia In the late 1940s, Columbia played Army in football at Baker Field. Army had a formidable team and was expected to make quick work of Columbia. Army also had two teams, I...

Columbia College 1950

my favorite text book While at Columbia we used Richard Courant’s “Differential and Integral Calculus.” It’s been my constant companion for forty years. I taught mathematics for twenty years and never found a textbook comparable. Unfortunately it went out of...

School of General Studies 1954

My First Day Commuting to Columbia My life is now a fast paced blur of events as I run though the treadmill of life with work, family, and the kids, however, first memories of Columbia are still sharp and forever...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1989

My Hang Time at CU Hang time at Columbia was the best. The swim center was a real favorite of mine–both the old pool and new. We used to have green towel chips…I wonder if they are still in use?...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1983

My Strangest Library Experience 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. I...

School of General Studies 2003

Noise One of the courses I took for my Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering (1972) was called Noise and Random Processes. The text was titled Noise. On my bookshelf in my office at work, this book always elicited questions from...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1972

Oddly Collegial In the fall of 1986 I somewhat reluctantly entered the School of Library Service. In the five years since graduating college, I had considered law, theater, journalism, wildlife ecology and clown school. I’d worked in libraries through college...

School of Library Service 1987

On Broadway 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 free...

School of General Studies 2003

Opera in Hartley Hall My sophomore Arts Humanities professor described van Gogh as “passion nearly out of control.” I took that line to bed with me in my Hartley dorm and had the following dream: I’m on the stage of...

Columbia College 1961

Painting a Picture Is the First Step 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 in...

School of International and Public Affairs 2003

Playing Hooky Led to My Most Artsy Experience! During my graduate student days in philosphy, I took a course taught by Professors Ernest Nagel and Thomas Merton on the Sociology of Science. There I met someone who was older and...

Columbia College 1962

Quantify it Joe! My favorite person at Columbia was Professor Arthur Pollister, with whom I took Histology and Quantitative Cytology. I also worked for Dr. Pollister in my senior year as a lab preparator for Histology, and I took care...

Columbia College 1964

Religious Life as an Undergraduate As an undergraduate (1954-58) I went to services, including a few at St. Paul’s (at one, Billy Graham waved his gilt-edged Bible and impressed my friends who were interested in theater), some at Union Seminary’s...

Columbia College 1958

Satisfaction My most memorable day at Columbia was not marching with thousands down Seventh Avenue, “Grease under the Stars” with Sha Na Na, the penthouse Hollywood party I tended as a member of Columbia Student Bartenders, or even getting knocked...

School of General Studies 1972

Securing a Seat at Commencement 1980 Desmond Tutu was to have been the Commencement speaker in 1980, but he was unavoidably detained, apparently assisting the police with their inquiries back in South Africa. I forget who spoke in his place....

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1980

September 12, 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. The...

School of the Arts 2001

Serendipity “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 alumni...

Columbia College 2004

Shivering at Columbia 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 hoped...

Columbia College 2003

Shut Up and Listen to Yourself 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 called...

School of Social Work 2000

So THAT’S What Life Is About! I came to Columbia largely sheltered from the real world, with little experience other than sitting on a stoop with my friends or immersing myself in books. As a freshman, I was assigned to...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1956, Columbia College 1954

So What I remember in ‘78 and ‘79 going regularly to hear the Columbia group “So What” playing at Carman. I thought they were the coolest guys on campus – cooler than the Count Basie guys at the West End....

Columbia College 1979

Sophomore Sweetheart Dance One of the dippiest things and one of the funniest things I ever heard at Columbia did not take place in a classroom. It took place at the Sophomore Sweetheart Dance. Our class had not one, but...

Columbia College 1959

Spirituality During My Years at Columbia At the ripe old age of “over 40,” I began my long term full-time graduate work at TC in 1991. That work was the culmination of a lifelong dream to attend Columbia. Early on...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1997, Teachers College 1993

Starving Artist I expected to graduate in December 1976, but was called into the Assistant Dean’s office. “The Regents are not going to change the rules for you, do you understand?” “What is he talking about,” I thought, sitting quietly...

School of General Studies 1977

Staying Warm 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 days...

School of Dental and Oral Surgery 2004

Strange Library In 1958, I was taking American History with Prof. Henry Graff. He assigned a term paper, which I decided to do on one of my favorite characters, Tom Paine. I went to the library to read “Common Sense,”...

Columbia College 1960

Stretch & Bobbito Moving from my hometown, Wheeling, West Virginia, to Manhattan to attend Columbia was an eye-opener in innumerable ways. But more than anything, it was the music that made me glad I had made the journey. During my...

Columbia College 1998

Studying Spirituality I took a course at Barnard in 1983 called “Religious Ritual”–because I was personally interested in the subject and because I had heard of Elaine Pagels, who normally taught it. Unfortunately, she left Columbia just before the course...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1989, School of General Studies 1984

Succinct as Could Be During freshman week we attended several lectures. The one that stayed with me and which I passed on to my children (Michele ‘86C, Benjamin ‘91C) is that of the late Harry Coleman. He said to us,...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1958

Summer in the City The celebration of graduation by law students is always just a little muted. In the back of your mind is always the dreaded bar exam. Columbia provided a fine legal education. I learned to “think like...

Graduate School of Journalism 1972, School of Law 1976

Talking Back to the TV (and the Movies at the Nemo) I lived on the ninth floor of Livingston Hall in my freshman year (1958-59) and on the second floor for a few months at the start of my sophomore...

Columbia College 1962

Thank You Ford Hall I was ecstatic when I was accepted into the Fall 1985 class of Arts Administration students studying for MFA degrees in the School of the Arts. The only problem–no on campus housing available for students who...

School of the Arts 1988

The Anabaptist Vision One of the more momentous, though still little-known, lectures ever given at Columbia was delivered by Harold S. Bender on December 28, 1943, in the Men’s Faculty Club. The occasion was the annual meeting of the American...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1980

The Closing of the Ring Although I am now a New Yorker again, I have lived and worked on six of the seven continents. I was a commuter, a subway student, for the first three years of my Columbia experience...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1950

The Everlasting Year I arrived at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in Sept. of 1967 from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was a year of many firsts for me: my first time in New York, my first subway ride,...

Graduate School of Journalism 1967

The Phone Call from Yogi In April of 1964, I was a freshman baseball player at Columbia who, in February, had been named the receipient of the Yogi Berra scholarship. However, it took several phone calls from the New York...

Columbia College 1967

The Sexy Manuscripts 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 to...

Graduate School of Business 1967, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1958, Graduate School of Journalism 2002

Things I Wish I’d Known–Making the Most of Columbia 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 I...

Columbia College 2003

Timeless Meaning The rigors of the Core Curriculum saw to it that I read what seemed like an infinite number of pages of the collective wisdom of Western Civilization. Unfortunately, I have a far greater appreciation for that now than...

Columbia College 1993

Visiting Art Galleries as an Undergraduate Columbia College in the City of New York was the way it was put to us. New York City is a great resource for Columbia students, and as a college student majoring in art...

Columbia College 1963

What Is Art? 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 in...

School of the Arts 2000

What New York Had That Warmed Me Most 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 bus,...

School of General Studies 2002

When Fruit Fly Genetics Only Cost a Nickel Though I could not attend the Columbia 250th Anniversary celebration, I do want to express my appreciation for all that Columbia has meant to me over the years. In 1936-7 I was...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1937

Winter in NYC My home city, Louisville, while being in the state of Kentucky, is not a part of the “sunny south.” However, I was somewhat concerned about spending the winter of 1980-81 in New York City. I had visions...

Graduate School of Journalism 1981