Memories tagged “Study spots”

50th Class Reunion On May 18-19, 1999, the Class of 1949 celebrated our 50th graduation ceremony. On May 18, 1999, I was nominated to give out the 1999 graduation pins to all the seniors of the graduating class of 1999...

Columbia College 1999

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 New Life I was newly married and starting my studies at the graduate school of library service. Every day I took the bus and the subway from NJ, and stopped at the old Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee shop...

School of Library Service 1978

A Perfect Columbia Day Of all the days that linger in my memory, one from my graduate study at Columbia stands out in particular. It was my doctoral defense with visiting professors from Michigan, Yale and Columbia P&S. I could...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1974

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

Abroad in Kenya The early 90s were somewhat charged with cross-cultural issues, accentuated by the Audubon Ballroom construction plans. I had decided a year before, as a wise fool, that I would take the rural south head-on through Teach for...

Columbia College 1994

Advice to Myself To an entering freshman who did not grow up in New York City, I would strongly advise him/her to set aside one evening a week and one Saturday or Sunday a month to explore Manhattan. A Sunday...

Columbia College 1954

AN ORIGINAL SAM Some of you will remember Sam. When I arrived at Columbia after the spring 1970 riots, he was sitting on Low Library steps or at the Broadway Gate selling his color abstracts. They were always of fanciful...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1972

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

Beautiful Site Although many of the gardens on campus are lovely throughout the year, my family and I especially appreciate the beds of Columbia Blue iris that bloom just once each year around the base of Low Library. A long...

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1990

Before a Seminar 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 go”...

School of the Arts 2006

Best Lecture in College Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor, taught a class on Freud in the early 70s. Gaylin was animated, brilliant, accessible, and captivated a huge room full of students for two hours a week. I usually...

Columbia College 1973, Graduate School of Journalism 1976

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

Bomb Squad In the 1960s I worked in the Special Collections section of Butler Library while going to school at Columbia. We received a gift of many films reels from the estate of Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, etc.)....

School of Library Service 1970, School of General Studies 1968

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

Boy Meets 616 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 studying...

Columbia College 2003

Breaking the Tension in Low It was during the days of the Ethnic Studies protests in April 1996. Students had entered Low Library to lend support to negotiators meeting with administrators–but President Rupp took umbrage, and would not meet until...

Columbia College 1996

Busta Rhymes Concert 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 us....

Columbia College 2002

Club Law at Our Apartment Lee Feldshon, my roomie in 1993-94, was in the Law School. He had it all–smart, dashing, etc. He had a great Law School party for the whole class, it seemed like, near the end of...

Graduate School of Journalism 1994

Columbia and Motherhood 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 world....

School of General Studies 2004

Columbia Graffiti, 1966 Graffiti found on Columbia study desks (circa 1966): Liszt was a beast but Nietzsche was peachy. Immanuel Kant but Genghis Khan. Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1969

Columbia Spirituality: Buddhism As a Theravada Buddhist by family tradition, I arrived at Columbia with a cultural exposure to layperson Buddhist practice, as well as a superficial understanding acquired through the excuse of getting out of bible study class at...

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

Convolution I was introduced to the mathematical operation of “convolution” as an aspiring EE (Electrical Engineering) student in an Electromagenetics course taught by a professor already named in these archives by someone else. Now, I wanted to be a “practicing/practical”...

School of General Studies 1990

Coping with Winter at Columbia No problemo.* I commuted from home on Long Island while getting my masters at Columbia. Never outside for more than a minute - from house to car, from car to LIRR station - from subway...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1960

CU through a Newcomer’s Eyes For most people, the image of giant steel gates evoke terrifying feelings of confinement. When I first walked through the gates of Columbia University, I was overpowered with a completely different emotion. For the first...

Columbia College 1998

De-stressing I remember many great times being at Columbia’s schools of social work and public health. The one memory that was “therapeutic” was the time when I just finished all of my exams from S.W. I had so much energy...

School of Social Work 1977, School of Public Health 1980

Documents to the People In April 1968, the turmoil on campus led the University to close Butler Library. The Library School was on the top floor of Butler. With the library closed, we were unable to attend classes. A group...

School of Library Service 1968

Dorm Life It was a warm, beautiful, late-spring day, and we were studying for finals. As I looked out of my Livingston Hall 2nd floor window, a pretty co-ed walking by caught my eye. I yelled a hello to her....

Columbia College 1958

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

Dozed Off In the 1960s I worked in Special Collections in Butler Library. We had a room called the Papyrology and Epigraphy collection where we stored the ancient texts. One afternoon, we let in and locked inside the room a...

School of General Studies 1968, School of Library Service 1970

Eclipse I think it was in 1972 that we had an eclipse of the sun (an astronomer could check this). I was studying upstairs in Butler Library where the old SLS (now defunct!) used to be, looking out across the...

School of Library Service 1973

Faith in studying 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 of...

School of Social Work 2002

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

Favorite Place to Study My favorite place to study for second semester exams was in front of the library, on the grass. There was beautiful music always playing over a loud speaker. The weather was wonderful after the cold winter....

School of Dental and Oral Surgery 1961

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

Frank: Learning to Love “Frank” was the grumpiest old man I’d ever met. He was a pillar of the church at Broadway Presbyterian down on 114th St, and his face often reflected it: a perpetual frown carved in stone. He...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1974

Ghana Be Good 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, I...

Columbia College 2004

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

GS Hangout During the late 60’s and early 70’s, a group of about 10 of us from GS, along with a few grad students, used to hang out regularly at the West End bar. There was a long banquette that...

School of General Studies 1973

Hang Time - Learning in the Lab When I went to Columbia, my favorite place to study was the lounges in what was then the new science building attached to the Engineering building. The building was relatively new and no...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1982

Hang Time One of my favorite places to hang/study was the Hungarian bakery a couple of doors down from V&T’s Pizza. I eventually found the right balance of caffeine and sugar to keep me sharp while working through the Core...

Columbia College 1993

“He Had a Moustache” The year before I saw him again–in the Columbia library–we had been students together in Dr. Schwartz’s Social Work “Group” class. He sat next to me, told me jokes and helped me get through the class...

School of Social Work 1975

Heart of a Campus I arrived at Columbia as a graduate student in the fall of 1963. Though I’d visited New York a number of times, I hadn’t really experienced life in a big city and certainly not life on...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1965, School of Library Service 1975

Hiding in the Stacks 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 might...

School of General Studies 2002

Hungarian Pastry Shop The Hungarian Pastry Shop was my place to study and relax. The comfort of exquisite pastries and refillable coffee mugs with a quality of coffee ahead of its time took you from ecstasy to a riveted concentration...

Teachers College 1981, Columbia College 1973

If I Could Find the Time to Hang Out… I din’t have much time to hang out when I was at CU. My studies were demanding (one year in journalism, followed by one year in SIPA, two master’s degrees squeezed...

School of International and Public Affairs 1993, Graduate School of Journalism 1992

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

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

Life in NYC Sometime in the fall of 1969 during my graduate school attendance at GSAS, I came across graffiti scrawled in the men’s room of Butler Library pleading “Free the New York 8 million.” As a lifelong resident of...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1969

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

Love of Cities Attending Columbia ignited my love of cities. I grew up and attended architecture school in suburbia, with only periodic ventures into any nearby city. Moving to 113th Street and immersing myself in the preservation program was a...

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1995

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 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

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

Opus Dei at Columbia I was intrigued that you would want to know about our religious experiences. During my four years there, I remember Columbia University feeling like the most God-forsaken patch of pagan indifference on the planet. Perhaps I...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1976

Orgo Night When I was a freshman at Columbia, I worked late hours at the reserve desk. I happened to be on duty the night before the Organic Chemistry final. I now know that there was (is?) a tradition for...

Columbia College 1992

Oxford Days I had a wonderful oportunity to take part in an Oxford summer study program while a junior at Columbia. Studying along with British and other American students in such a classic setting was memorable. I rememebr with great...

Columbia College 1989

Planning a Life In 1956, Joni, my recently-departed beloved, and I began planning our life late at night on the steps of Low Memorial Library. From time to time we would stay late enough to get nudged by security. Later,...

Columbia College 1960, Graduate School of Business 1992, School of Public Health 1993

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

Show Time 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 following...

Columbia College 2005

Ski Jump on Low Steps 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 weren’t...

Columbia College 2003

Snooze I used to love the Architecture library as it had particularly comfortable easy chairs to take a snooze in between classes, since I had an early class on Tuesdays and a huge chunk of downtime until the next one....

School of General Studies 1990

Snowed In 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 that...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2007

Sound from the Depths of Philosophy I had come to Columbia in 1950 on a research fellowship in the Electrical Engineering Dept. My sponsor was Prof. Harvey Fletcher, who had recently retired as director of research at Bell Labs. He...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1959, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 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

Staying Alive In the spring of 1965, finding myself drifting within a sophomore slump, playing pool a tad more than reading utopian theory, visiting the West End Pub almost as often as visiting my class on the poetry of Stevens...

Columbia College 1967

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

Succeeding the Focused Way When I was an undergraduate in occupational therapy, part of our classes were at the medical center and part at Teachers College. I lived on the main campus. I found that returning to college after a...

Teachers College 1967

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

Surviving NY Winters The hardest part of Columbia winters was rowing on the Harlem River. Although the crew rowed in indoor tanks in the basement of Low Library during the coldest months, we would be back out on the river...

Columbia College 1960

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 Best Thing Happened to Me in FRONT of the Butler Library 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 of...

Graduate School of Journalism 2005

The City of Cats, Crescents, and Cigarettes: Studying Abroad in Cairo in the Fall of 2001 My study abroad experience in the Middle East can be divided into three phases: The “Wow - look at the pyramids!” phase; the “HolyShitSomoneCrashedAirplanesIntotheWorldTradeCenterandPentagon!”...

Columbia College 2003

The Columbia Riots of 1968 In the fall of 1967 I entered the School of General Studies, following a three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia. I won’t say that the spring of 1968 was my happiest time...

School of General Studies 1974, School of Library Service 1976

The first day of class On the first day of classes, I sat next to a tall young man. We talked about nothing in particular waiting for our first graduate class to begin, both a little nervous about what the...

School of Social Work 1986

The Herodotus Quiz When my father helped me move to New York to begin my graduate studies at SIPA, we took a walk across the main campus, a rare moment alone for the two of us. He quizzed me, history...

School of International and Public Affairs 1992

The Hogan Life 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 room...

Columbia College 2002

The Hungarian Pastry Shop At the beginning of my sophomore year at Columbia College, in 1989, I decided to study Russian. Within a week of starting my first-year Russian class, taught by a charming graduate student whose name escapes me,...

School of Law 1996, Columbia College 1992

The Ike and I As a student at The College of Pharmacy (68th St. and Broadway), I was in my sophomore year. We had to go to Pupin Hall on the campus for physics. During a lab period, we were...

College of Pharmaceutical Sciences 1952

The Lows and Highs of Campus Beauty An urban university campus is not the first place in the world that comes to mind when I think of locations that have the capability to move the soul, but Columbia has these...

Columbia College 1990

The Prettiest Part of Campus 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

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

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

Trying to Study 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 a...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2001, Columbia College 1998

Unusual Memory of the Columbia Library Fresh out of West Virginia for the first time in my life, I was a twenty-two year old library school student at the School of Library Service, Columbia University, in the winter of 1945-46....

School of Library Service 1947

Warm Weather in Manhattan In Canada, where I’m from, September marks the end of summer, with days getting shorter and temperatures dropping. In November, snow starts, and it gets really dark outside. Then, in December, it gets very cold, and...

Graduate School of Business 1981

Where to Hang Out I had three hangs-outs during my time at Columbia. My favorite was WKCR’s lounge, as my Barnard girlfriend did a classical music show there, and I could count on her showing up a lot of the...

Columbia College 1960