Memories tagged “Travel”

1968: Year of Decision I am a Vietnam Veteran, a college graduate of the Vietnam Era, and a professional journalist. That should establish either some kind of credibility or culpability. The Vietnam War began when I was l7 years old...

Columbia College 1967

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

Arriving Early In the fall of 1956, a fellow student and I arrived at Colubmai as the first two students to attend engineering school on the Combined Plan from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Neither of us had been out...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1958

Best Sports Event I Saw In the spring of my sophomore year, 1988, I asked the Office of Sports Information how to try out for the position of Lion mascot. The answer was “You got the job!” The lion suit...

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

Envious Regrets I went through the college as a young 16 year old, still living at home in Washington Heights, focused on a pre-med education and adolescent socialization. I helped out on the Columbia Review, wrote humerous poems for the...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1953, Columbia College 1949

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

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

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 Letters The best teacher I had at Columbia was Professor Gilbert Highet from whom I took Humanities in the fall of 1947. He had just returned to Columbia after having served in British Intelligence during World War II. Professor...

School of Law 1954, Columbia College 1951

My Columbia Summers 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 freshman...

Columbia College 2005

My Shoes Wore Thin! In the Program in Occupational Therapy, we often traveled many miles per day: from 186th St. on the west side to TC campus on 116th St. and south to 23rd St. and First Ave., many days...

Teachers College 1960

NYC Cold In response to your call for anecdotes regarding weathering the NYC cold… As a native Texan, I was grossly unprepared for the NYC cold (circa 1983, when I began college there). This was particularly challenging for me as...

Columbia College 1987

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

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 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 Dungeon Walking in the crisp fall air at Columbia, I always wondered why my computer science lab was in this underground bunker type space next to the gym. It was 1985 and anyone who took a computer science course...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1989

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

To Thine Own Self Pay Heed If I could travel back in time to 1974 and translate my regrets into good counsel to my freshman self, I would say go ahead and be a “grub.” “Do all the problem sets...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

Winter in New York 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 idealized...

Columbia College 1996, Graduate School of Journalism 2001