Illustration by Bella Aldrete
Year:
Senior, Class of 2023
Major/College:
I am a double major in Comparative Literature and Society and Creative Writing on the poetry track. I’m having a lot of senior ruminations about my academic choices. I’m realizing that I would probably recommend sticking with just one major—for me, that would have been Creative Writing.
I chose these two majors because I’ve always loved writing, as so many people on this campus do! I chose Creative Writing because I see undergrad as one of my biggest opportunities to study and focus on Creative Writing. I chose Comp Lit because I always enjoyed studying Spanish in high school and I didn’t want to let that go. I also wanted more reading than the Creative Writing department would give me, so I thought Comp Lit would be a good way to go.
Hometown:
I’m from a really, really tiny town called Long Eddy in upstate New York, just west of the Catskill Mountains. It's super rural. Lots of trees and more deer than people. You can only really pick up one radio station in the car. It was naturally very beautiful and exposed me to nature and hiking in ways that I think were really important to me growing up. I feel lucky to have grown up there but, by the time high school came around, I was itching to get out because it was such a small town. Luckily, Long Eddy is pretty close to the city, about a three-hour train ride. As a teenager, I started to go on weekend day trips to visit the city. I came to watch a lot of Broadway shows when I was in my theatre phase. It was nice to find something that helped me get away and feel some independence.
What you love about Quarto (you can also share a favorite memory):
I love Quarto’s community, of course. Quarto is so special because of the people, which is such an overwrought answer and I bet everyone will say the same thing in these interviews, but it’s just so true. I’m remembering the Club Fair where we had to give the Quarto spiel 500 hundred times and we would say “Quarto is super tight-knit. We’re not like a family because that’s gross, but we are genuinely all friends.” I could talk to anyone in Quarto for hours and hours. I feel so safe within our community and that’s super special to me, especially as a shy person.
What else are you involved in/hobbies & interests:
My campus job has been a huge part of my college experience. I’ve worked at Avery Library for all four of my years at Columbia. Since working there several times a week for every week that I’ve been in college, I’ve realized that all the people that are behind making this university work are so amazing and talented and that, without them, we would be nothing. You can have all the brilliant professors and students in the world, but without the people who work in the libraries and help you with your research and finding books, nothing would work. They’re all such generous and wonderful people.
This semester I also started helping out with writing workshops for a non-profit called Uptown Stories. I basically assist a teacher in teaching middle schoolers writing. It’s one of my favorite parts of the week because it’s so life-affirming to see all of these kids who just love writing so much and it isn’t something that’s been totally tainted by school yet. They’re still very much in the stage where writing is such a raw form of emotional expression.
Favorite author/work:
My favorite novel—and this is a little embarrassing because it was assigned reading for LitHum—is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I was so out of sorts after finishing this book. I hadn’t been so moved by prose in that way in a long time. It felt so authentic and timeless but also pointed to my life right now.
I also love Bluets by Maggie Nelson. I think one of the most beautiful passages ever written is from this book. It starts with something along the lines of “that this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one.”
I’ve been listening to SZA’s album Ctrl all semester, too.
One of my favorite movies is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a movie that followed me all throughout high school. I think it does a lot of interesting things within all sorts of realms in filmmaking, from storytelling to costume design.
What’s in your tote bag/essential items (5-10):
Book: for an essay I’m writing right now.
Mini Notebook: I have a little notebook because we have to write a commonplace notebook for my fiction workshop. It’s just a collection of hand-written quotes that you find interesting.
Water Bottle: I have this water bottle that I took from my mom in middle school and I’m still using it. At this point, this water bottle has so many memories attached to it, I can’t imagine how sad I would be if I lost it.
Mini Reusable Bag: I have a mini-bag inside a bag. This one is from Trader Joe's.
Sunglasses: these sunglasses, which Armaan calls my matrix sunglasses.
Lipbalms: various lip balms for the winter.
Fingerless gloves: these fingerless gloves which my friend gave me yesterday. They’re little bees with smiley faces on them.