FRESHMAN JOURNAL
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Enjoy the Ride of Your life

By Sara Garner, Columbia University

When am I going to do that physics problem set?

And I need to get lunch; it's 12 o'clock.

But then I won't be working on my comp sci homework due tomorrow.

But I do need to get lunch.

But what about studying for my chem midterm?

Lists of meetings and assignments to complete occupied my mind and nervous jitters coursed through my body as I waited for the elevator, trying to decide whether I had enough time for a lunch break.

My feet were tapping nervously and my eyes wandered as I tried to plan out a way I could get everything done that day. All of a sudden, my thoughts were interrupted by a ding and the noise of the opening elevator doors.

I walked in with a furrowed brow that quickly disappeared as I was greeted by bellows of laughter and hello's coming from the men in the elevator.

The men were dressed in Columbia University maintenance uniforms and one was holding a ladder. While discussing the bigger lockers they had recently been assigned, one man replied "Well it's something, right?" and they all laughed. The elevator doors opened and with infectious smiles, they all set off in separate directions to do their work.

I felt different but couldn't quite decide why. The feeling of being overwhelmed had disappeared, and I carried on with my day, calmly completing one assignment after the other.

For weeks, every time my mind turned into a Google Calendar, working to fit in all of the obligations I had that week, I would think back to the feeling I had in the elevator that day and feel my mind clear. I couldn't piece together exactly why this worked, but I continued to happily go along with this technique.

A few days ago, I was waiting in line to be served lunch, allowing my mind to wander. I said hello and told the man what I wanted, going back to my own thoughts. Until, several moments later, I was jolted by a "So, do you have any midterms this week?" Shocked by his friendliness, it took me several seconds to respond. We discussed the tests that were approaching and I told him that he was the only person who worked in the dining hall who had ever started a conversation with me.

"It makes the day go by faster," he replied with a laugh.

I thought back to the experience I had in the elevator a few weeks earlier and put it all together: I could succumb to the stress and run along on the hamster wheel, just working to complete everything that was thrown at me. Or, I could enjoy the experiences I was having and look at studying as a part of the exciting opportunity I had to learn new things.

Every time I start pitying myself for the work I have left to finish or the studying I haven't yet done, I look out my window and remember I'm in New York City. I reflect on how amazing it is to be learning the answers to things I've always wondered about. And then I think back to the men in the elevator and put on a smile, and it makes the work go by a little bit faster.

Previous Entries

October 2011: Getting to Know You

My bus driver's name in high school was Maemi. She enjoyed visiting Georgia during vacations, was married and had a son who played sports.

From the first day of high school to the day of my last exam before graduation, I got on the bus each morning to go to school and each afternoon to get home. I would greet Maemi hello each morning and afternoon, and thank her and tell her to have a good day before I got off.

Maemi was my bus driver for four years and that is all I know about her; I'm not even sure I spelled her name correctly.

Every time I got on the bus, I hoped it might be the day I would learn something, anything, about who she was. On the rare occasions when I was the first one to get onto the bus, I struggled to make conversation about anything other than the weather.

I've thought a lot about how I never got to know Maemi. I've thought about what I could have said and cannot think of anything.

When I arrived at Columbia, there was a week of orientation; trips to the Met, tours, cookout dinners, anything that might encourage us to talk to someone new. Every time I would meet someone, we would go through the same routine: where are you from, what dorm are you in, let's try to find people we both know, etc.

Although it seemed mundane at times, I would later think about these conversations and realize how much I knew about my new friends.

They would talk about the things they loved about home, what they missed about their friends, and told stories about their families. Although talk of majors may seem unexciting, it often turned into discussions of what we were passionate about, the things we looked forward to learning about at Columbia, and the people we wanted to become here.

As we became better friends, we told stories about life at school and home. I listened as stories about difficult experiences would slip out, and I found myself sharing similar ones of my own.

I thought about my friends at home, and I realized I never discussed much of what I was able to instantly tell my new friends. None of the stories were ones I was unwilling to share; they were just ones that had never come up at home.

As I reflected on the hours I spent with the people I had known for four years or more, I thought about the awkward silences during which everyone took out their phones, and the time when we talked about our spring breaks in class and I was embarrassed to say I had loved spending mine reading Freedom.

While we had bonded over the experience of being at a new school, the good grades we had gotten, and the stresses of studying and college applications we had gone through together, I could tell you little about what they were really interested in.

The people I had spent so many weekends and countless lunches with ... I barely knew them better than I knew the bus driver I spent a silent hour with each day.

But, I look at it in a different way. I know the people I've spent only a few weekends with better than I've known almost anyone else, and I've got four years for those moments to become countless.



September 2011: My Story

As I watch the tour group walk by, I realize this is it: I'm at college.

Being surrounded by hundreds of years of history and libraries that look more like national monuments has made it hard for me to believe that I am not just at a posh summer camp, but this my home for the next four years.

I walk around the campus and see many people I haven't spoken to and even more that I've never even seen before. I see touristy pictures not yet taken, steps not yet loitered on, and memories not yet made. I brush by suit-wearers and wonder if they are Nobel Prize winners and rub shoulders with students in T-shirts who may soon be Supreme Court justices or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists.

But as my first week of school has gone by, I've stopped leaving the elevator at the wrong floor, mistaking students here for friends at home, and feeling like anything but a Columbian. The other day, after someone mentioned they were from New Jersey, a few of us launched into a discussion about The Jersey Shore. As we debated whether Ronnie or Pauly D was funnier, I realized that even a future president of the U.S. watches T.V., has the same awkward moments as the rest of us, and knows a joke or two. I realized that while some have published books and others have started successful businesses, I have hoarded experiences.

Some of my friends here collect music and others have catalogs of movie references, but I have proudly taken the role of gathering stories. Every day I learn from my friends about artists I've never heard of and articles I haven't read, and I share with them my yarns about private school and life at home in Boca Raton, Fla., a city ranked 12th rudest in the world.

I tell stories that have been passed down at dinners with my grandparents and rides in the car with my mother--adventures in a time when a movie ticket cost 25 cents and legends of life in the age of hippies. More importantly, in just a week, I have learned about what it's like to live in Singapore, been inspired by tales of people who have transformed their lives and overcome amazing hardships, and spoken with someone who heard the gunshots during the attacks in Norway first-hand.

I can't wait to explore Columbia and New York City over these next four years, not only amassing stories that I will tell for years to come, but also making cameo appearances in the experiences of such interesting people.