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| Reunion 2019, Columbia University in the City of New York. |
As the Starlight Celebration went on into the night and all milestone reunion years (every 5 years all the way up to ’49) danced under the benevolent gaze of Alma Mater, right after I took the photo above and descended from Low I found myself sitting on the Steps with my good friend Andrew (who, until reunion, I last hung out with 7 years ago in Beijing) and had a deep conversation about—literally—our mortality; love; loss; longing to leave a legacy and pass on our stories; how we’ve reached an age where we’ve made certain decisions we can’t ever come back from and must make peace with that; Andrew saying the question he asks himself now is “What do I want to get out of life?”, which I know will stick with me; how we don’t want certain feelings to ever fade away… all the good stuff, and it was so Columbia, and I loved it, and I love my friends I made here so much. He and I talked about how we don’t remember too much about what we learned in class (well for me I did internalize everything I learned freshman year, which is when I knocked out most of the Core, but after that… yeah sorry Columbia), but to us this place has always been and always will be about the people.
At my 5-year reunion it felt like I never left, like I had just come back from a long summer break. At 10 years though, enough time has passed to make it seem very, very strange. It’s all so familiar, yet—as I told Andrew—it feels dreamlike. Columbia, post-graduation, has always had a dreamlike quality to me, but when I wandered around campus that night I felt like a ghost. Like I was looking at everything through incorrect prescription contact lenses (which is highly probable). I lived here in another lifetime, something I did notice years back.
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| Honey, I'm home. Columbia University, my 10-year reunion. |
At my 5-year reunion it felt like I never left, like I had just come back from a long summer break. At 10 years though, enough time has passed to make it seem very, very strange. It’s all so familiar, yet—as I told Andrew—it feels dreamlike. Columbia, post-graduation, has always had a dreamlike quality to me, but when I wandered around campus that night I felt like a ghost. Like I was looking at everything through incorrect prescription contact lenses (which is highly probable). I lived here in another lifetime, something I did notice years back.
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| Who else from Columbia remembers the school-only Facebook group from 2005 called "I had a crush on Alexander Hamilton" because I did when I was 16. |
And the next morning my throat was sore from scream-singing (while intermittently raising my wine cup) along to “You Oughta Know” which was inexplicably the last song the live band played.
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| "In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen." Columbia Reunion during the Starlight Celebration portion of the night. |
(But then there’s something so perfect about a crowd of dressed up Columbia alumni singing Alanis Morissette at the tops of our lungs at midnight.)
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| Using Riverside Church as a guide, spot Columbia, turquoise copper roof Lego block oasis. Goodbye again. Miss all you nerds already. |
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