Bwog

A poem by and now to none other than Missus Dearly Departed, Dolly Parton. May her blessing be a memory to all received the honor of her grace. Her warmth. Her evergreen realness. Miss Dolly. Oh miss Dolly. I guess the world is finally finding out about all that you’ve been doing your big long life. you have influenced two generations of Women before me, and trust i take that torch as not a right, but as a duty to all I come from, and all I KNOW I stand for.

Or, how not to look like a tourist! A major draw of attending Columbia or Barnard is its location in the greatest city in the world, but a major drawback is the possibility of looking like a transplant or, worse, a tourist. It’s important to blend in while you’re out exploring beyond campus. As a born and raised Manhattanite, here are some things you need to know in order to get into that New York state of mind.

Wait I thought getting in was the hard part… Dear freshies, When first arriving at Columbia, the term Imposter Syndrome did little to soothe my feelings of displacement and anxiety. I wasn’t worried about if I belonged or not, I simply knew I didn’t. Where I’m from, South Carolina, people stay local for college, if they go at all. To go anywhere for school, including our local technical community college, is something to be proud of.

Baby’s first Columbia situationship is often a doozy… Dating at Columbia, and in college more generally, can be difficult to figure out. Everyone is coming from ALL different parts of the world, with immensely different experiences and desires. This can be exciting and fun, but also quite scary for any 18 year old freshperson to navigate. Columbia in specific can be a hard school to figure out, both academically and socially.

Bwog begs you to follow this roommate advice! Roommates. They’re the foundation of your college universe. From the first moment you meet them to move out, they are a part of your life no matter what. For some students, they’ve never lived with another person. The transition to sharing a space with other students can seem anxiety-inducing.

Transfer, it’s your first time on campus too!! We didn’t forget about you – here’s some advice from a fellow transfer! You may be a tad less fresh than your other fellow newcomers, but transfer students are in many ways freshmen 2.0. Actually, that is my biggest piece of advice for transfers at Barnumbia, and many of these tips will come back to it: this is basically a second freshman year, and you should treat it as such.

Hard-won advice from the directionally-challenged. Columbia’s main campus in Morningside Heights is rather cozy, especially for a university of over 30,000 students. Yet navigating all those ancient green-tipped buildings can be confusing, especially when the first floor never seems to be on the actual first floor. You might even have to make the journey to Manhattanville—wherever that is—for the occasional class.

Let’s get down to the really important stuff. In the light of changes to dining in the past year and in honor of Freshletter, here’s your 2026 updated guide to Columbia’s dining halls. In order from worst to best (in MY opinion). 11. Chef Don’s Pizza Pi AVOID. This pizza is the nastiest, skank bitch I’ve ever met. Do not trust it. Plus their hours are horrible, and it’s in Mudd so you’ll have to look at engineers while you eat. 10. Johnny’s Johnny’s, I don’t really know you very well.

You built the perfect schedule. Then classes started. There are few things more humbling than walking into the first week of classes convinced you have created the perfect schedule, only to realize 20 minutes into your dream seminar that you absolutely cannot spend the next four months there. Welcome to shopping period. Shopping period is essentially your chance to test-drive your semester.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the part of college where you’re expected to understand a curriculum you’ve never experienced using terminology no one bothered to explain. If you’re staring at Student Planning with approximately 47 tabs open, three different advising PDFs downloaded, and absolutely no idea what a “Mode of Thinking” is, welcome. Every Barnard student has been there. The good news? Foundations are much less scary than they sound. The bad news?