In which Bwog's first-year correspondent, Dan D'Addario, doesn't let his schooling get in the way of his education.

The first semester of my Columbia education has flown by. It seems like just yesterday that I arrived with one too many bags, that I marveled at the splendor that is the interior of Butler Library, and that my next-door neighbor asked me, "Are you opposed, per se, to partying?" Since then, I've learned a great deal about Herodotus (in Lit Hum), Orientalism (in MEALAC), dialectical montage (in Intro to Film), and the limits of human endurance (in University Writing). But I've learned far more outside of Hamilton's walls—and hence, my biggest lessons of first semester, freshman year:

Lesson 1. Social Endeavors

Clubs are weird. One week, I got into MisShapes on the strength of an Urban Outfitters t-shirt and an insouciant attitude. There were a lot of sweaty hipsters there, and also Jessica Simpson. The next week, the club was 21-plus. No big loss, I guess.

On the other hand, being in a dark room with twentysomethings dressed exclusively in American Apparel dancing to Hot Chip was fun—which is more than I can say for some of the parties that went on in the freshman dorms that first week. After a couple of drinks in John Jay, my floormates shed their clothing, swaddled themselves in blankets, started crying, and watched Arrested Development. I'm not sure what lesson this taught me, other than that first-time drunks are both sweetly naïve ("Wow, I can't believe they didn't even search our bags when we came into John Jay!") and hilarious.

Read more after the jump...

Prestige-obsessed Columbians should be pleased to hear that 3 2 3 of the 5 most influential "idea-makers" in New York (as ranked by New York Magazine) work at Columbia!

Everyone else should at least get some morbid thrill to know that on said magazine's list of the 5 most influential New Yorkers in education, our own PresBo appears not.

Update: Adding to the irony, he did make the cut for real estate.

Update 2: Robert Thurman (Uma's dad) made it in religion.