For those of you who haven't yet gotten your dream job offer, you may want to consider going to the Broadway Sky Lounge tonight from 7:30 PM to 9 PM, where you can discuss what you're going to do with your BA with other soon-to-be graduates.

Seniors who gloated at the news that next year Columbia is effectively preventing its students from studying for finals may be in for some schadenfreude this evening, as underclassmen can again remind themselves in the fact that seniors are, you know, adults come May.

But don't look so glum! There will be fancy downtown cupcakes of the Magnolia variety at this group freak-out thing.

NY1 is reporting that a mother and a daughter graduated together from GS yesterday. "'It was very competitive, she loves to compete. Like what grade did you get on your paper? How well did you do on your midterm? And in the end when I got a B+ and she got an A-, she was like "I did better than you did," she rubbed it in my face,' says mother Insaf Abdullah." As for post-grad plans, daughter plans to return to the Middle East while mother opts for grad school.

Bwog offers accolades to both mother and daughter, but frankly we're a bit shocked that this exact situation has never been lampooned in a Varsity Show before.

It's not only seniors who are receiving diplomas this week, outgoing President and Varsity Show protagonist Judith Shapiro (pictured with her signature sass at right), will be receiving an honorary Columbia University Doctor of Laws degree, presented to her tomorrow by none other than PrezBo. In a press release, PrezBo commends JShap on doubling BC's endowment, instituting the Nine Ways of Knowing, and launching construction on the Vag.

Congrats, JShap!

It's unofficially academic honors day on Bwog, so in a very special double-feature of Senior Wisdom, we check in with CC Salutatorian, Julia Kalow.

Name, School:

Julia Kalow, Columbia College

Claim to fame:

I'm the one you have to listen to at CC Class Day who's not Joel Klein.

Post-grad plans:

PhD in organic chemistry at Princeton.

Preferred swim test stroke?

Breast.

What are three things you learned at Columbia?

1. The academic part of college (which is all I'm qualified to talk about) is fun if you allow yourself to be a dork enough to enjoy it. Look for the things that interest you, that surprise you, that impassion you, and then have unabashedly loud and dorky arguments about them with your dorkiest friends in inappropriate places.

2. Appreciate your departmental administrative assistants. If they like you, you can get around a lot of red tape. Also, some of them will give you cookies.

3. If someone asks you a question that you can't answer, the best response is: "That would be a good thought experiment." I heard Horst Stormer use it once at a seminar, so it must work.

Tipster/photographer Jason Patinkin just sent the following photos Bwog's way. "Well bwog, I hope you enjoyed the last week of sitting on the steps, because once again Columbia taketh our favorite midday hangout. Indeed the construction of wooden posts and metal bleachers across the steps begins today (or maybe yesterday)," he writes.

It's that time of year again when graduation preparation coincides with the most beautiful week of the year. Gather ye steptime while ye may/Old Time is still a-flying/And this same flower that smiles to-day/To-morrow will be dying.

More of Patinkin's photos after the jump.

Via Columbia's website:

"Julia Kalow, of Newton, Mass., is majoring in chemistry and creative writing. A winner of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, she works in the lab of Professor Jim Leighton in a synthetic chemistry research group. She also is an accomplished flautist, playing with the Columbia University Wind Ensemble, and a dancer. Her interest in creative writing focuses on short prose forms and fiction. Kalow will pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry next year and intends to teach at the university level."

Kalow is also a short prose writer, and a talented one at that. You can read her work in the March issue of the Blue and White and in our upcoming April/May double-issue. And for a fun, semi-Julia Kalow-themed matching game, see our earlier post about Phi Beta Kappa.

Congrats!

In the weeks after securing their diplomas, some classically-minded seniors may be wondering about the ancient language on the symbolic paper scrolls. Bwog tipster Tao Tan went a little further.

"The Latin looked just a bit off to me," Tao writes. "Specifically, I was wondering how and why they chose to render "New York" (Novum Eboracum in proper, classical Latin) the way they did. On the diploma, New York is rendered in two ways: 'Noveboracensis', a Neo-Latin adjectival form, and 'Novi Eboraci', a classically acceptable locative.

Fortunately, as I was wandering around the Heyman Center this morning, I ran into Peter Pouncey, the former Dean of Columbia College and, before that, a Professor of Classics. Brandishing these pictures, I asked Peter Pouncey what he thought. After getting over the initial shock that somebody actually noticed ('What? We must have overeducated you. You're not supposed to actually be able to *read* your diploma!'), Professor Pouncey explained that having variety in grammatical forms was highly regarded.

However, Dean Pouncey was kind enough to provide a short literal translation of the Columbia College diploma. Basically, the first two lines literally translate as 'The Trustees of the New York-y University of Columbia, the College formerly known as King's' (this is verbatim; Pouncey literally said 'New York-y', as 'Noveboracensis' is an adjectival form).

Ironically, this leaves Barnard College (diploma at left) as the only Columbia school to even come close to properly rendering 'Columbia University in the City of New York' in Latin.

This translates, as Peter Pouncey explained, into, quite literally, 'The Trustees of the University of Columbia (which happens to be) situated in New York City'. Not the City of New York, mind you.

Anyway, all this is better than the Law diploma, which translates: 'The Trustees of the New York-y University of Columbia'."

Way more than we needed to know, but we're glad someone's keeping tabs.

For those of you wondering how Speakergate '07 played out, Chris Szabla took these notes under his blue gown during the speeches.

First, Fox called out a Spec quotee:

"Matthew Fox singled out Julia Kite for saying that she didn't know who Fox was, and Prezbo followed with 'Julia, I didn't know who he was either,' adding, 'Don't worry, he's gone now.'"

And then things got political:

"When Quigley introduced Prezbo as being 'farsighted with regard to the spatial planning needs of the university' or something, people understood it as a reference to Manhattanville and started booing. Conversely, there were seemingly cheers whenever OMA was mentioned."

And Quigley made a charming chronological faux pas:

"Also, Quigley called us 'toddlers of the early 80s,' (though most of us were born from 1984-6) then chatter ensued, at which point he looked up, thought a moment, and just continued. Recycled speech?"

Spec takes a more measured approach here.

UPDATE, 9:15 PM: In a surprising upset, SEAS Class Day speaker Santiago Calatrava disappointed. By one account, his accent was positively Havelesque, and the speech ("one long drone about public service") dropped the phrase "challenges of engineering" about 10 times.

Also, the SEAS senior fund claims about 100% participation. CC got 83%. HOW DO THEY DO IT?

In other news, everyone's favorite gay-basher just died.

We told you a few weeks ago about Claire Lackner, the quiet physics major who came out on top in this year's GPA parade. This weekend, Bwog sat her down for a study break to chat about Mexican food, facebook, and looking at Mars.

The salutatorian gives a speech, but what does the valedictorian do?

As far as I know the Valedictorian does nothing except sit up on stage with everybody on class day, which is nice because it means that if it rains there's a tent, and I won't get wet. Other than that, I don't think there's anything.

How did you find out that you were valedictorian?

They sent me an email. I knew I was being considered - Professor Blaer told me in December that he would be nominating me, but I got an email two weeks ago right before everyone found out when somebody posted it on the Bwog.

Did you do anything to celebrate?

I think it must have been a Thursday night, which means I was probably working on a quantum problem set, so no. Plenty of time to celebrate after everything's done.

Do people treat you differently now that you're valedictorian?

I don't know how many people know — I guess a lot of people read the Bwog and know through that, but because I don't have my Facebook profile up there's no face-name association.

Yeah, a lot of people with the best GPAs don't seem to have Facebook - something like 40% of the people initiated into Phi Beta Kappa...

[Laughs] I actually do have a Facebook profile. It's just set to hidden, and I don't check it very often. So there is no real secret to not having a Facebook — I don't use it; maybe that's the real secret.

Former Spectator managing editor and Blacksburg native Nick Klagge is the deans' choice to say something profound at graduation this year. Bwog stopped by for a sneak peek at the speech, and some MarioKart.

What's the process like for becoming a salutatorian?

I haven't been told a lot about it. After they told me I was one, I looked it up on the computer to see, and I guess they take some top percentage of the class by GPA, and there's like two committees that make the decision.

Have you thought about what you want to talk about?

Yeah, I've been thinking about it. I have to give them a draft pretty soon. I'm not sure what my topic will be, but the hardest part of figuring it out is realizing how few of the entire senior class I actually know, and thinking that I have to come up with something that's going to be meaningful for even people that I don't know, who've probably had an entirely different experience from me.

Are there any themes that strike you as particularly important?

We're going from this very precise and out-of-the-ordinary environment at Columbia, which is almost unique in the world, and to go wherever other people are going, I guess what are the adjustments we need to make to our mentalities, I've been trying to figure that out.

What have been some of the most fulfilling things that you've done at Columbia?

The main thing would be working for the newspaper. I put a lot of time into that. When you enter there, it seems like there's a very well-defined path where you should go if you want to advance, I didn't end up taking exactly what I expected at the beginning. You start out as a reporter, become a low-level news editor, become the news editor, editor in chief. I didn't go like that, I ended up switching from the news to the opinion section, doing stuff that I didn't envision at the beginning, but everything there was interesting and kept me on my toes. I guess that's the resume one, but probably the biggest thing I'm taking away from Columbia is the people that I've met here, particularly my closest group of friends. You can get a great academic experience lots of places, and I've loved my academic experience at Columbia, but the thing I couldn't have gotten anywhere else is the support group I have here, we call ourselves 'the family,' and I think that's not far from the truth.

It may feel like the beginning of second semester outside, but the 40 Days event is happening now out on Low Plaza. To the delight of many, they've got more sandwiches than one can shake a stick at. But it turns out a large bunch of seniors are in the middle of another countdown, that of Passover (5 days to go, buds) and thus can't eat the food that's currently out there. A few disgruntled tipsters have reported that all of the Kosher food was gone by 12:45.

One senior writes that there were only "10 bottles of kosher wine and 10 kosher meals" while "close to 30% of the 2000 seniors planning on attending are Jewish." Demanding an apology, the same student feels that the event "is clear case of cultural insensitivity and...should not stand, especially at a Columbia where Anti-Semitic claims are not a new thing." He would like a kiss-and make-up event after the holiday, but that would be, well, 35 days until they walk.

Thanks to Lenora Babb for the picture.

- JDC

Admit it, you're glad you didn't have to sit out in the rain for the class days and Commencement, but you kind of want to know if anything interesting happened during the graduation festivities. As usual, Bwog's got you covered.

Precipitation: It rained, dulling the much-ballyhooed McCain protest (sez the NY Times), and giving rise to griping grandaunts and yelling matches between stressed parents and seniors. Parent quote of the day: "Well, I figure, I sometimes sit in snow for five or six hours to hunt some elk, so, I figure why not sit through a bit o' rain for the son's graduation?"

Salutation: CC Salutatorian Julia DiBenigno spoke gleefully of the joys of "familiar faces," "experimenting with who we are and who we want to be," and the "memories that will last a lifetime." Quoting Peter Parker, she reminded graduates that with great power comes great responsibility. Lukewarm applause ensued.

Pontification: The senior senator from Arizona intoned on the "fight between right and wrong" that we are apparently now facing, in a speech remarkably similar to the address he gave to Liberty University grads three days before. Hey, if it's good enough for a school that does the good work of God, why change?

Duplication: One of the Cohen twins got magna cum laude, while the other got just the laude. I mean, they're fraternal. Identical twins Paul and Phil Fileri, on the other hand, both were honored with summa cum laude. Snap!

Jubilation: You've got to hand it to PrezBo—for having given three commencement speeches already, he's still churning out zingers like eviction notices in Manhattanville, as well as ponderous pronouncements such as how the Iraq war might have been avoided if we were all a bit more educated. The word "procrastination" drew applause from across the board, but audience response typically followed State of the Union style: CC students went wild over his quotations of Montaigne, medical students screamed at the mention of 168th street, and Bwog is willing to make an assumption about who cheered when he talked about India's advances in computer engineering.

Projectilation?: All the classes threw their appropriate objects upon being called. Columbia College launched apple cores for the core curriculum (mostly aimed at SEAS). International flags for SIPA, giant toothbrushes for the School of Dentistry, mini gavels for future lawyers, paper airplanes for SEAS...you get the picture.

A loyal (indeed, very loyal) Bwog reader reports:

"Shortly after the SEAS class day festivities finished (e.g. now), the sound system is playing the Mos Eisley Cantina song from Star Wars."

Bwog has heard many graduating students proclaiming that they have waited a long time for this. We bet they have.

This is the ninth post in the senior wisdom series. Read the rest here.

Bethany Milton, C '06
Claim to Fame: Bwog Co-Editor.
Post-grad plans: European Politics and Society Program Assistant, Danish International Study Program, Copenhagen, Denmark. (It's the secret English-language study abroad program everyone loves.)

Preferred swim test stroke?

The "Oh-let-me-just-make-sure-my-bikini- top-is-going-to-stay-on-before-I-jump- in-OH-MY-GOD-I- JUST-UNHOOKED-MY-BIKINI- TOP-BOOBIES-STAY-IN-!-!-!-!

What are three things you learned at Columbia?

1. Montaigne was cranky because he had a kidney stone.
2. Nietzsche was cranky because he had the syph.
3. Freshman are cranky because they have to take Frontiers. Suckas!

Justify your existence in 30 words or less.

I'm carbon neutral.

Class day has transformed the South Lawn into some kind of mass graduation arena! Just in case you're not in Morningside Heights this week, see what your campus has become...


Bring an umbrella and look for wet powder-blue robes. Forecast calls for intermittent showers tomorrow.



And even if it doesn't rain, you still might be swimming through a sea of chairs [groan].