NYC: Campus Life, City Life

Columbia has a beautiful campus; it’s one of the first things that attracted me to the school. The classrooms have a very old world, east coast feel to them, and they all still have old-school style blackboards, you know, the ones that take chalk. I was really surprised by this at first.
The social scene is really pretty cool. Most of the people I’ve met here are great, and this GS class in particular is very good. It is a bit funny of course because there is some gap between us, who are almost all over 25, and the ‘little college kids’ who are coming straight out of high school. I’m not a member of a frat (I don’t think any of the GS’ers are), and I don’t go out drinking too often, too much homework to do. I’m not one of those people who can function on 3 hours of sleep a night. But there’s plenty to do here in this city that never sleeps (it’s true, BTW), and they have a fair number of events that are really pretty solid here on and around campus.
As for the city, I have to talk about it first in terms of The Bubble. The Bubble, aka Morningside Heights, aka Columbiaville, is an area from about 122nd down to 110th, and about 10 blocks wide. The campus itself is here (between 116 and 114), and the school owns a lot of the real estate surrounding it. The Bubble is … a bit different than much of the rest of NYC. We have the lowest crime rate here of any neighborhood other than Wall Street. Almost everything is geared around the college. And while that’s wonderful, you have to go a bit outside that zone to really experience the city properly.
Which regrettably, I haven’t done much of; not for lack of wanting, but see earlier comment about too much homework. I wanted to focus on getting a good feel for my classes first, so I’ve spent a lot of time just working in the 9 weeks I’ve been here. But from what I have seen, this is a great city. Very different from Seattle, to be sure. But it’s awesome, it’s really starting to grow on me already. There is a kind of vitality here, an energy that’s hard to describe exactly, but it gets into you, gets under your skin. Who knows, maybe it’s something in the water. :)
I’ll be sure to post out more as I get out into the city and experience it more fully, but this should provide people with at least a snapshot idea.