Columbia University Housing
The suite itself is amazing. It is far nicer than anything I have ever stayed in at Rochester. My bedroom is twice the size of any room I ever had at Rochester, and it is air-conditioned. Also, the kitchen not only comes equipped with a full sized refrigerator, a microwave, and ample cabinet space, it even has a dishwasher!
All of this notwithstanding, there are/were a few problems. To begin with, after waiting literally an hour to receive my Columbia University ID (which allows me access to my own dorm building), I went to enter the building and was told that my ID was not activated. It had just been printed minutes before, in front of my face, and no one had told me a thing about needing to have the card activated. This was certainly an annoyance, but what is even more frustrating is that we have received absolutely zero information about these living accommodations. I still have no mailing address, no idea how to work my room phone (thank goodness for foresight and my purchase of a cell phone), my internet is broken (although this could be due to my own computer, who knows), I don’t know if I have gym or library access, and I don’t know where any of the campus services are located (assuming any exist) or how to contact them. On top of all of this, I have no city map. (Brilliant planning, I know.)
To try and rectify a few of these situations, I took time after work today to go running. I ran around the campus to try and orient myself as well as possible. This was rather difficult, since Columbia University is comprised of mostly bridges and stairways and windy brick pathways between buildings all smashed together in the smallest space possible. However, I did manage to find the gym and to receive a sheet designating the hours of operation. Whether the swimming pool is actually in this same building and whether my Columbia University ID will give me access to these amenities, I have yet to discover. One step at a time, I suppose. Then, I ran around the local area, trying to find Central Park. Once again, Google Maps proved fruitless in terms of directions. It turns out that all I really had to do was run a little bit south and a little bit east (I think—I had to run downtown so that the numbers got smaller, and I had to turn left off of Broadway), and I ran right into it. Coming back, though, I got a little lost, since it turns out that Morningside Drive splits into two separate streets straddling the not-so-safe Morningside Park. I of course ended up on the wrong Morningside Drive and had to backtrack a good ten blocks to get back to campus. But on the brighter side, I found a few places to go grocery shopping tomorrow.
As for my first day of work, well, I will start by saying that Time was less impressive than I expected it to be. The orientation session was considerably less efficient than it could have been, and it began with a video that was riddled with technical problems. For a publishing and media company, I was a bit taken aback by this. I would write more about this particular day, but since I am stuck posting this at work, I will have to cut this post short, finish writing it in my dorm, where my internet does not work, and bring the rest tomorrow.
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1 comment:
ZOMG DISHWASHER WANT WANT WANT
I mean...
One of my professors was a 2003-or-so Ph.D. from Columbia. She tells a story of having driven cross-country from San Diego to move in, having no information about where she'd be housed but a floor plan and a street address, encountering hardships on the road and sleeping in the moving truck in a New Jersey parking lot the night before her move in, only to get there in the morning and be told that _that_ building was being renovated and her new apartment was at such and such other location a couple streets away instead. Well, needless to say, after this stressful move, the hoops already jumped through to get this floor plan, the process of becoming attached to it, the work she'd put into changing her address to where she'd been told she would live, and so on, she did freak out a little as she and her husband drove around the few blocks to the new building; then they met the doorman. They went upstairs and threw open their door... looked at the huge space to the left of them... looked at the huge space to the left of them... agreed that this would do. Soon, she came to find out that after being bumped from her old place, she was assigned the first available similar flat, in a building they housed professors in -- and, yes, that it would be hers until she gave it up.
That's my only Columbia housing story. Congratulations on beginning at Time.
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