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Before a Seminar
Katherine James, Alum
School of the Arts 2006


At Columbia, when you have an hour and a half before your next seminar, there is always a place to go. I imagine Universities--of Nebraska or Main or Iowa or New Mexico--and think their "places to go" must be benches, perhaps made of wood with maybe a little plaque nailed to the back, placed carefully next to a well-edged lawn, sweeps of pesticidal green to numb the brain while looking over notes. I'm sure that I'm wrong in this--that other schools have their own beauty, their own interest--but I do know that in all of America there is not another University that holds captive the senses the way that Columbia does. The Architect, the journalist, the biologist, the writer--we are the attentive audience. Broadway plays its horns and tyre whirls, and Butler Library puffs its chest inhaling a city that moves forward like power, creating the very fuel of its own momentum.

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