For whatever reason, it was much easier for me to pronounce the “d” sound as a baby than it was to pronounce “l.” So I called my grandmother, Elizabeth Higgins, “Dizzy” instead of Lizzie. At the time I understandably did not realize or recognize that the name would carry over to multiple generations of my family. In fact, now even her own children refer to her as Dizzy when we reminisce about our many experiences with her. She died a...

Please tell us what you find most appealing about Columbia and why: Initially, the idea of remaining in New York for college did not appeal to me. That is, until I realized that for most of my life my New York City has consisted of the 60s-80s on the East Side. Columbia embodies the education I want within the environment that I want. Education is not about immersing oneself in books or alienating oneself. Though studies are certainly a...

List the books you read for pleasure in the past year: The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), The World According to Garp (Irving), Nausea (Sartre), Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), The Reader (Schlink), Lolita (Nabokov), A Widow for One Year (Irving) List the required readings you enjoyed most in the past year: Dirty Snow (Simenon), Red Dragon (Harris), Frankenstein (Shelley), Hard Times (Dickens), Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry (Anson), Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri), Hunger of Memory (Rodriguez), Dubliners (Joyce), The...