Sixty-nine theses (not in order)

1. Neither New York nor Columbia was what you expected.
2. The only thing worse than the idea of New York is the reality.
3. New York has been fictionalized by geniuses and hacks.
4. The best characterizations: “Revolutionary Road,” “Bartleby the Scrivener,” “American Psycho.”
5. Romantic garbage: Woody Allen, Capote, Rand, Sinatra, Kerouac, Salinger.
6. New York always overrates itself; look at the New Yorker.
7. There’s nobody more provincial than a native New Yorker.
8. There’s no deep history here—only personal narrative and delusion.
9. The self-satisfied run New York, which is why the status quo is impossible to change.
10. Manhattan doesn’t have neighborhoods, it has real estate tracts.
11. Below 14th Street one talks about rent—above it one talks about real estate.
12. It’s impossible to realize there’s a working class in Manhattan without getting arrested.
13. The outer boroughs are excellent; but by saying this I make them less so.
14. New Jersey is underrated, but Westchester and Long Island and Connecticut are actually disgusting.
15. The only thing more depressing than a tourist in Times Square pretending to have a good time is one who actually is.
16. Nobody going somewhere ever goes anywhere.
17. The people going places in New York are always the ones that remain the most static.
18. The more chaotic things are, the more alike everyone is.
19. We’d really rather just drive everywhere.
20. Your ability to thrive in New York depends on your proficiency in putting up with things that would be intolerable anywhere else.
21. The climate here actually sucks.
22. In New York you can be someone.
23. Or you can be yourself.
24. You can never be both.
25. It is the presence of hope that makes New York so hellish.
26. Here neurosis is mistaken for energy, insecurity for ambition.
27. Everyone here always wants something from you—it’s never you.
28. Nobody who stands in New York stands on his own two feet.
29. People here would rather give you a job than make friends.
30. Everything is externalized.
31. Therefore, one can only experience the shallowest pleasures and the deepest sorrows.
32. You are what your record is.
33. Merit matters far less than everything else.
34. Journalism and publishing aren’t industries if nobody’s making six figures and you qualify for rent reduction.
35. Think tanks are like an evil version of academia.
36. The government pays how much it has; you get what you’re paid for.
37. Finance is exactly what you think it is.
38. Does anyone do anything else from Columbia? In New York?
39. Columbia is synecdoche for New York, and New York determines Columbia.
40. Columbia is dense enough to be claustrophobic but diffuse enough to be lonely.
41. Columbia has all the convenience and culture of suburbia with the cost and cramp of the city.
42. At Columbia, sex makes strange bedfellows.
43. At Columbia, diversity is skin color and a person, not background and people.
44. At Columbia, everything is promised and so little is delivered.
45. Columbia instills desires within its students it can’t possibly fulfill.
46. The only thing more depressing than a Columbia student pretending to enjoy Columbia is one who actually does.
47. What do you learn about writing in University Writing?
48. (Or art in Art Hum? Music in Music Hum?)
49. You don’t actually get a good grounding in literature in Lit Hum.
50. (Nor a grounding in civilization in CC; nor one in major cultures in Major Cultures.)
51. You haven’t actually read anything.
52. Columbia serves to make you seem smarter by making you less aware of your own stupidity.
53.There are no clubs at Columbia, only cults.
54. Groups keep to their own and exist to reinforce their prejudices.
55. We’re ashamed of racism and proud of classism.
56. Having two parents who earn six figures makes you "middle-class."
57. Nobody is more boring than the people that try to entertain themselves by going to parties.
58. Only at Columbia could people who sit in an office 40 hours a week listening to themselves call themselves “journalists.”
59. Columbia and New York make you grown up in all the wrong ways.
60. As New York is the logical conclusion of capitalism, Columbia is the logical conclusion of trying too hard.
61. At the U of C the idiots select themselves; at CU we hand-pick which ones we want.
62. The successful get nothing out of their education; the failures get nothing but education.
63. Columbia students are too smart to be slutty, too stupid to be promiscuous.
64. Too smart for style, too stupid for substance.
65. Too rich to be under-overprivileged, too poor to be over-underprivileged.
66. Too sheltered to be real, too representative to be human.
67. The status quo is impossible to change.
68. Anyone could have written these theses after spending a week here.
69. This confession has changed, and will change, nothing.

Chris Morris-Lent is a Columbia College senior majoring in English. Politics, Sex, and Religion runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com