Columbia Felt “Unforgettable” for This WNBA Podcast Host

Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely ’01 is a San Francisco-based educator and writer, and the co-host of Valkyries, Say Less, a podcast covering the Golden State Valkyries, the city’s new WNBA team; the show was recently featured in The New York Times and earned Hutchinson-Szekely recognition as a “Keeper of the Realm” by the team. She has nearly 25 years of experience in public education and currently teaches middle school P.E. Hutchinson-Szekely is also the founder of Big Belly Breathing, a bilingual mindfulness platform for kids and families; her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and on Mindful.org and Broke-Ass Stuart.

What were you like when you arrived at Columbia?

I arrived alone on a red-eye with two suitcases, blissfully unaware that most people did not get dropped off at college that way. Meanwhile, the East Coast contingents rolled up in packed minivans, entire bedroom ecosystems carefully labeled and lovingly installed by their families. I was equal parts stunned and fascinated.

I quickly learned the ways of dorm survival thanks to kind new friends: How to loft your bed onto cinder blocks to make precious storage space, how extra-long twin jersey sheets are the softest, how to fill your shower basket and to always wear shower shoes, how to fold a Koronet pizza slice in half for the cheesiest bites, how a microwave and mini-fridge can save you when you just don’t have the energy for the full dining hall experience. I was so grateful for the generosity and the crash course in college culture.

Academically, it also felt like stepping into a whole new world. I had just graduated from a small French immersion school, and suddenly I was doing all my coursework in English in this iconic mega-city I had read about, seen in movies and dreamed of for years.

I was in awe of everything. Of New York. Of the East Coast energy. Of the brick buildings. Of the fall crisp air, and the “city that never sleeps” vibe.

What do you remember about your first-year living situation?

Forever grateful for being assigned to Carman 9.

It’s wild to think about how few people even had cell phones back then, and how many notes we’d leave each other on the door. We’d all gather at the end of the hall around the not- so- giant TV to watch Dawson’s Creek like it was a major cultural event.

I remember learning to swing dance in the middle of the hall, right up until my dance partner may or may not have thrown out his back. I also befriended someone on the ski team who dragged me to a New Jersey mountain at dawn, where on my very first run I wiped out on an ice patch and, unsurprisingly, was never invited again.

But mostly I remember the hilarity. The friend dynamics. The randomness. I became friends with swimmers, wrestlers, footballers, gals obsessed with Titanic, punks, philosophers and East Coast suburban kiddos, which all felt wildly exotic.

Carman 9 was collective chaos and collective joy. Planning meals at John Jay around our schedules. Wandering into each other’s rooms nonstop. So much time spent laughing, figuring out how to stretch our dollars, debating which work-study job was the most chill and social, and choosing which spots to visit in the city. This was the kind of unstructured, communal hilarity that only happens when you’re all living in the same narrow hallway of life. Thank goddess we didn’t have cell phones, and just had each other.

I made friends there whom I’m still close to today. Carman 9 forever.

What Core Curriculum class or experience do you most remember, and why?

Three experiences immediately rise to the top.

First: Music Humanities, taught by the incredible Kitty Brazelton GSAS’94. I took it sophomore year with my best friend, and we did a presentation called “Madonna, Then and Now,” which felt both academically legitimate and slightly rebellious.

One of the hardest assignments? Visually depicting a symphony. I still think about that. How do you translate something so layered and abstract into an image? Thank you, Kitty, for stretching our brains in ways we didn’t know they could stretch.

Then there was the moment post-Madonna presentation when I was absolutely thrilled to get a “nice job” from a cute boy in cool Nikes. At the time, he was just a classmate with great sneakers; later, I realized he was Jake Gyllenhaal. Those Nikes are forever immortalized in my memory.

Second: “History of the City of New York.” The epic highlight was the overnight bike ride through the city led by the legendary Kenneth T. Jackson. We met on campus at midnight and rode for hours, stopping at historic sites, wandering around the fish market, listening to his stories, and ending up at the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. Only hard rule: no one was allowed to ride in front of him.

And third — not academic but the most delightfully random — I got to be the mascot at one of the football games. I donned the Roar-ee gear and leaned all the way in.

Those out-of-the-box experiences are what made Columbia feel so unforgettable.

Did you have a favorite spot on campus, and what did you like about it?

The Steps. Always The Steps.

As soon as the sun came out in the spring, that was it — we migrated. We’d grab sandwiches at Lerner or JJ’s Place, claim a stretch of stone and settle in for hours. It was part picnic, part runway show, part sociology experiment.

Everyone passed by eventually.

You were in the center of it all.

So many conversations. So much people-watching. So many sandwiches.

Once spring hit, The Steps were home.

What, if anything, about your College experience would you do over?

I wish I had taken fuller advantage of career counseling because I figured a lot of it out as I went. I’m so grateful to my Barnard bestie, whom I met while studying abroad in the Columbia in Paris program, as she introduced me to the idea of joining Teach For America. That conversation changed everything. It led me to join the America Reads tutoring program in Harlem, where I worked alongside fellow Columbians and began to see education as something I could actually do after graduation.

However, I sometimes think about the doors I didn’t open.

I wish I had joined Spectator or the student radio station and gotten more involved in campus journalism or broadcasting. I wish I had tried out for an improv group and been braver about being funny in public. I wish I played more than a couple of intramural basketball games.

I took an awesome painting class and absolutely loved it, but I wish I had taken more art classes. Being in New York meant access to museums, performances, writers, galleries — this constant campus-to-city cultural exchange that was right there. I participated in it, yes, but I could have leaned in even more.

If I could redo anything, it wouldn’t be about changing my path, but about taking more creative risks.