Reflecting on the Journey
On the importance of oral communication
“Being in small discussion-based classes taught me so much about expressing myself. Your professors really make you feel like you have a voice. I’ve changed so much since high school. Be a voice: that’s what Columbia has taught me. Human beings are multifaceted, but I fell into this trap of thinking that you have to be one thing or another thing. I kept thinking, ‘Can I call myself a singer?’ You should allow yourself to do everything that you love. In cabaret, you tell a story. Everything is scripted — I get to set the scene. Cabaret allows me to be the singer and the writer.”
Rebekah Lowin CC'14
On the importance of oral communication
"[Conducting research on indigenous movements in Latin America] was great because I had the freedom to do what I wanted. I read about practically every country in Latin America and their indigenous movements. The independent research component of the program made me realize I wanted to [do] a lot of oral and ethnographic history in grad school, and [showed me] the value of getting people’s perspectives on history over getting it from a secondary source."
Marlen Rosas CC'14
On the importance of oral communication
"I received Columbia College funding to work on an independent research project: reading fan mail sent to Soviet cosmonauts during the early days of the space race at archives in and around Moscow. It was important to me to read the letters through different frames: from a distance (to observe patterns), suspiciously (for what is left unsaid), and also sympathetically, keeping in mind that both the emotions and the situations people were articulating them in were not so distant from our own."
Kate Seidel CC'17