Columbia's
Super-Grads
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (AUGUST 2002)
Once
again, this year’s 99 highflying Columbia Publishing
Course graduates have put their Palm Pilots on warp
speed and wowed us with their über-achieving résumés.
As in years past, we offer you a taste of publishing’s
next generation in the composite biographical sketch
below (all content has been taken from actual student
biographies). Columbia’s New York Career Day is set
for Monday, August 5, from 9 am to noon at the Time
Life Building; call (212) 854-9775 or email publishing@jrn.columbia.edu.
Cow
tipping was certainly not part of Ms. Student’s upbringing.
This self-proclaimed “grammar geek,” a tenth-generation
native of East Hampton with the physical stamina of
an ocean lifeguard and the capacity to serve as an antidote
for difficult people and situations, instead has her
mind set on unparalleled career-oriented success. Not
cow tipping. As a student at the University of Virginia,
a school with a strong curriculum, but a reputation
that extends no more than two highway exits in either
direction, she spent four years utilizing Socratic inquiry
to study great works in science, philosophy, Haitian
Creole, and Quechua.
Cursed with an insatiable desire to read and write across
a variety of genres, she used her washing machine–like
work ethic and casual disregard for pretentious literary
critics to write her first book at the age of four.
Intrigued by the failure of language to replicate the
visible world, the nearsighted Ms. Student turned to
publishing after graduating with degrees in English
and Comparative Literature, and a minor in Frisian.
More recently, Ms. Student took a 30-day train trip
across the country, stopping off in Kalamazoo, MI, where
she dabbled in Norwegian, Japanese, and Ancient Greek
and Latin. In her spare time she ghostwrote TOEFL books
and dubbed “serendipity” her favorite word. Ms. Student
then headed to California, where she co-founded California’s
best-attended regular reading series at UC Berkeley,
while doing PR for the Gap.
Fed up with un-air-conditioned car rides and intent
on pursuing her hobbies of collecting international
license plates and Lulu Guinness handbags, Ms. Student
set out to become the youngest female editor in the
history of Zambia after working in an Irish pub in Bratislava,
an Indian restaurant in Dublin, and a bingo parlor in
rural Pennsylvania. After spending nine years in an
international boarding school situated in the Himalayas
and months scouring the streets of Amsterdam as the
Benelux travel writer for Let’s Go Western Europe
2001, she returned to New York to resume her addiction
to the Simpsons and interesting coats. More importantly,
she could put her past as manager of Enron’s international
finance team in India solidly behind her.
©2002
Publishing Trends
