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.
