Hi! My name is Ben and I am a rising Junior at Columbia. I'm majoring in Linguistics with a minor in AI. I'm from Newton, MA, and outside of school, I love to tap dance, perform (both musical theater and choir), cook, run, and explore NYC! Looking forward to meeting you!

Hometown

Newton, Massachusetts

Major(s)

Linguistics

Minor(s)

Artificial Intelligence

Clubs, organizations & involvement

Columbia UnTapped - Comms and Media Director, Vice President; Columbia-Barnard Choir - Student Director; Columbia Musical Theater Society

Describe your college experience

Coming into the city is always an adjustment, but I knew I wanted to live in NYC and boy am I glad I made that decision! There's constantly so much going on you're always able to have fun and new experiences. Plus, with Columbia's campus having both a quad and being further uptown, I definitely feel like my academic environment is protected during the week. It's the perfect balance of focused school time​/​traditional college campus life and city life.

Tip for future students

Be yourself! I realize that's one thing to say and another thing in practice, but it truly does make a difference. When appying to college and when starting college, you have literally nothing to lose by being yourself, so why not go for it! Columbia can feel very fast-paced and like everyone else has everything all figured out, but trust that you being authentic and not knowing the answer to everything is okay! That's what college is for!

Favorite class

Literature Humanities was by far my favorite class here. Closely followed by my Sociolinguistics class (called "Language and Society" here). Lit Hum is a part of the CORE and every Columbia College freshman has to take it. I absolutely ADORED my professor (who is now at another university in Brazil), he truly made every class feel special and interesting and like he truly cared about our opinions. Plus, I think that the opportunity to be "foced" to read older literature that I wouldn't otherwise pick up on my own gave me a wonderful opportunity to fall in love with reading again. The class also eased the transition from high school being seminar style and capped at 22 people per section.

Career goals

I aspire to work for a firm that's doing something good with AI. I think AI as a tool right now is very big and popular, but not many people truly know how to fuse the gap between human work and AI, as well as protect human workers. That's where a computational linguist can come in and better design interactions with AI.

Ideal way to spend a free night

Hanging with friends, with takeout and cookies in the oven, watching TV or playing a game together (maybe with a cocktail or glass of wine?)

High school or secondary school

Newton South High School, Newton, MA, USA

Previous college

n​/​a