Top 5 things at NYU that no campus tour guide will tell you

5. NYC hates you. It's a justifiable enough hatred-- we eminent domained the shit out of them and fill the sidewalks with drunk 18 year olds walking four abreast. But it's a hatred intensified by New Yorkers timeless aversion to new people. And by the hyper sensitivity of said 18 year olds, who are probably lifelong perfectionists, do-gooders, and general confrontation-avoiders.

4. There are an unfathomable number of people here. Try to find a place to eat lunch and do your homework. Oh, is it cold/rainy outside? You need a power outlet for your computer? Happy hunting.

3. Undergraduates are garbage. Don't get me wrong-- I am satisfied and impressed with the level of education I've received here. It's endowed me with, among many other things, the skills to write snappy blog posts. I think very hard here and it feels good. But we have virtually no agency in the bureaucratic labyrinth that is NYU, are internally referred to as "clients", and our dissatisfaction with the system is discounted because, huzzah!, we are the Infinity Plus Dream School of America and there will always be a slew of Midwestern high schoolers with big Sarah-Jessica-Parker dreams who will come here. In the eyes of this private university, a service is being provided for money. I still believe it's a very good service, but the undergraduate school at NYU is less a symbiotic academic environment than it is a service-for-payment exchange. I'd imagine the administration likens last year's TBNYU protest (which was misguided and unproductive but rooted in SOME basically good ideals, i.e. budget transparency) to going into a restaurant and ordering food and saying, 'fuck this restaurant! This restaurant needs to change its policies, and support Palestine! I'm gonna occupy this restaurant!'

2. It's more than just the lack of a traditional campus that gives NYU its distinctive non-community community. It's also the concerted efforts of culture-shocked undergraduates who want to establish their "NY savvy" as quickly as possible, and do so by adopting an air of total indifference and isolation. A lot of time at NYU is spent in big anonymous crows and lines (see #4); consequently, a lot of time is spent shoving and not saying excuse me. [I don't know, honestly, what a more traditional campus vibe feels like, but something tells me things must be much different at a school where running into someone you know is not a nice rare surprise.] It fosters a lot of acrimony, a lot of envy, particularly among the ladiesss, which brings me to:

1. The huge number of girls (and to a somewhat lesser though not to be ignored degree, boys) involved/engrossed in various crushing states of self-destruction and self-loathing. Oh, how often I have found the barely-digested remnants of someone's salad lunch in a Bobst bathroom. Emaciated girl picks through loose fruit at space market. Coffee coffee water water cocaine. This is agonizing for me-- you are supposed to be of the world's brightest and most talented young women. You are attending this incredible school in this amazing city. You are scorning your thighs and staring wishfully at some other girl's protruding pelvic bones when you SHOULD be writing your opus. Sigh.