To be and not to be

Those Columbia students who willingly label themselves “Speccies” believe a lot of crazy things. They swear, for instance, that pizza from V & T Pizza does not taste like garbage because they don’t have to pay for it. They’re convinced that using a semicolon or the word “however” in writing should be grounds for execution. They think calling their sporadic parties “Spectails” is clever, even though that word barely makes sense as a pun.

Speccies have invented their own belief system because they hold fast to one principle above all others—that being heavily involved in the production of the Spectator necessitates becoming a person whose life revolves around the paper. In their minds, someone who didn’t do this would be like a unicorn, or a Barnard student wearing pants instead of leggings: nice in theory, maybe, but certain never to exist in the real world.

Well, guys, I’ve got news for you: This column was written by a pants-loving unicorn.

I’ve been involved with Spec since the beginning of my first year. Since then, I’ve written about five Internet pages’ worth of articles for the paper and held various positions on both the daily and The Eye, the Spec’s weekly magazine. But in spite of all that, there are still many aspects of Spec culture I remain completely unfamiliar with.

I never lingered in the office until dawn, ostensibly scrambling to put the paper together while actually downing Blue Moon and playing Sporcle. I never had a relationship or made a drunken mistake with someone else on staff. (There’s a cute Speccie term for that, of course: Speccest.) When other editors made reference to managing-board members of years past—“I talked to Steve today”—I would nod and smile, afraid to confess that I had no idea who Steve was. (I think his last name starts with an M—Steve Montana? Steve Montezuma?)

It actually wasn’t my choice not to be totally consumed by Spec. On the paper, the protracted process of running for a new editorship is called “turkeyshooting.” I turkeyshot a whopping five times without ever receiving my first-choice position. In retrospect, this was probably for the best—I was always too lazy and too quick to make fun of other people’s writing to have made a good authority figure. Also, not having to be in the office very much meant that I still had time to do important things like intern at a bunch of places and watch every episode of “Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll.”

In the end, that’s probably why I stuck around for so long, even though I never got what I thought I wanted from Spec. Because I participated in the paper while not considering myself a Speccie, I was never totally crushed when I got rejected again and again. My liminal involvement allowed me to enjoy the good parts of Spec without getting too infuriated by the sucky parts of it.

And despite all of the gentle (and not-so-gentle) jabs I’ve made at the paper in this column, there are a lot of good things about it. Working in the A&E section helped me see and read a lot of stuff that normal people wouldn’t be permitted to see and read until weeks or even days later. I got to keep the “So You Think You Can Dance” Nalgene and sweatband Fox sent us in the fall of 2008.

Spec even gave me the opportunity to write an opinion column, where I explored weighty topics including how great “Showgirls” is (answer: so great!) and how Michael Phelps looks like a monkey. These silly articles were published on genuine newsprint even though they were totally irrelevant to anyone who wasn’t me, which was pretty awesome.

It’s common knowledge that people who go to Columbia take a sick pleasure in moaning about how miserable they are. Because they’re suffering from sleep deprivation and vitamin D deficiencies, Speccies are often some of the worst offenders in this regard. That, I guess, is the greatest indication that I am not and have never been a Speccie—working at the paper didn’t make me miserable.
So thank you, Spec, for kind of dictating my college years and kind of not. As a big-toothed teenager in a blond wig once sang, I sincerely feel like I’ve experienced the best of both worlds.

The author is a Columbia College senior double-majoring in English and history. She was an Opinion columnist on the 134th Managing Board, the managing arts editor of The Eye on the 133rd Managing Board, and the TV Editor and the Deputy Features Editor of The Eye on the 132nd Managing Board. She also wrote the Weekend Calendar when that was still a thing.