Proactive Freshman Plans Out Next Three Years of Breakdowns and Crises


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JOHN JAY—Rebecca Davis ‘22 is hands-down the most proactive freshman on campus right now. Davis prides herself on finishing assignments  three weeks before deadlines, and spends her free time planning out long-term goals. During NSOP, Davis planned out her course schedules for all eight semesters. Now that academics are out of the way, she is organizing her personal life for the rest of her time at Columbia.

Davis scheduled a breakdown for two weeks after fall midterms, when grades would be out.

“I knew that studying weeks in advance would leave me blankly staring at blue booklets come exam day,” Davis told The Federalist.  Indeed, that is exactly what happened, but by planning ahead, Davis says she was “ready to break down, question everything, and then get right back to work.”

Similarly, Davis marked the day after Christmas for her second breakdown, when she will suffer the same fate with finals. She has arranged these breakdowns to be recurrent for the subsequent seven semesters.

In the beginning of March in her sophomore year, she has scheduled an existential meltdown about her direction in life. She will decide on selling out to Wall Street come graduation, but she has her sophomore spring booked for contemplating pre-med and pre-law. Additionally, she scheduled appointments to hyperventilate these anxieties and doubts to Academic and Preprofessional Advising Committees fifteen months in advance.

Davis is also slated to find a boyfriend in her junior year, who she plans to meet at a Beta Halloweekend party, and she’s already penciled in some ugly fights with him at the one-month and three-month anniversaries. She has also marked her calendar to break up with whomever she will be dating at their six-month mark. She has arranged the next eleven days for ugly crying, eating exclusively at Häagen-Dazs, and hooking up with strangers on Tinder.

“I’m just so thankful to go to a school where I’m learning real life skills,” said Davis. “If I were going to some small cushy college, having breakdowns out of the blue, that would really get in the way of my career.”