At Columbia, it’s easy to tell who we want to be.

See: the tweedy academics-in-training, groutfitted athletes, chain smoking internationals, boat-shoed fraternity brothers, outré hipsters, Barbour-wearing preps, etc.

I ran into an acquaintance from freshman year the other day. We hadn’t spoken since 2010. “What are you studying?” I asked, by way of small-talk (figuring by strong chin that he studied economics).

“Econ,” he said. He’s got an offer from a bank. “You?”

“English,” I replied, before we both paused: “Oh, cool, yeah.”

We live in our in-groups. We share a suite, or a fraternity house, or a Spec office, where we can let ignore whatever group stands against ours. We run around in circles, and those circles rub elbows at 1020 or Beta or Mel’s.

(That’s one very different thing about first semester. We haven’t yet fully created our college selves, and so we aren’t automatically prejudiced against others. I enjoy spending time with my freshman year friends—and if I met them today, we probably wouldn’t be friends.)

But that’s not what I care about now. Of course we dress and think like our friends, and gather in the same places. What I’m concerned about is after graduation.

Because now, when I come upon the pre-professional whose contract is already signed, sealed, and delivered at JP Morgan—and he comes across me, thinking I don’t know what—we do hate one another a little bit.

But we have to be civil: we’re both students here. We were both in Butler last night—we have some stuff in common, even if ideologically we’re anathemic. Even if we talk shit about one another in our groups, we still are part of a community here. So we nod, “Oh, cool, yeah.” Here, the econ major and the gender studies major usually have the decency to appear to take one another seriously. After graduation, once we’ve really self-sorted, this won’t be so.

— Conor Skelding