Doing Bwog’s Senior Wisdom Questions Even Though They Did Not Ask Us To: Kyla Bills
We love Bwog so we copied their questions and asked our graduating seniors them. You should check out Columbia seniors answering these questions!
Name, School, Major, Hometown: Kyla Bills, CAS, Journalism with a concentration in Media Criticism and also Sociology (lol), Syracuse, NY
Claim to fame: I ran this blog with Addy. I wrote all my final papers about Gawker. I was a decisive figure in your journalism class. I became a stereotype of myself. I made the blogs kiss. I broke the NYU Local website for about a month — oops. You’ve probably seen me at a protest reading Bwog on my phone. I made the “fuck WSN lol” stickers. I caused a lot of niche drama.
Where are you going? Literally nowhere. I’m going to die in Kensington and I’m going to love it.
What are 3 things you learned at NYU and would like to share with the Class of 2021?
1. Everyone at NYU is disgustingly hot but that doesn’t mean they aren’t nice. As a means of coping with our intellectual inferiority when compared to our uptown neighbors we all just get really into the Brooklyn DIY scene and have opinions about Eckhaus Latta. But underneath it all we all were in high school band/theater/orchestra and took AP Euro. While we have our fair share of archaic neolibs and bro-y business students, most NYU kids are tender nerds who just want to talk about their feelings. No one is really that intimidating once you sit down and talk about “what queer means to you.” Talk to everyone! Talk to people who scare you! I thought NYU Local was the most intimidating, hottest, scariest group of people I had ever seen freshman year, now I’m in charge of all of these precious little weirdos.
2. Someone will inevitably make a joke about you being “gay by May.” It might not be a joke.
3. Never Have Chill. Chill is stupid! Chill is ridiculous! Never minimize your emotions for the sake of seeming cool! It’s beautiful to throw yourself into your passions, into your people, and into your classes with the full weight of your being. Irony and detachment will only get you so far. When you start doing things you care, you’ll find people that care about you. Like, really care about you. If you’re friends with someone or dating someone who doesn’t appreciate your lack of chill, they don’t appreciate you and they’re trash.
4. THAT’S RIGHT. I’m doing four!! It’s my blog I can do whatever I want. This is the biggest thing I learned in my life: find joy in people hating you. If bad people hate you, you’re doing something right. If you’re friends with everyone and no one has any issues with what you’re doing, you probably aren’t really fighting for what you believe in. Worrying about what people you don’t even like think about you is a worthless and pointless use of your time. Be a hater. Make some enemies. Yell at that kid in your lecture. Laugh when someone calls you a bitch. Publish that story. Argue with your annoying professor without thinking about your grade. Tell your TA that you think they’re narrow minded. It’s super fun to send a nasty email to someone you think is shitty. If you can live your life feeling great while hundreds of people hate you, you can really do anything. And if you can do it with a smile, you won.
“Back in my day…” Hayden was Hayden. Sidestein didn’t exist. I was woefully unaware of the ethical dilemmas that going to NYU would inevitably present me with. I thought I was mostly straight :-(. I was a student athlete and 181 Mercer was called Coles and I lived there.
Justify your existence in 30 words or fewer: “You could call it ‘mean’ or ‘dramatic’ or ‘unnecessarily dramatic,’ and I would both agree with and love each of those characterizations.” — An Email I Sent To [REDACTED]
What was your favorite class at NYU? Political Cinema with Shimon Dotan and Frontiers of Journalism with Mitchell Stephens. Do media crit, it’s all the fun parts of theory but like… actually applicable to the real world.
Would you rather give up oral sex or cheese? I stand by my tweet.
One thing to do before graduating: Will someone swipe me into Downstein? This is a real inquiry. Please DM me. Also please get me a milkshake from Sidestein.
Any regrets? I wasted two years NOT being best friends with Addy Baird. I wasted a year not spending NEARLY enough time with the people I love while navigating unhealthy interpersonal relationships with people I did not love. It still takes me too long to realize that my parents are basically always right. I probably should’ve transferred to Gallatin, but really you can say that about anyone. But mostly, I regret my debt.
