Looking up prospective colleges, I came across the Pipe Dream website. It was the only college newspaper I had seen that fascinated me. I was not considering writing for a paper when researching colleges, nor was it a qualifier for the school I would accept, but I knew that if I came to Binghamton, I needed to write for Pipe Dream.
I transferred to Binghamton from Hunter College, a school with a larger student population packed into three academic buildings on the Upper East Side. My freshman year was atypical. I had classes two days a week and commuted for over an hour — often waking up deep in Queens to a flurry of internal cursing because I had missed my stop. All I did was travel. I wasn’t getting anything out of the experience, so I sought to transfer out.
Binghamton was totally different. Outside of the home I had made in Hinman, where my longest walk to class lasted no more than four minutes on a cold day, I was given the opportunity to immerse myself in my unexplored interests, from joining Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity and growing to become its president, to working on local political campaigns to elect public servants that can truly make an impact in Broome County, to answering correspondence at the White House. I learned that just putting yourself out there can help make an impact in a community — it was a concept unfamiliar to me, as I shuffled through the streets of New York City unknown headed to school my freshman year.
Get involved and take advantages of the opportunities here. I learned far more from these internships, clubs, jobs and interactions with people than in the classroom. Hands down. After four years, it’s difficult to even think of what I can recall from the classroom — little seems pertinent outside of the final exams or papers I wrote in record time — but I can name a handful of lessons and experiences that I will carry with me for the foreseeable future. I couldn’t be more thankful for all of them.
I had the courage to become a contributor during September of 2014. I wrote my first column criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy. It was a piece I now regret, as I completely misunderstood the basic premise of his foreign policy doctrine and the idea of soft power abroad — but it was a dream come true four years later. It is my hope that with my last column I have said something right this time.
Thank you to all that have read my columns, the section and my awful headlines. And thank you to the following that made it all happen along the way:
Mom: you have spent the last three years making going away to college a reality for me. I could not have done it without you.
Carmela: our long national nightmare is over. I’m excited to return to our city together.
Raven, Jeannie, Adam, Duke, Mike, and Joe: you were all my first friends at Binghamton and made it all worth sticking around for. I look forward to embarrassing you at each of your weddings.
Ian and Rebecca: thank you for indulging a year’s worth of beer at the Ale House. I will live for conversations there and am proud to be immortalized on the bar’s walls alongside you both.
My larger APO family: you know who are — the kind, gifted people that will be the change-makers of this world. I can’t wait to see what you will all do.
The Telefund: far from the books, you were home in Bartle Library. I spent hundreds of hours not only speaking with alumni there, but speaking with the great callers alongside me — all with an incredible story.
Pipe Dream: you all took a chance on me and I will never forget. Four years after I first stumbled on your website, you made my dream come true. It’s been a pleasure working until the early morning to put out a paper together, especially the Copy Desk Chief that dealt with my affinity for the Oxford comma.
If you’re still reading this, thank you. Go out there and get involved. You can do big things.
Lawrence Ciulla is a senior double-majoring in political science and philosophy, politics and law.