“My journey to Columbia. I walked all the way from Korea in those flip flops.”

My name is Alistair, but most people call me Ali. I am about to enter my second year at Columbia College Chicago, and I am the Graduate Student Ambassador for the Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management (AEMM) MAM graduate program. My main areas of focus are music business and entrepreneurship, but I have my hand in a lot of Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management pies. I am really looking forward to promoting the program, answering your questions, and meeting you all at the graduate orientation and preview days. Hopefully, my blog posts will give you some insight into life as an AEMM student and life in Chicago. I am enjoying my time at Columbia, and I’m sure you will too!

So what to write about… Well, I am originally from the UK but have travelled around quite a lot, so I thought I would write my first blog post about my journey to Columbia.

It all began almost two years ago when I was living in Korea. I do not have room to tell the entire story of how I came to be living there, so I will condense my explanation. I was teaching, traveling, and saving money. After a year of Korean life, I began to think about my next move. I knew I wanted to get my masters degree, and being a creative jack-of-all-trades, I knew that I wanted it to involve the arts. The problem I faced was not being able to get adequate information on colleges whilst living on a tiny peninsula in the Far East where campus visits were not really an option. Oh, and the fact that I really wanted to study in America. To my good fortune, I found out that the colleges would be coming to me by means of a recruitment fair in Seoul. It was a surreal experience. There I was in the heart of Seoul surrounded by more Americans than I could shake a shiny college pamphlet at. I gradually made my way around the room, eyeing up each college until I got to one that was on my list: DePaul. The interaction that followed (transcribed here verbatim) would set me on course for Chicago…

DePaul: “Hi. What are you interested in studying?”

Alistair: “Hi. I am considering creative masters programs involving the arts…”

DePaul (cutting me off and waving vaguely to the left): “You want to talk to those guys.”

And that, as they say, was that. I took two steps to the left, found myself in front of a very colorful stand, and began my journey to Columbia…

Looking back at the fair in Seoul I find it interesting that the recruiter from another university was willing to pass a potential student to Columbia upon hearing the words “creative” and “arts”. However, having completed my first year here, I know those words are what defines Columbia, and I guess everyone else knows it too.