In her 2003 column for Newsweek, “Outside the Bright Lines,” Barnard alumna Anna Quindlen wrote, “Tolerance is the rice pudding of modern behavior; it tastes sweeter than bigotry, but no one would confuse it with a parfait.” In other words, tolerance is more like a distant runner-up to the ideal—an ideal, Quindlen believes, that can be found in the pages of Jennifer Boylan’s first memoir, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

I was 17 the first time I tried to get tested for HIV. Barely out of the closet and utterly fear-stricken by the possibility of contracting the virus, I raced to a health clinic on New Year’s Eve. After I told the nurse my short sexual history—leaving out the parts that included having sex with men—she said that an HIV test wasn’t necessary and that I should take my paranoid self home. I was too embarrassed to argue with her, so I left.

For this week’s Blinks, we asked our staffers to dig out the tiny traditions that have taken shape in their own day to day lives. The little pieces of repetition or habit that hold greater meaning. From paper submissions to salads, and late emails to libraries, here are the results:

Determining which subway station is closest to your dorm room is probably the most important thing you’ll ever do at Columbia. You need to know how many blocks, avenues, and blocks per minute-rate your walk takes to go from the cubbyhole you call home to somewhere—anywhere, please—outside of The Bubble.