Sunspots (https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/category/cornell/page/2/)
Here I hand to you a figurative racket to bat back those mental health grenades. Everything is going to be fine. You are not alone. Beds exist. Prelims and minute-to-minute schedules are now, but beds are now and forever.
Over the course of the past couple weeks, the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement has been a particularly hot topic on campus. From initial communications between SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and Martha Pollack to an uneasy session of the Student Assembly, the issue has taken center stage for many campus organizers and members of student government. The Cornell BDS movement primarily calls for Cornell University to divest from Israel, which would require a complete cessation of funding to the state. In a letter released on February 28, Martha Pollack responded to the request for divestment with a firm ‘No’. To be clear, this article is not meant to take a stance on the BDS movement or Pollack’s refusal to divest from the State of Israel.
Alcohol Use Disorder
The label “alcoholic” is no longer appropriate to refer to someone with alcoholism. My uncle is not an alcoholic; he has an alcohol use disorder (AUD). As if this euphemism can make it easier to separate––and save––oneself from the problem. AUD is “drinking that becomes severe,” and my uncle is not a severe drinker. No, he has a problem with drinking severely at times… sometimes… most times.
Set your alarms to 7:00 a.m. sharp. Spring pre-enroll kicked off today for seniors, and the rest of campus isn’t too far behind. That there will be cries of great torment (damn you, Oracle PeopleSoft blue page redirect of death!) is certain. But beyond the immediate agony and the ecstasy, pre-enroll is also a time to anticipate our future selves, our brains and bodies to come. We choose, un-choose, and re-choose the kinds of knowledge we wish to absorb.
I spent last semester studying in the far-off land of New Zealand. Now I’m back and it’s time for that self-hatred inducing study abroad post where I tell you how I made meaning out of fleeing the country for a little bit. When I left, I told myself that I wasn’t going to be one of those obnoxious people who went on and on about how study abroad changed them, but then my publishing deadline came a knocking and I realized that I had nothing to write about, and suddenly putting out my experiences seemed like too easy a topic to pass up. I’m hoping that I can say a couple things about my time that go beyond the usual self-discovery stuff though, and instead tell you about how studying abroad shifted my perspective on Cornell life. 1) Pretty much every other place outside of the arctic circles is nicer than Ithaca.
Finals week can bring a lot of things to the surface: the sudden motivation to learn everything, a seasonal caffeine addiction, an awe-inspiring general state of self-loathing. After barely making out alive from seven finals seasons, I have come to realize that finals week also brings out the economically irrational agent hidden in all of us. Here I have listed a few principles of behavioral economics, applied to the disaster that is Cornell finals week (special thanks to Karna Malaviya):
Hyperbolic discounting
Finals season is always a time of personal reflection and contemplation. A question I frequently find myself asking in the days and hours leading up to exams as I panickedly squish months upon months of complex content into my brain is: why am I like this? The answer?
Dear Freshman Brittany,
Welcome to Cornell! You’re going to change so much over the next three years, and I’m legitimately so excited for you. A lot of your personal growth will pivot around your mental well-being. It will not be an easy or linear trajectory, but it will bring necessary and worthwhile progress. Part of me wishes I could tell you exactly what to do, what not to do, and what I wish I had done.
I have no right to feel guilty when I tell a rocket scientist or a pre-med I’m an English major. And yet I can’t seem to ditch that ball-and-chain question that follows me everywhere I go: why am I doing this? Who will I be helping? I know the generic answers, the ones that bespatter college applications: I really enjoy writing (true), I want my writing to have an impact on the world (good luck with that), I like to read (also true), my favorite author either went here or teaches here (though I cannot possibly live up to her). When I look at what my major has taught me thus far, I see infinite possibility – which is synonymous with impossibility.
“Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised.” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind
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Intra-Ivy League bickering aside, Cornell University is widely regarded as one of the top institutions of higher learning in the world. Students who graduate from our school go on to become world leaders in their industry of preference: from Wall Street and Capitol Hill to Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The design and administration of our medicine, our mortgages, our software, our textbooks, our food, our jobs, our cities and our homes all bear the mark of a Cornellian somewhere in the fine print. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a fact of our society.
“Look, this is the Bill and Melinda Gates building,” my dad said to my mom for the fifth time as we drove past Gates Hall on our way to East Hill Plaza. My parents don’t get to visit often, and I don’t blame them, since they live 2,000 miles away. My dad works as an IT, so he will always feel compelled to tell the whole family where Gates Hall is the few times they visit me. Again, I don’t blame him. I’m a first-generation student and I know my parents did not get the opportunity that I’m getting right now to study Computer Science.