Life

INOCCIDUOUS THOUGHTS | I Feel Bad…

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There’s a time and a place for guilt. Most times it’s within reason—after doing something immoral, unethical, or unkind, it’s a necessary part of self-regulation that, without intention, keeps our emotions in check and subsequently provides a feedback mechanism for changing or continuing a behavior. Psychology Today assembled a short list of five types of guilt and how to cope with them. Interestingly, they preface with Freud’s psychodynamic theory of guilt and anxiety due to the repression of unconscious desires. With Freud in mind, the five types of guilt were listed as being: guilt for something you did, such as hurting someone physically or emotionally; guilt for something you didn’t do, but want to, such as having the desire to cheat on your partner; guilt for something you think you did, but didn’t, such as causing someone else’s misfortune by wishing it; guilt that you didn’t do enough to help others, including “compassion fatigue” which puts your own mental vitality at risk; and lastly, guilt that you’re doing better than someone else. These feelings of guilt are fairly common, but they’re rudimentary.

Campus

SUNSPOTS | What’s the Best Course You’ve Taken at Cornell?

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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.

Existential Crisis Week

Existential Crisis Week | The Checklist

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Coming into freshman year, I came to know a typical Ivy profile, a profile molded from a strict checklist and meticulously groomed to satisfy all its criteria ever since childhood. I began to notice consistent commonalities among a seemingly diverse community of academics. These commonalities read like a resume of the sophisticated, well-rounded type-A Ivy bound kid. Note, I didn’t even have a resume in high school. In addition to the stellar GPA and top-performing test scores, under curricular achievement there’s the leadership category with “President” or “Founder” alongside a plethora of other club activities and probably some sort of national honor recognition.

Politics

WHITE KNUCKLES | Personal&Political

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It takes a long time to feel at home in another country. It takes mispronunciations, catching up on a lot of pop culture to understand the references, adapting to a different kind of humor, eating unfamiliar food and walking other roads. It takes a family in both countries, whether tied by blood or by adventures and bad days at work and difficult prelims and the question of what to do next. It takes a long time, and it happens gradually; you only realize it when it’s already happened, its making slips away in days and seasons. To me, it’s happened.