Advice Forum

DESTROYING JOTENHEIM | The Three Essentials of Orientation Week

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Pack your schedule to the max

One of the great things about Cornell is that they are well aware of the difficult transition between high school and summer to living at college, and they go through a lot of effort to make the change as easy as possible for incoming freshmen with Orientation Week. Events start as early as the day of move-in, and if you take full advantage of the university’s scheduled activities, you shouldn’t have a single minute of empty time to stew over the discomfort of being in an entirely new and unfamiliar place. That being said, a lot of Orientation Week is what you make of it. Only a fraction of the events that you will find in the welcome guide are actually mandatory, and many tend to overlap and leave the decision of attendance up to you. As a newly former freshman myself, the best advice I can give for this portion is to go out to as many events as you can.

Advice Forum

SUNSPOTS | Ask Us Anything – Orientation 2019

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We get it! You probably have a lot of questions. We all did too. We also know that good advice can be sparse, hard to find, and mixed in with a lot of crap. So here is a form for you to ask us your most pressing questions about Food, Student Life, Extracurriculars, Classes, Ithaca, and whatever you want.

Life

INOCCIDUOUS THOUGHTS | Why Can’t I Celebrate Others’ Happiness?

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You know the feeling: Your friend just got an A in the class you got a B in, your roommate got an amazing paid internship over the summer, your best friend just got into a relationship. You want so badly to be completely happy for them because they deserve the best, but you just can’t. So why does your smile feel ingenuine, and why do the words, “I’m so happy for you!” sound sarcastic coming out of your mouth? Jealousy is a distressing human tendency, and no matter how hard we try to shove it down, it’ll always buzz in the back of our minds. It’s easy to dismiss the great accomplishments of less familiar people because we know less of their story, and the distance makes any jealous spike fade rather quickly.

Freshman Orientation 2017

SERENDIPITY | 5 Survival Tips and Tricks for New Cornell Students

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Cornell is a difficult place – colloquially, we are known as the easiest Ivy to get into… but the hardest to graduate from. While many of you are among the swaths of high school valedictorians, science fair winners and speech and debate aficionados, all of you will certainly fail at some point in your college careers. Whether you be staring at your grades with a terrible kind of awe, realizing three days later that you never turned in (or started) your final essay, or getting sent to the hospital for drinking too much during O-Week, Cornell will crush your souls in every way, shape and form. But worry not! After pressing on through four years in this frozen wasteland, you will emerge as elite graduates who have a remarkable capacity to change the world for the better.

Life

Kylie’s Room | On [unsolicited] Advice, Indecisiveness and the Dear Sugar Podcast

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Where would I be without advice? I am frustratingly indecisive when it comes to making decisions regarding my own personal life; often, I find myself going in circles trying to make a decision. From the classes I should take next semester, the clothing I should wear, career decisions, where and what I should eat for my next meal-  I often find myself sending out a quick “HELP/What should I do?” text out to friends, or dialing my mother during the middle of the work day or the wee hours of the night when I fail to make a decision. The advice that I’ve gathered through the years from friends and family has made an impactful impression upon me.