Orientation Week is an eye-opening experience. For new students it marks the beginning of a new life and a college career. For returnees, it’s a weeklong reaquaintance with friends, drinking games and the late night conversations with your porcelain friend that frequently follow. Regardless of the circumstance, Cornell is buzzing with excitement, eagerness and anticipation for a new semester.

I, however, am an exception to this gleeful buzz. I return to Cornell for an additional semester — a victory lap if you will — to finish my double major, academic concentration and law school applications. Having vicariously graduated last semester with my class and bulk of friends, I find myself in a fresh, unfamiliar situation. Having few friends and ties to lower classes, it seems that in the aspects of novelty I am once again a freshman.

At the beginning of freshman year, I was very nervous and insecure as I embarked on a new lifestyle in a new environment. With that challenge, however, came great freedom and liberty to recreate and hone my goals, attitude, self-image and reputation. Away from parents and anyone that would have a remote chance of knowing me (I come from a small island in South Carolina), I had the ability to start over — to create a life with objectives that could be as farcical as possible from my previous person. I was the new Carl Menzel — the college Carl Menzel.

I quickly identified the pros and cons of my previous life and outlined a skeleton of adjectives I wished to embody. Terms such as “cool,” “life of the party,” a “guy’s guy” and a “ladies man” all sounded hip, desirable and absolutely foreign to me. Though I had a successful life to that point, certain sacrifices were made, and to characterize myself without the previous descriptors was not far-fetched. Instead, I was known as a “nice young man” who was described as “polite, hard-working, intelligent, conscientious and ambitious.” While these terms, and the life that yielded them, were good enough for my family and childhood friends, they weren’t good enough for me once I had left high school. I was tired of spending weekend nights waiting tables and playing board games — I wanted to be part of the “scene,” and college offered the perfect opportunity for this metamorphosis.

Armed with this brazen demeanor, I jumped right into the college environment. Recognizing the tremendous breadth of opportunities Cornell offered both scholastically and socially, I began to assimilate to my new persona’s demands. I signed up for courses that were scattered with no particular academic concentration or focus. I didn’t look into joining any student clubs or extracurricular activities. Instead I booked my weekends, and soon after, my weekdays, with parties, sports and social hours (aka doing nothing). I changed my responsible sleep and living schedule into a havoc-wreaked chaos that revolved around dinner and its subsequent time-wasting activities. I quickly began to be described with the aforementioned “positive” adjectives. College had been a success.

That is, unless, of course, one measures success in ridiculous terms such as GPA, reliability and responsibility. While I was obsessed with transforming myself into the quintessential high school prom king, I had sacrificed many core values, beliefs and goals that allowed me to achieve and get to Cornell in the first place. Furthermore, I soon realized that I was playing to the wrong audience. While it may have been cool to neglect homework and arrive at class disheveled and/or hungover in high school, I was at a place that not only rewarded but expected punctuality, dedication and responsibility — the very characteristics I had championed on my college application. While I was so busy trying to adjust my image for the majority, I failed to realize that in my new world my previous yet more “boring” attributes were, in fact, the new majority.

Luckily this epiphany occurred with enough time to salvage fall term grades —and resident hall reputation. I suppose this realization completed my initial college maturity cycle — one of many that have occurred since. I have since not obliterated either persona, but have learned to meld the previous Jekyll-Hyde Carl into one manageable entity. I learned how to enjoy parties, sports and leisure (after all, it would be an equally venal sin to complete college having ignored this aspect) without sacrificing my core values and goals in the process.

I am aware this enlightening occurs to almost every student at some point, which is why I am a staunch believer that Cornellians epitomize the “work hard, play hard” philosophy. Freshman year — though complicated and demanding — presents many new opportunities that should be explored with guarded aggressiveness. I look forward to joining the Class of 2011 in enjoying new freshman-like freedoms and experiences — in a much more controlled manner this time around. And if anyone ever wants additional advice, I’m the mature, responsible hard-working young man taking tequila shots at the bars on a Tuesday night.

Carl Menzel is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at

cdm38@­c­o­r­n­ell.edu. Southern Style will appear alternate Fridays this semester.