This column appears in the 2007 edition of The Sun's annual Freshman Issue.
Put your keys on a key chain and put your ID in your wallet. The freshman lanyard-around-the-neck thing is so grotesquely band summer campish and is an unwelcome throwback to an era when acid-washed jeans reigned supreme.
And that’s the only advice I’m going to give you. From here, you’re on your own to make mistakes. So many newbies arrive at Cornell fresh off a summer spent sitting in front of computer screens meticulously planning the perfect first year. If you’re one of these freshmen, hours have been invested in scoping out and communicating with future classmates. You do this with every intention of securing a group of friends, a packed social schedule and the street smarts to navigate the mean sidewalks of Ithaca.
Yeah, it’s cool. I did it too.
Guess what? Once school starts, maybe (maybe) one good friend will emerge and remain a fixture in your life from that pool of Facebook friends you haven’t yet met. If you’re as lucky as I was, you’ll first encounter the guy you’ve been flirting with online all summer on the way back from your swim test when you’re soaking wet and your mascara is dripping off your chin. Perhaps you’ll even have a booger hanging from your left nostril. Yes.
Stop planning. That’s not advice; that’s an order. Let yourself make your own mistakes and let freshman year happen to you. Want to blow off a prelim sometime? Go for it and enjoy trying to pull it out during finals week. Interested in hooking up with someone on your floor? By all means, do so, and you won’t so much as consider looking at anyone in your residence hall ever again. Wear Uggs on rainy days, pay for a $60 pedicure in October, make fun of a hotelie. Spend your evenings on the phone with your high school girlfriend. Wear a Harvard shirt. Try to get into The Palms with a fake ID. You learned all about what kind of places are strict with IDs on the Class of 2011 website forums and you know about the best sororities thanks to the various Facebook group walls.
Forget everything you think you know. Please. Let yourself be a freshman.
The first year of college develops much like an intense romantic relationship. It’s unpredictable; it will come up to you on the dance floor and grind on you when you’re sipping your cheap beer, will develop into a love that’s life-changing and will shake you to your core. You arrive in Ithaca and find yourself dazzled by all the commotion. Nothing compares to those first warm Ithaca nights that you and Cornell spend getting to know each other. You move into your residence hall and all at once, you find yourself falling deeply in love with Cornell and all its treasures. You forget to call your mother. In this honeymoon stage, you care enough to shower and put makeup on (or a clean shirt, whatever) every time you leave your room for one of those magical first dates with your new Big Red lover. You’re giddy. When you finally get around to calling someone from high school, all you can talk about is the new love of your life.
Eventually, though, you and Cornell settle into a ho-hum routine and once prelim season hits, the relationship becomes wrought with hardship and difficulty. You envy your friends over at Southwestern Alabama State who remain in healthy, functioning relationships while you’re feeling trapped, misunderstood and tortured. The sky is gray, the forecasts bleak. Since you’re already committed (you did put a $40,000 diamond ring on Cornell’s finger, after all), the two of you forge ahead with various ups and downs for several months before Cornell finally decides to break it off.
Slope Day is your explosive, passionate breakup sex. And just like breakup sex, it feels marvelous while it’s all happening and then the next day you’re left smelly and battered and feeling like crap.
And once you’ve got some distance from campus, you miss the hell out of Cornell and you come crawling right back. Typical.
So begins your epic love affair with this place. Cornell can be a shitty boyfriend and can put you down and abuse you when you’re at you weakest, but you love it deeply anyway. And like one of those great love stories that not every person is so lucky to have in their lifetime, it really never ends — go online and check the comments on The Sun website; you’d be surprised at the staggering number of alumni still keeping tabs on the goings-on at their alma mater. Cornell remains in their hearts and, years after you graduate, it will remain in yours too.
Good luck, guys. And remember what I said about those lanyards.
Jenna Bromberg is a senior in the School of Hotel Administration. She can be contacted at jkb34@cornell.edu. Fast Times at Statler High appeared alternate Fridays this past semester.