Greetings people of Cornell! My name is Corey Brezak and I will be one of your new opinion columnists for the fall semester (and maybe longer if the Sun editors are crazy enough). Every other week I will provide you with a glimpse of what goes on in my brain, and believe me, it is a scary place. If you could pop open the top of my head and look around inside, you would probably see chimpanzees doing cartwheels, clowns riding unicycles and Derek Jeter getting base-hits to right field. What I’m trying to say is this: Read at your own risk.I guess I should tell you a little about myself, so here are some fun facts: My favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is Donatello because he got stuck with the crappiest weapon (a stick). I hardly ever cry during movies, but Toy Story 3 made me bawl like a little baby. Whenever my roommates are all out of my apartment, I like to sing, dance and play air guitar to the song “Your Love” by The Outfield while wearing nothing but my underwear. I strongly believe that mint chocolate chip ice cream is superior to every other ice cream flavor out there. And last, but not least, I am an Applied Economics and Management major.You’re probably wondering to yourself: “Why is this weirdo from AEM writing for the Daily Sun anyway? Shouldn’t he be staring at Yahoo Finance all day while drool slowly drips down from the corner of his mouth?” Well, the truth is that AEM and I go together about as well as LeBron James and winning championships, or the Jersey Shore cast and high IQs. (Snooki for President, anyone?) Over the years my business classes have felt like unfunny versions of the Ben Stein lecture from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (YouTube it), and I started to realize that the only classes I really enjoyed were from outside of my major. I think it finally hit me one day in Managerial Accounting when I was about to stab myself in the eye with a No. 2 pencil because the boredom had become too unbearable. “Maybe I need to switch out of AEM for good,” I thought to myself.But of course, I did not switch out of AEM for two reasons. First, I am an extremely lazy individual. (Who wants to fill out paperwork?) Secondly, and more importantly, my parents guaranteed me that if I graduated from the AEM program I would be set for life. “AEM is ranked very high on that ranking list,” they would tell me. I assumed this meant that at job interviews, the interviewer would see “AEM” on my resume and immediately get on his hands and knees, kiss my feet and promote me to CEO of the company. This assumption was slightly inaccurate, however, as proven during this past summer when I was the one on my hands and knees begging for an internship. (Luckily, I did find an internship after six months of submitting applications. It’s like they always say: If at first you don’t succeed, try 100 more times and if you still don’t succeed, start making up stuff on your resume.)Being a business major also means that, like other majors, you are probably going to be typecast in a certain way. When I tell other students that I’m in AEM, they immediately give me that look, as if to say, “Oh, you’re one of those kids.” There is undoubtedly a stereotype that everyone in AEM is a future Gordon Gekko, and this is completely and utterly false — AEM is also filled with future Bernie Madoffs and future Lloyd Blankfeins. Get your stereotypes right, people!Ha, I’m kidding. (I just really wanted to use that joke.) I do love my AEM brethren, but they are definitely more pre-professional than I would like to be. It makes me wonder if these kids had dreamed of being investment bankers when they were in elementary school. You know what I dreamed of being? An astronaut. (Speaking of which, why can’t I major in “Being an Astronaut” here at Cornell? Isn’t our motto “any person, any study?” If I want to learn how to be an astronaut, they should let me. And it should be as similar to Space Camp as possible, because my parents didn’t let me go when I was young. I am still pissed about that.)Anyway, I hope all of this sort of answers the question of why I am writing this column. I may not like my major very much, but I do like to write. And I think you and I are going to have a fantastic semester together. That’s right, I’m talking to you — brown-haired kid in Trillium eating a turkey sandwich.(Somewhere in Trillium, a brown-haired kid reading The Daily Sun just dropped his turkey sandwich in disbelief.)This is going to be fun.Corey Brezak is a senior in the College Agriculture and Life Sciences. He may be reached at [email protected]. Taking My Talents to C-Town appears alternate Mondays this semester.
Original Author: Corey Brezak