Columns

STELLA | So Long and Thanks For All the Fish

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Everyone tells us that college is the best four years of our life. So what now, we just eat shit? Cornell sucks us in excitedly as incoming freshmen, with clubfest and orientation, just to herd us out as quickly as possible, trying to get their numbers of employed graduates up. Yesterday I was standing on-line at RPCC for Mongolian Grill and today I’m looking at apartments in Los Angeles that have in-unit dishwashers. Do I need a bed frame when I leave college?

Columns

STELLA | Seven Saturdays Left

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I knew this was coming, all year our class has been interviewing for real-world jobs, buying grown-up pants, figuring out how much of our salary we can spend on the shoebox New York City apartment and googling how long we can stay on our parents’ insurance plans. (If I break my wrist past 27, I’m shit out of luck.) But hearing my friend phrase it in that way shattered the glass for me.

clubfest

STELLA | Thank You For Coming Out of The Womb First

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My brother guided me through clubfest (giving your email to too many groups will result in non-stop notifications), our ever-hated DUST report (is that only for Arts & Sciences?), and Greek life rush. He gave me advice without ever trying to sway me to do or join the things he did.

Columns

STELLA | Does Cornell Hate The Irish?

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For the first March ever, Ithaca is not facing Second Winter. Thanks to global warming and fossil fuel burning, the weather has picked up to the forties and fifties and shows no signs of slowing down. Parkas and scarves have been replaced by sundresses and bro-tanks (though we should have outgrown the latter after seventh grade). Despite this God-given luxury ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, Cornell won’t get on board.

Columns

STELLA | Wednesday’s Fall Break — The Semester’s Saving Grace

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The freshman year on lockdown, the shortened senior fall, the choppy internet connection on Zoom — they’re all side-effects of an uncontrollable variable about which we can do nothing but hope to end. Thank goodness for the one saving grace of this semester. The golden goose from that one fairytale, the walk-off homer in little league playoffs, the utter sense of relief when you finally make it to a bathroom after holding in a large Coke for the entirety of Parasite. Wednesday, October 14: our Fall Break. I don’t know what we would have done without it.

Columns

STELLA | What Do We Want To Be Now That We’re Grown Up?

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Some of you still have a couple years before you need to figure this out, others of you already have – the return offer signed, sealed and delivered. But how many of us will answer this question the same way as we did in kindergarten? Our misspelling hands scrawling on our first homework assignments, writing down the reasons we wanted to be firefighters, astronauts, artists, secret agents, veterinarians, movie stars, the President, our fathers and mothers. Not once did you hear trade analyst, consultant, HR representative. Yes, that’s probably because half those words weren’t in our vocabulary yet.

Columns

STELLA | The Four Stages of Quarantine Blues

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Today marks the 44th day that shelter in place has been instituted in California, and there is still no real end in sight. If you’re in one of the majority of states that still have lockdown orders, or if you’re virtuously still trying to limit your outdoor adventures in the states that are reopening early, the days are feeling long and seldom fulfilling. The activities we used to be excited about having the time to try now seem like undesirable responsibilities that we didn’t sign up for. Growing a mustache was exhilarating at first, but now grooming and styling with mustache wax has become a daily chore (need to keep it until quarantine is up though, the public needs to see what I’ve accomplished). Shearing the dog was all fun and games, but now mom makes us put sunscreen on the parts we messed up.

Columns

STELLA | The Cornellian’s Guide to Abroad

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“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” The oraculous Douglas Adams once wrote a book about a book about surviving the Universe and its contents. Diseases that cause global house arrest wouldn’t exist if the Universe didn’t, but then again, neither would Pokémon Emerald or Joe Exotic. One thing that has made our Universe slightly more tolerable (before the age of quarantine) is the ability to travel while “studying” on our little, blue, insignificant planet. It makes us feel more significant (as we can tell by the abundance of social media outbursts from local acquaintances in foreign countries).