Columns

YAO | Give Me a Break

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During one of the wellness days in March, I took the advice on the Cornell University Instagram page to take a long walk around campus and refresh. My sense of rejuvenation lasted for all of two and a half minutes until I remembered an assignment deadline fast approaching. I spent the majority of those two days catching up on work and cramming for a quiz scheduled for the Friday of that week. Based on the number of people hunched over laptops in the Physical Sciences Building where I was studying, I wasn’t the only one who viewed wellness days as synonymous with workdays. 

I hate to break it to you, Cornell, but four random days off during the semester don’t count as a real “mental health break.” Even during a non-pandemic semester, by this point in the year students are running on fumes. Spring break usually acts as an oasis of reprieve within the mid-semester slump and offers a chance to muster up enough motivation to tackle the latter part of the semester.

books

YAO | Read All About It

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Back in ye olden days, I spent my afternoons maxing out the book limit at my local library and my evenings traveling to Oz or Narnia for hours at a time. The table by my bed perpetually labored under a precarious stack of novels that always seemed to grow higher. But soon enough, that library card spent more and more time inside some drawer or another before I eventually misplaced it. My nightstand heaved a sigh of relief as the pile of books dwindled to nothing. 

Somewhere between sixth-grade’s The Giver (which I enjoyed) and twelfth-grade’s Hamlet (which I skimmed before the exam), I put down leisure reading for good. There was no more time for such things, I reasoned.

Code Yellow

YAO | On-Campus Ruminations After a Semester Away

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Five months ago, amid a whole lot of FOMO but even more uncertainty, I wrote a column titled Cornell Study Abroad: Home Edition. I had elected to stay at home for the fall semester due to a variety of reasons, not least because of the rising case count and the mounting panic I felt every time another university shut down. But just as staying home last semester felt like the best decision at the time, coming back felt natural for this spring. Remote school had reached the stage of monotony where any change seemed better than the existing condition, so I took the leap and found my way back to the snowy gorges of upstate New York. 

After almost an entire year away, being back in Ithaca is a bit like a fever dream. I can only describe it as feeling like seeing a friend you had lost contact with, only to realize upon meeting that you had both drastically changed.

Columns

YAO | Complacency: Just as Contagious, Even More Dangerous

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Recently, Pfizer announced that the company had ended its coronavirus vaccine trial with a 95 percent success rate. Moderna shortly followed with news that those who received two doses of the vaccine still had elevated levels of antibodies three months later. This is news that we have waited on for almost a year, and it is most certainly cause for hope and celebration –– we finally have the means to quell the virus that governs our lives. 

However, that doesn’t mean that we can relax and resume our lives as usual. It’s dangerous to succumb to the boredom and agitation that makes us complacent and impulsive. We cannot forget that contracting the virus can mean life or death.

Columns

YAO | Online Learning Isn’t All Bad, Keep the Good After the Pandemic

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I am loath to admit that Zoom University has any good qualities. Breakout room discussions in which one person asks a question followed by ten minutes of awkward silence. I’m pretty sure we’ve all had at least one big internet scare the hour before a crucial prelim or project due date. I have fallen asleep at least eight times this semester during lecture. Okay, fine, maybe that last one is my own fault, but I’m still going to blame it on Zoom. 

But, I have to give credit where credit is due, and some parts of the online environment are –– dare I make such a bold claim –– not the absolute worst thing in the world.

Columns

YAO | Bring Back Opt-In S/U

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Last semester, Cornell implemented an opt-in S/U grading policy, where students had until the end of the semester to switch any class to S/U — even if the course did not previously offer it as a grading option. Furthermore, courses where students received a satisfactory grade could be used to satisfy major or minor requirements. In doing so, the University recognized the need for flexibility and solicitude during a year where we saw the world as we knew it fall apart. Some of that empathy might come in handy this semester as well. This fall, Cornell chose to revert to standard grading practices, implying that students should treat the semester the same manner they treated every other year.

Columns

YAO | Zoom and Gloom

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Every time I leave a Zoom meeting, I’m left with an acute sense of emptiness. There’s no satisfaction or relief derived from getting through a lecture without falling asleep. No lingering sense of happiness that usually comes from catching up with a friend. With a single click, I’m thrust back into the stark silence of my room — a silence that only reminds me how much of an illusion these on-screen interactions really are. Think about it: At the most basic level, we’re conversing with an amalgam of pixels that either form people’s out-of-focus faces or black boxes with some white letters on them.