The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/ksong/)
In a few weeks, our University will welcome a batch of freshmen who are already navigating the confusing pandemic alongside the rest of us. But unlike us, they may never experience Cornell as the bustling school we once knew.
In some ways, traveling across the country was exactly how I pictured it would be: a black Jeep rumbling from the coasts of Florida to the vineyards of California, long nights fueled by Slim Jims and one dinky motel after another. But on this particular trip, there were also floor-to-ceiling face shields in hotel lobbies, prairies swarming with wildlife in the absence of humans and long lines for lottery tickets to enter national parks. I began my journey on March 28 in a passenger seat next to my boyfriend, eating our last CTB sandwiches as we veered onto the freeway. Over the span of 18 states, 5,500 miles and four weeks on the road, we would witness COVID-19 evolve from its first beginnings to a country-wide pandemic, manifested in distinct ways from one state to another. But as we rushed out of Cornell that evening, we knew only a few basic facts: We had grandparents residing in both of our homes, and we needed to avoid flights at all costs.
I was a horticulture intern at the Ithaca Children’s Garden, a three-acre public park that includes a life-sized troll house, a giant stone turtle and live chickens
After the pandemic, I’m not sure where the next place I call “home” will be.
My freshman roommate once asked me, as she blinked awake to the cloudy, Ithaca sky filtering through our dorm window, “Kelly, are you ever so stressed that you can feel it in your chest when you wake up?” I, having just woken up ten minutes ago, looked at her, looked at the fort of laundry between us that needed to be done and just nodded. Earlier this week, almost exactly three years since that conversation, I woke up to that feeling in my chest again. Immediately, I thought of her and our yellowish wood furniture and string lights that clearly violated safety hazards — what a stressful, chaotic, beautiful time. It occurs to me now that her musings always came at a particular time, and it happens to be that time of year again — early March or, more to the point, summer internship acceptance season. When someone brings up the words “summer internship,” I am immediately overwhelmed by a series of thoughts: I have not found one yet.
Somehow, three years after I’ve come to Cornell, I am more confused than ever about what a “community” means. This is not surprising — Cornell, in many ways, has always been a congregation of pieces to me: a campus too wide to grasp, with too many people to meet and too many opportunities to seize and miss at the same time. Going into junior year, these elements seemed to come to a stagnant halt. Being an upperclassman started feeling like I’d been part of the same clubs and organizations all my college life, yet I’d established my roots too deep to find an identity anywhere else. I decided to quit Cornell’s competitive ballroom dancing team at the beginning of this semester. Or at least, take a very long break from it.
The first time my boyfriend and I talked about the definition of love, we were in a New York City apartment. The summer was humid and scented with moss, and in a crowded kitchen, we talked about what love means — argued about it, really. We quickly realized this word required a definition neither of us could grasp — a concept simultaneously as expansive as the city awake around us, yet as narrow as the mortar between brick walls. We haven’t talked about that definition in a while, but I hear it discussed all the time around me, in cafés, in classrooms, in libraries. And as Valentine’s Day comes around, there emerges a widening rift between those who are lonely and those who are not, those who are cuffed and those who are eating ice cream alone in their bed, those who are happy and those who are heartbroken.
I’ve been waking up these past few days with the same strange, rare feeling — I am at Cornell and feeling motivated.
I call it the “beginning-of-the-semester high.” Anyone who is a human and studies at Cornell knows what it is: that feeling at the beginning of every semester when everything still feels possible, productive and hopeful. I’ve seen my friends (and myself) suddenly have the urge to make an omelet for breakfast and spend more than 20 seconds picking out the day’s outfit, then take the longer, more nature-filled route to the first lecture. Time and time again, I hear friends setting goals around this time of the semester, saying things like “I’ll go to class more often” or “I’ll coordinate chores with my housemates” or “I’ll try to cook more this semester.”
It’s strange how there’s a period of time when we suddenly feel like our lives are put together. Maybe it’s the freshness of a new beginning, or the promise of a rare week with no tests, but something in the air is different. Whatever it is, I like it.
Every Thanksgiving before college, my mother and I used to prepare the dinner table together. She would bring out trays of ginger candies and sunflower seeds, and I would fill the teapot with Oolong. She didn’t believe in making turkey — our Asian family, like many others, has a mysterious aversion to white meat— so she would always prepare a roast duck. My sister and father would join us at the dinner table, and we would spoon pieces of duck on “bing,” piling on sliced cucumbers, scallions, black bean sauce and oozes of Sriracha. It was never cold in California, but there was always the same warm glow inside.
My parents packed all their luggage in one just bag when they came to the United States from China. That’s a story my family loves to tell over and over again — the layers of coats my mother wore so she could bring over all her clothes, the prized kitchen knife my father snuck past security, the Scott McKenzie song playing on the airplane when they first landed. But I never quite thought about what my parents couldn’t pack — the scallion pancakes from the shack downstairs in their province, my mother’s pink bike she rode for three days on a road trip, the Napa cabbage blooming behind their old home. All their brothers, sisters, cousins. Those were all faint elements I knew existed, but never saw for myself.