The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/noahdo/)
After the day-long affair of elections and a gauntlet of long missed in-person speeches charged with an electrifying fervor for student journalism, The Cornell Daily Sun has elected its 141st editorial board. This year’s group of shining Sunnies is poised to create a board that is as vibrant and zealous as its namesake number is palindromic.
It’s become something of an ongoing series on Noah’s Arc to reflect on the specific highs and lows of being in the class of 2024 and entering college in the thick of the pandemic. I’ll admit that most of the reflection has been negative; I suppose the downsides are easier to write about and certainly easier to write sarcastic quips around.
To make this more personal to Cornell students, let’s consider this game in terms of college majors instead of careers: which majors would you want to start a new civilization with? Right off the bat, majors from all of Human Ecology, Dyson, Hotel, ILR and most of Arts & Sciences can all be nixed entirely, save for maybe Nutritional Science in Human Ecology. CALS and Engineering are where we find the most bang for our buck, with such majors as Food Science, Animal Science, Mechanical Engineering and Environmental Engineering having obvious utility.
Anime viewers love to imagine being the sole friend of a gorgeous, shy intellect who clings onto their every word. Similarly, “golden retriever boy” characters like Jun-ho and Yi-jin give fans tall, broad-shouldered, blank canvases to dump their ideal man fantasies onto. As we all know, real life is never this simple. Romance requires a lot more than good looks and listening to your partner’s whale stories, and real people rarely reciprocate your feelings in exactly the way you want.
As a child, I never understood the idea of a parent living vicariously through their kids. I had seen so many sitcom episodes about little Billy being forced to play baseball just because his dad never made it to the Little League finals, or similar stories of parents learning to let go of their expectations for their children, but I was never able to fully process the parents’ emotions. How could your child’s achievements possibly make up for your own regrets and shortcomings?
People throw parties to have fun, but they require a detachment from each of our personal identities that makes the whole affair seem impersonal. Out on the dance floor and in the fraternity and sorority houses, everyone is looking out for themselves, only interested in making their night as memorable as possible. At a school as competitive as Cornell, I spend too much of my time battling the curve to have to fend for myself at a party full of strangers.
I’m sure many of you reading are already thinking of some people that you harbor a one-sided dislike for. At least, I hope you all are, otherwise this column may have just exposed me as a full-time narcissist. Regardless, I can think of a few examples of encounters with strangers that have left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Late August and non-frozen-hellscape weather once again mark the start of a brand new school year. A fresh set of classes to attend to diligently, new dorm rooms to christen with unwashed laundry and a fervor for the spirit of academic exploration that runs through our Big Red veins. Not to mention, a whole new cohort of bright-eyed freshmen embarking on their college journeys — all in the surveillance test-free comfort of their brand-spanking-new dorms and boujee pastry cafes. Back in my day, North Campus was a pile of dirt, rock, machinery and cigarette butts. These whippersnappers just don’t know how good they have it.
As of sometime last week, I am officially a humanities major. My switch to English from Human Biology, Health and Society was a move that 2020 Noah would never have expected, given my high school background in math and science. Before this column, writing was never a hobby of mine, let alone something I’d be willing to commit my college education to.
I have to admit that as a pre-med, I am only really taking on half the burden of a humanities track. My worries about employability are at least temporarily assuaged by the comparably hand-holdy structure of applying for medical school (granted, the extreme levels of competition makes that process scary in its own right). The skeptical confusion that people get when I tell them my major at least turns into mildly doubtful fascination when they learn I’m still on the pre-med track.
Even if I’m sort of two-timing the liberal arts crew, I still feel I am uniquely qualified to comment on the division that seems to exist between sciences and humanities.
s column is published, I will be turning 20 years old in two days. It’s a big milestone, of course, leaving your teens. Even though 18 and 21 get most of the attention, entering one’s twenties marks yet another shifting of the line for what is considered adulthood.