Opinion

POGGI | On Being a Better Friend

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No one thinks they’re a bad friend. Few people tally events unattended or birthday texts missed on their part, yet we always notice when others fall short for us. In high school, being a good friend was relatively easy; you saw your friends throughout the day, in class or at practice, and rarely had to alter your schedule to carve out time spent together. School provided the infrastructure of friendship, and expectations of evenings at home absolve us of much planning save for weekends. This model doesn’t translate well to college, however, as I learned my freshman year.

college

CHOUNG | A Nod to New Beginnings

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To my fellow first-years, to those who are excited for a new chapter in their lives and those who are afraid to close one: believe it or not, we are in this together. We will all step foot onto campus, find our groups, find new groups, laugh, eat, sleep, cry and throughout all that, find that things do eventually become okay. It may take days, weeks or months, but before we know it, the year is over and we find ourselves counting down the days before we can return again.

Columns

ONONYE | Dear College Kids, It’s Okay to Call Your Parents More

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I have a feeling that the parents and alumni who read this are going to get excited and encourage their children to stay in touch, while the students who read this are going to assume that I am a loser with no friends. I have a lot of friends and a great social life at Cornell, and I think that’s in large part because I talk to my parents a lot.

Columns

LORENZEN | The Lists for When You Feel Listless

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Ithaca has been rainy lately. It feels like everyone is sick — either with COVID-19 or that classic mid-semester cold. The former is, of course, unrelated to the recent easing of masking and testing regulations on campus. And the latter is, naturally, unrelated to the inundation of prelims, essays and projects tumbling down from Canvas onto students during this time of the semester. We’ve reached the doldrums of spring at Cornell.

Arts & Culture

When Did Sleep Go Out of Style?

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Let’s face it: sleep just isn’t cool anymore, nor is it valued by society. Instead of encouraging exhausted people to get a good night’s sleep, society’s go-to advice is to have an energy drink and push through the pain.

Arts & Culture

GUEST ROOM | Living College Through Film

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There is this foreign feeling which emerges from watching what should be your life play out on screen: every once in a while, when watching a movie or an episode of television, I notice characters are not wearing masks, not socially distancing or going out to parties and restaurants, and think “that can’t be made today.” Otherwise realistic works of art are sapped of that reality when the crushing changes of the pandemic sink in — and it becomes all the more painful when that work of realistic art is meant to represent your youth.

college

TRUSTEE VIEWPOINT | Three Things I Learned From Virtual Cornell

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Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Cornell’s campus closure. Since then, the University community has learned to adapt to the COVID-19 world; Daily Checks and surveillance tests are now  second nature. And with a federal directive to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May, it finally seems that the end of the pandemic is near. Quarantine, for me, was a time for introspection and growth. Staying at home with family gave me a chance to deepen my relationship with my siblings.

Columns

CHEN | Put Computer Science in the Common Core

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I could easily have gone through high school without writing a single line of code. 

The one computer science course I did take was selected on a whim, a simple space-filler for my senior year schedule. Science and math were enjoyable enough, and tech seemed like the next unexplored realm. But I was also on the edge of taking a random biotechnology elective, zoology class or just leaving the space free to take extra naps. There was little to no initiative — or requirement — to learn about computing other than the fact that I found phone apps addictive and played around with Scratch when I was a kid. AP Computer Science had the same weight as my elective journalism or strings classes, not AP Chemistry or AP Language and Composition.

business

What is the Real Cost of a Cornell Education?

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Why did Cornell choose to raise tuition at a time when many are experiencing stiff financial hardship; why is the University’s financial aid lower than all of its Ivy League peers? Amid concerns about the true value of a college degree in the era of “Zoom University,” School of Industrial and Labor Relations Prof. Ronald Ehrenberg, who studies how institutions of higher education operate, explained the nuances behind some of these questions.