Opinion

DO | The Beginning of an End

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This is an especially pivotal time for this column to be returning — graduation looms on the horizon and I’m faced with the same conundrum that graduating seniors have faced for centuries: How do I cope with leaving? I’m asked the very sweet yet wholly unoriginal question of how I feel about graduating on what seems like a daily basis, so I figured I’d compile my thoughts here for easy access. For some, the idea of coping with graduating may not even be a thought. If your vision of Cornell is an incubator for pre-professional juggernauts with more LinkedIn experiences than fulfilling hobbies, then graduation probably feels like it couldn’t come sooner. If you’re like me, though, LinkedIn gives you indigestion and graduation means leaving behind four precious years of your life. 

Perhaps I should say two precious years — my freshman and sophomore years were valuable in their own ways, but I can’t promise I’ll be looking back on pandemic-era dorm life on a construction site all that fondly.

Columns

YAO | Saying Goodbye to ‘Hello Katie’

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I’ve been accumulating ideas for this final column since freshman year. Amorphous thoughts stored in the back of my mind, half-baked phrases in the notes app on my phone, 3 a.m. text message wisdom to friends. Yet now, when I have to transform my jumbled miscellanea into coherent sentences, nothing I can write feels adequate. After all, how do you consolidate four years, one pandemic, a million existential crises and a billion more memories into a cohesive narrative? 

Columns

CIPPERMAN | The Class That Saved Cornell

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Every graduating senior knows some version of my story at Cornell. The class of 2023 is unique, and unified, in our trials and triumphs through COVID-19. We alone have seen the before and after. We are the class that watched Cornell fall apart, and we are the class that rebuilt it — preserving and restoring the traditions, cultures and communities that make this place worthwhile. For once, I write not to break news in The Sun, but to express generational solidarity. Our class, despite all odds and administrative difficulties, saved Cornell.

Columns

DERY | One Last Lick

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The other day, I spoke with a friend who asked about how I liked my time at Cornell. To that I said, “I got lucky.” I got lucky starting a fantasy football league with two podmates on the fourth floor of Kay Hall. I got lucky randomly sitting next to a student at Appel, who later that night introduced me to a fellow physics major. They are all now my closest friends. I got lucky that home was a two hour bus ride away, and I could go see family and reset whenever I needed. I got lucky that I had a support system around me that talked me out of stupid decisions like pulling unnecessary all-nighters, and talked me into stupider ones like bat hunting in McGraw Hall.