Columns

BARAN | Letters to the Writing on the Wall #2

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These words may mean little to you. But hopefully, they mean something to just a couple people here at Cornell, sitting in Zeus or in Libe Café reading a discarded copy of today’s paper. Hopefully, those people will get up, walk outside and smile at the nervous-looking student on the Arts Quad. Hopefully, those people will go to dinner that night, or next week, or next month, and plop down next to the kid sitting alone.

Columns

NGUYEN | My Spring of Surrender

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It wasn’t until I untethered myself from our culture of excess that I was able to unearth the bounties that so many student organizations had promised me as a freshman: connection, community, interest development and identity formation. It’s almost like I can hear myself better in this quiet, like I can finally breathe without the congestion of my old commitments. It’s been in this spring of surrender that I’ve felt the freest.

Columns

JOKHAI | If You Think Cornell Doesn’t Care About Your Mental Health, It’s Because It Didn’t Plan To

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Throughout all these crises, the idea of being “the campus on the hill,” separate and safe from the dangers of the rest of the world, seemed to many students as a farce. It would appear as though Cornell doesn’t address the student deaths as a collective event that continuously impacts the student body morale; the numbers of lost students have not been made readily accessible to the public prior to Do Better Cornell’s statement, which only adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and fear. Throughout all these examples of anxiety-inducing events, there has existed a surreal amount of dissonance between the Cornell administration’s attitudes, those of its faculty and those of its students.

Cornell Health

As Prelims Approach, Students and Experts Discuss Effects of Stress on Mental Health

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The recent switch to in-person classes has excited many students for the semester ahead, but as the first week of prelims approaches, some have expressed apprehension about the start of exams due to the stress they faced last semester. 

In November, occurrences of bomb threats and gunmen on campus were followed by finals week. Students including Lindsey Feinstein ’24 and Amber Lao ’24 expressed that they feel built up pressure to finish their assignments and perform on their exams while many are still struggling with poor mental health. 

For many, online classes were not an easy undertaking. Feinstein spoke on the stress that online finals this past semester gave her. 

“This shift was very abrupt, and it was anxiety-inducing to shift gears into a different format of learning,” said Feinstein. Feinstein said that students have felt a decline in their academic process due to external factors, such as the bomb threats and the gunmen announcement. Feinstein said the threats made her feel less safe on campus, which consequently disrupted her daily routine.

bomb threat

WILK | Winter Breaking Bad

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Every interlude between semesters starts and ends the same: with the stress of doing it right. Coming face to face in class and on campus means tiny talk about big plans. That’s something I understood after just my first season of breaks, and in anticipation, I’ve been sharpening my reflexes to kick away questions of how I spent it — like a single dollar I couldn’t stretch. 

I still don’t know how to break like a Cornellian, people whose pauses come only with the promise we’ll get busy again. So many of my pauses have left things in a pile to be picked up where they were left, a load no less precarious or heavy. Even without the rigor of academics or internships, relaxation can’t find its way in.

Arts & Culture

Intentionally Let Go to Unintentionally Let In

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Since the backwards law encourages us to focus on the deeper, underlying meaning behind our goals, I was forced to reevaluate where my values came from and why they were important — pushing me to intentionally let go of objectives that added no true value to my life.