The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/senior-year/)
Everyone makes jokes about freshmen and as a senior, I sense a little bit of envy in that joke: for getting a fresh start, for having every pathway open to you, arriving at a place unknown, undeclared and undefined.
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?
As I readjust to being unmasked in classes and using Willard Straight Hall’s reading room to study rather than get my nose swabbed, it’s hard not to wonder what would have been if two and a half years of my college experience had not been carved away, muffled under the blanket of ‘unprecedented times.’ Are my Ithacalves weaker from fewer climbs up the slope? Have I built less character by spending many frigid days on Zoom rather than tramping to class through feet of snow? Did I miss out on a crucial part of the Cornell experience by limiting my intake of 3 a.m. Nasty’s calzones? Or, did I just do my stomach a favor?
My 22nd birthday was an excuse to be just-a-little-bit like Taylor for the day. It was my girl-group bracing the 35 degree Ithaca cold to sit outside for my birthday brunch, my law frat brothers threatening to make everyone in Libe Cafe sing happy birthday to me if I spent the day in the library, my parents nailing my birthday present and a shout out at the Nigerian Students’ Association’s Date Auction.
As the Class of 2021 exits their final Zoom classes and bids farewell to their favorite spots on campus, seniors reflect on an unusual last year while looking ahead to their next chapter –– one marked by increased competition as COVID restrictions ease.
Clinging to the last remains of their final semester on campus, many seniors have chosen to stay in Ithaca during their self-isolation.
Hello, Josh. You thought I would let you smoothly transition to campus, uscathed by the burden of a strange, washed-up older sister? Or that I wouldn’t use the first line of my first column of my senior year to grant you the public embarrassment of your name printed in The Sun for all of campus to see? You really thought. Welcome to Cornell, my dearest brother.
As I look toward the semester ahead and consider how I should spend my last semester at Cornell, I realize how much has changed over the past three years of my time here. Most notably, so many on- and off-campus premises continue to be newly established or demolished that I may not even recognize Cornell three years from now. Renovations in Rand Hall have finally been completed almost three years after a car crashed into the building during my freshman year. Long-time Collegetown restaurants such as Aladdin’s have gone out of business and new apartment complexes are constantly under construction. Personally, I have stretched myself far and wide to adjust to new situations as they arise.
The first day of my last year at Cornell began with me co-leading a tour of first-years around campus. To be totally honest, I thought it was a pretty dreadful idea for me to be the co-lead for the tour, mostly because I have a rather unpopular opinion of the comings and goings around campus. Duffield Hall? Best place on campus in my eyes. My engineering friends think it’s a miserable wreck of a place that sucks the soul out of them, but I think it’s a quirky cross between the glassy exterior you find in extravagant skyscrapers, and the plush interior of stylish hotels.
Well, we made it. We have at long last reached the end of the road. It was a tough journey, certainly not one for the faint of heart, but despite all the pain, I believe it was worth it. This right here is my last column. As I sit write, I have to admit I’m glad I decided to go to Olin to do this because I can already feel the emotions that would no doubt have poured out in the form of tears if I wasn’t in a public place.