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

OBASEKI | Dealing With The Coming Pandemic

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Something is spreading among the student population: a fast-approaching scourge that will inevitably infect a significant portion of Cornell and other schools alike. Specific to seniors, this condition risks a student’s mental, academic and even physical well-being. Often dismissed jokingly, “Senioritis” still yields serious consequences for a small portion of students whose life circumstances may compound in a perfect storm of depression, apathy and burnout.

In a time when a mental health crisis is inflicting our youth, a decline in motivation and academic performance is something we should all take seriously. Especially given that many of us will apply to graduate schools, we should stay vigilant about our academics. Whether you’re wide-eyed and optimistic about a future beyond college, or a hardened senior, dreary at the thought of one more winter in Ithaca, you mustn’t underestimate when and how you can be affected by senioritis.

Columns

ST. HILAIRE | Good Things Come to Those Who Wait, Trust Me, I’d Know

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I don’t recognize myself right now. 

Not in a bad way, it’s just that this person who greets me at the mirror each morning is miles ahead of where I expected her to be, or should I say, where I expected myself to be. 

Every semester, I’ve made a habit of checking in with myself with a single question: “Would your freshman year self recognize you?” I don’t know where the question stems from. I don’t know why I continue to ask it semester after semester. Yet, every semester I do, and I can say with certainty that the answer is a strong and resounding “no,” and I’m proud of that. 

For reference, freshman year Catherine was someone to know, and some of you did. She was 17, younger than her peers and hyper-aware of it. She was scared of being away from home and alone for the first time in her life.

Columns

OLGUÍN | The Places We’re In, The Places We Go

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I’ve recently started to dislike the spaces I have loved in the past. The spaces that were my home during the early mornings of trying to catch up on work and the long nights of racing against a deadline. Now, simply walking into the areas I once loved gives me a feeling of such palpable out-of-placeness. These spaces feel novel to me now. I remember the amount of lively people that occupied a bustling Klarman on a busy weekday, and while that’s returned in our in-person year, I now feel like I don’t know the space anymore. 

It’s filled with the unfamiliar faces of two years of undergraduate students I never had the privilege or chance to meet in passing or an in-person class.

Columns

MEIDENBAUER | The Beginning of the End: COVID and College

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For all of us in the Class of 2022, this period marks the beginning of our “lasts.” Our last first day of classes. Our last time we’ll move back into Collegetown apartments. Our last semester ever. Even as I’m typing this out, it doesn’t feel real, especially thanks to Zoom University. Like so many other seniors, I keep dreading the inevitable questions about post-grad plans.  A part of me feels like it’s somehow wrong to plan for a time after Cornell — the part of me that doesn’t quite know how to picture life any other way.  After all, like many of us, I’ve spent 16 of my 21 years in the educational system; being a student is a huge part of my life.

Columns

ONONYE | Seniors, It’s Our Turn to be Mentors

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During my freshman year, I joined Building Ourselves through Sisterhood and Service, a peer mentoring program for womxn of color on campus. Every year B.O.S.S. assigns upper-level mentors to  first-year and sophomore womxn on campus. It is very much a get-as-much-as-you-put-in sort of organization. They provide brunches, movie nights and service opportunities for mentor-mentee pairs to bond, but still encourage them to get to know each other beyond scheduled events. 

Columns

WILK | Faking it Until You Don’t Want to Make it Anymore

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I was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society in seventh grade. Our mentors were eighth-graders seasoned by nothing more than hours of community service that most either forged or substituted for familial favors. Following their footsteps, we were to stand in the middle school gymnasium and be introduced to the families of spectators in the bleachers, ending with our career aspirations. I was freshly thirteen and my future plans were far from concrete.

Columns

HUA | The Butterfly Effect

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Freshman year — pneumonia and a broken heart. Sophomore year — a broken ankle and financial stress. Junior year — bronchitis and misplaced trust. Senior year — finally finding my family at Cornell, only for these last moments with them to be snatched away. If you had asked me on my first night at Cornell whether I would ever consider writing for The Sun, I would have scoffed.