YAO | Zoom and Gloom

Every time I leave a Zoom meeting, I’m left with an acute sense of emptiness. There’s no satisfaction or relief derived from getting through a lecture without falling asleep. No lingering sense of happiness that usually comes from catching up with a friend. With a single click, I’m thrust back into the stark silence of my room — a silence that only reminds me how much of an illusion these on-screen interactions really are. Think about it: At the most basic level, we’re conversing with an amalgam of pixels that either form people’s out-of-focus faces or black boxes with some white letters on them.

FOX | Hybrid Semester Threatens Cornell’s Claim to Nonprofit Status

I’m spending the month of October in Michigan, a key swing state among a small cohort sure to decide both the presidential election and control of the Senate. While this is the priority I chose to set for myself this semester, I remain enrolled as an online student taking a full credit load at Cornell. The readings are immersive and the lectures are informative. Given that most of my peers living in Ithaca have only one or two in-person courses, the class component of my education this semester is not too dissimilar to theirs. Still, without the ability to study in groups, engage in free-flowing conversation and take full advantage of university facilities, a pressing truth becomes clear: This is not worth the money.