2008 Woodie Awards
Cornell: The Flipside Perspective
Reid Kiyabu
Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: Commentary
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Last week's Colgate Maroon-News featured a commentary piece about the horrors of Cornell University. The author spoke of her depressing experience at Summer College 2007, and elaborated to educate us on the coldness of its prospective students. I, too, attended Cornell last summer, with a completely different take on the college, with its year-round garlands of ivy and altophobia-inducing gorges.
To tell you the truth, Cornell was a very self-fulfilling experience for me. Every year of high school previous to two summers ago felt monotonous and scripted. Like many of you, I felt like a slave to the college application process. The sad truth about the modern high school student is that he or she is highly likely to act not upon their preferences, but upon their extrinsically proclaimed "best interests". I was a model for making decisions based on my "best interests" and even the decision to attend Cornell was not fully my own. Fortunately, as I sat on my sagging mattress, in the single room that was to be my home-away-from-home for three weeks, I told myself that, because I was there, I had better make the best of it, even though I'd much rather sit at home by the beach sipping virgin lava flows with my best friends and family.
Surprisingly, it was not very difficult to integrate myself into the college way of life. I developed and stuck to a routine - something I had never done before - and I got through the three weeks with minimal ego-bruising, earning an "A" in "ST&S 145: Body, Mind, and Health: Perspectives for Future Medical Professionals".
Receiving an "A" in my first college-level course was encouraging, but the most rewarding aspect was learning about myself, and my capacity for excellence and self-reliance. In those three short weeks, I acclaimated myself to a place I never realized I could tolerate, and I smashed through all of the psychological barriers that kept me from developing a passion for school and life in general.
To tell you the truth, Cornell was a very self-fulfilling experience for me. Every year of high school previous to two summers ago felt monotonous and scripted. Like many of you, I felt like a slave to the college application process. The sad truth about the modern high school student is that he or she is highly likely to act not upon their preferences, but upon their extrinsically proclaimed "best interests". I was a model for making decisions based on my "best interests" and even the decision to attend Cornell was not fully my own. Fortunately, as I sat on my sagging mattress, in the single room that was to be my home-away-from-home for three weeks, I told myself that, because I was there, I had better make the best of it, even though I'd much rather sit at home by the beach sipping virgin lava flows with my best friends and family.
Surprisingly, it was not very difficult to integrate myself into the college way of life. I developed and stuck to a routine - something I had never done before - and I got through the three weeks with minimal ego-bruising, earning an "A" in "ST&S 145: Body, Mind, and Health: Perspectives for Future Medical Professionals".
Receiving an "A" in my first college-level course was encouraging, but the most rewarding aspect was learning about myself, and my capacity for excellence and self-reliance. In those three short weeks, I acclaimated myself to a place I never realized I could tolerate, and I smashed through all of the psychological barriers that kept me from developing a passion for school and life in general.
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