I hope you are doing well! It’s been a month now since you’ve entered college, and I wanted to check in. I remember this being a hard time, full of all kinds of feelings.
On the plus side, homesickness has started to subside. The campus is beginning to become more familiar, the walk uphill both ways no longer leaving you as out-of-breath as it used to.The path, too, to your classes is familiar too, and you are no longer always relying on Google Maps to get you to class on time. You’ve discovered Sunday dim sum brunches at RPCC and realized that college is different, and it is a different feeling to wake up at 7 AM for class now. People, too, are becoming more familiar to you. There’s that person you chat with about CHEM 2070 every single day, your roommate, and that person who is also a freshman in your major who you sort of recognize but have never spoken with. Regardless, you’re starting to find the rhythm that works for you and the people that will take care of you at your home away from home, with sights and waterfalls that are still as awe-inspiring as they were on your first day. Many of these people you meet will be your friends for life and then some, and those sights will never get old.
However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows (though there often are rainbows on Triphammer Falls)! You’re probably thinking about your first round of prelims right now, which are starting just around now and will not stop until the end of the semester. Yikes. To that, I want to say you can do it—however your first round of prelims goes, it does not define you! If you ace them and get 100% on them all, props to you. More time and energy can be spent on having fun, delving into a passion, or exploring new clubs and extracurricular activities. On the other hand, if they don’t go as well as you’d hoped, I would like to remind you of a few things.
First, know that Cornell is a very challenging school—the best of the best attend Cornell, and any differences between people are not large. Your grades do not define who you are, and everyone has different commitments in their life that allow them to spend more or less time studying. You belong here.
Let me say that again: You belong here.
Sometimes, we are so focused on the outcome that we forget everything that led up to it. It is so easy to overcommit at Cornell, because we are both privileged and cursed with so much freedom and choice.
Time is really such a commodity at Cornell! It’s very easy to want to do everything available, every extracurricular you are even remotely interested in, because that was possible in high school. Similarly, it is easy to want to hit the credit limit and hate HumEc for having an 18 academic credit limit. There’s a social pressure to sleep very little because apparently, the less you sleep, the harder you must be working, a myth that is simply not true. Sleep and taking care of yourself should be just as much of a scheduled task as any of your problem sets or readings, because they will help you to do better on exams and tasks.
And lastly, I just wanted to address that this is no ordinary semester, and it is extraordinarily difficult to attend school during a pandemic. Whether you are in class remotely from your home or on-campus, everything is more difficult, and no one knows what is going on. This is uncharted territory for us all, but like any good explorer, you have a trusty compass to guide you—whether that is your friends and family, your professors and TAs, Cornell counselling services, or even us at the CEC, you are not alone. We will get through this, and there will be an other side. Please reach out if you are starting to feel lost. Take care!
Warmly,
The Human Ecology Career Exploration Center