Roses are Red, Violets are Blue

The third column of 2nd semester.

Roses are red; violets are blue. Sixty percent of Cornellians marry one another. This Valentine’s Day, I wondered, is that rumor really true? A sizeable percentage of Cornellians meet their future spouses on campus. For Jessica Shaw ’99 and her fiancé Joel Raha ’99, “Our relationship struck up senior year at a Zinck’s Night sponsored by the Class of 1999 to celebrate 99days before graduation. Eight years later to the month we began dating, he proposed to me,” she shared. More recently, Matt O'Connor ’06 and Summer Peck ’07 were engaged. They were set up by Summer's sorority sisters for a formal dance, and the rest is history.

Significant forces propel these and other Cornell couples together — attraction, common interests, and shared values. Of course, the nearness in proximity, or propinquity, certainly helped. Bumping into a cool guy in the dining hall often enough is bound to lead towards an eventual date, right? But, wait … did we actually date in college? Do “watch a movie in my room” or “meet at that party” count as the formal invitations of our parents’ generation? You can blame it on the studying not leaving us any time to make plans in advance or the desire to just hook up on the dance floor, but dating in college is more of an anomaly than a frequent occurrence.

To be fair, amidst this environment, we adapted. We dated by going ice skating in Lynah Rink or meeting for Bubble Tea. Sometimes, those dates evolved into boyfriends who I saw around campus everyday. As our relationships developed, I grew to know them within a world of shared social lives, student organizations and academic deadlines. Of course, when we broke up, I wished the campus were bigger so that I wouldn’t bump into them so often.

While some of us stay in relationships that began on campus, maintaining them can be challenging. After Cornell, our paths take us in directions where we are no longer a five-minute walk from our significant other. Long distance can make the heart grow fonder, or it can do just the opposite. Once one person feels the other isn’t trying, love fades quickly. Sometimes, it can be hard to let go, but in the end, moving forward makes you happier. Even when a couple moves to the same city, jobs put new pressure on our love lives.

After college, whether one is suddenly single or still searching, how has dating changed, for better or for worse?...

Continue reading the column here.

Learning for Life, Part II

Even if a class has capped at 100 people, as a student you can now "sit in" on the course, virtually, of course. This rising feature of universities to place lectures, notes, and syllabuses on the web is not solely available to students, but alumni, and increasingly the general public. It is the subject of a Wall Street Journal article titled Yale on $0 a day.

Following the lead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other highly competitive schools, more institutions are posting online everything from lecture notes to sample tests, and even making audio and video files of actual lectures publicly available. The sites attract anywhere from thousands to more than one million unique visitors each month.

In January, I addressed the desire for recent graduates and also alumni to continue to learn even after they graduate in my column "Learning for Life." Interestingly, more universities are reaching out to the public to fill this void. And it's not just young alumni who are seeking the learning opportunities. The return on investment from posting these online courses is vast--a rise in public knowledge and publicity for the school, to name only two.

What are some of the others?

Community Service: During and After College?

The days when college students were building houses for Habitat for Humanity have not been replaced. But, now there are options to build houses, or even schools halfway across the world in Kenya. An article in the New York Times reports that now students can receive funding for such projects. A new program at Duke University will offer students the opportunity, thanks in part to a $15 million gift from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and matched by the Duke Foundation.

For students, this is an incredible opportunity to help make a difference on projects which they envision and carry out themselves. The President of Duke University, Richard H. Brodhead, told the NY Times that:

Such programs also recognize the importance of experience to complement what students learn in the classroom.

Once they complete their activities abroad or locally, the students will have gained an incredible experience which will shape their future. Will they continue with such efforts once they graduate? More importantly, ae their companies or graduate schools providing similar opportunities to engage in community service without having to worry about taking time off or funding challenges?

Planning Summer in Winter

The second column of 2nd semester from the Cornell Daily Sun.

It was only the beginning of February. And yet, as I trudged through the snow on my way to class immersed in thoughts of trading sweaters for shorts and chapstick for sunscreen, summer could not arrive fast enough. Still, it felt far enough away that I needed to pinch myself to remember that the race to secure a summer internship had already begun.

I call it the “race” because each year, the process seemed to start earlier. By November, my friends applying for positions requiring security clearance had mailed their applications. And by January, my peers taking advantage of on-campus recruiting had dropped their resumes at Career Services.

With February just starting, I began my freshman search for a summer internship, hoping that the early birds hadn’t caught all the opportunities. I sought out both advertised and unadvertised positions. Cornell Career Services compiles the posted opportunities with its campus recruiting and job fairs.

The Internet was another useful source of information. Some internship websites, like jounalismjobs.com, are tailored to specific occupations; others, like idealist.org, include postings from organizations in numerous fields...

Continue reading the column here.