Junior Year

It’s weird to be back on campus as an upperclassman. You know you’re getting old when you think freshman are “cute” (or is that just me?) I now know my way around Cornell so well that I am that person freshmen or visiting parents ask when they’re lost. I have my table at Olin, my daily routines, and my Saturday afternoon jogging tracks.

So, at the end of last semester, I had spent a lot of time thinking if I had done everything I wanted to do at Cornell so far, that my college life is half over. And now at the start of junior year, I wonder about the same thing. What’s more sad now, though, is not that I haven’t yet gone to the Farmer’s Market or I haven’t been to a Harvard hockey game; it’s that my closest friends from college are starting to leave me one by one, and I may be leaving them.

In college, not everyone graduates at the same time. Some people need more time than others and some people graduate early. I am personally thinking about taking a year off. College life feels like it started not too long ago, but I’m already starting to say goodbye to people. At the end of my sophomore year, I hugged my roommate goodbye as he left to serve two years in the Korean army.

I guess what I want to say is that one thing I’ve learned over the summer as I self-reflected on my college years is to spend time with people you care about. Studying is important, and as a pre-med, there are few that know that better than we do. But after having lived completely in Olin last year, I began to wonder “what exactly is important in my life?” That question was especially strong after I lost someone this summer. I realized that I have to find a healthy balance between school and my social life. Could I sacrifice some studying so that I could spend more time with the people that mean a lot to me? I think the answer should be yes, and that’s what I’m hoping to keep as my goal for the second half of college. Here I go.