ithacation

I was wearing shorts last week, if I recall correctly. Ithaca was still basking in the seemingly endless sunshine that, in a normal year, would have ceased to exist after orientation week (or so it always seems…).

Then came this week. The mercury plummeted and the skies turned grey; we won’t be making it out of the 40s today, and the wind chill is in the mid 30s. Maybe not so coincidentally, this week marked the unofficial start of prelim season. Every professor on campus feels the need to get at least one major test or assignment in during the couple of weeks leading up to our long Columbus Day weekend. Seats will become harder to come by in the library, partially because nobody wants to play frisbee on the arts quad when it’s 37 and drizzling. Soon enough, though, we’ll have a long weekend to recharge. Judging from what I’ve heard from my fellow Daily Sun editors, I wouldn’t be surprised to run into friends on the streets of Montréal in a couple of weekends.

Cornell, like nearly every institution of higher education, has been forced to make budget cuts across the board during these difficult economic times. Each cut has sparked a response from faculty/staff and students alike, but one that resonates especially powerfully with me is the University’s recent decision to eliminate Dutch, Swedish, and Turkish language courses, in addition to English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses. While I had never planned on taking any of these courses, they’re vital components for various parts of the Cornell community.

Cornellians looking to pursue research in, say, Sweden, the Netherlands, or Turkey will soon have little or no language resources available to them. Those students (especially graduate students) who come to Cornell from over 120 countries will no longer have access to hands-on writing training. How does this affect undergraduates? Well, even though 99% of classes are taught by professors, graduate students acting as teaching assistants (TAs) are a vital part of the classroom learning experience. What happens when they don’t get the writing training they need and deserve?

In information sessions for prospective undergraduate students, Cornell admissions officers always make sure to highlight the 40+ languages offered on campus. It’s a staggering number, but this slide isn’t promising. It’s reminiscent of the scene in the movie Airplane! in which the plane has just landed and is skidding down the runway. The arrival gate keeps changing as the aircraft continues its controlled crash:

Flight 2-0-9 now arriving gate 8, gate 9, gate 10…
Gate 13, gate 14, gate 15…
Gate 23, 24, 25…

This time, however, we’re counting in the other direction.

Related Links

Budget Strikes Again: C.U. Fells Dutch, Swedish [via The Cornell Daily Sun]
Future Turkish Classes Available Only on Video [via The Cornell Daily Sun]
ESL Writing Classes to Be Eliminated [via The Cornell Daily Sun]
Cuts: Je Ne Sais Quoi? [via The Cornell Daily Sun]

The Monday after spring break is one of the more obnoxious days of the academic year. Nearly everyone on campus has just spent a slightly less stressful week spread out across the globe. The stream of cars on Route 79 entering Ithaca on Sunday evening carries better-rested students whose sunburn still kind of hurts and who are just starting to get back to work on the bus ride in from New York City. The transition from break to school is never an easy one, but this year it was a bit tougher because, when I arrived in Ithaca for what is supposedly spring, it was snowing. Thank you, mother nature, for reminding us that, no, Ithaca doesn’t observe spring like the rest of the world does. Kind of like Arizona not doing the whole Daylight Savings Time thing, but colder.

Group projects pick up where they left off, even though everyone’s brain is still somewhere else for those first few days. Paper topics loom ominously on your computer’s desktop, waiting to be contemplated, researched, and outlined. Prelims sneak up from behind. Perhaps most terrifying: there’s only a little over a month of classes left in the semester. Back to work we go.