In day-to-day life at Cornell, it can be very difficult to focus on the big picture. Little things like the next club meeting, tomorrow night’s prelim, or the essay due at midnight often overshadow the reasons we came here in the first place. Professor Dan Schwarz’s talk was a good reminder to stay proactive and focused on the future. As someone in large classes and with a pretty focused curriculum, I particularly appreciated what he had to say about getting to know professors and the importance of taking classes outside of your major.

While I truly appreciated his advice, I did think that much of it was too general to be especially helpful. This was particularly because most of the audience was composed of upperclassmen; there was only one freshman in attendance. Professor Schwarz touched on everything from the first weeks of freshman year to getting a job after graduation, so while he covered a lot of information, he didn’t go into much depth on any one topic. Most upperclassmen had already heard much of this general advice before, so discussing one or two things like how to approach professors or how to do well in a job interview would have been more helpful to his audience.

That being said, he very clearly cared deeply about Cornell students – not just in their successes here, but in their successes beyond the university. I appreciated him taking the time to talk to us, and his reminders were a great way to start off the semester and this year’s Scholar’s program.