As a returning Rose Scholar, I remember Dan Schwartz’s talk from last year, in the cramped space of Garrick’s apartment. I remember he said basically the same thing, along the lines of get involved in the community, work on your career, don’t waste your time here, same old same old. But after rereading my blog post from last year, I realize that the good professor had changed a little bit of his lecture to include a new piece of advice: do something fun every day.

Sounds obvious, right? But I find that in the stress-induced environment that Cornell produces, it becomes harder and harder to make time to do something fun. Take right now, as I’m writing this blog post. I’m in the middle of my Operating Systems problem set, after grading assignments for the course I TA for ten hours before that, after writing code for my project team for three hours before that, after working on web development jobs for clients I have from the summer, after organizational meetings and doing work for a different club. And looking forward, I have a Machine Learning problem set and a math problem set due this week, as well as a prelim on Monday. So fun can wait, right?

The problem is that doing all of that stuff in a row is tiring and if you’re not careful and don’t let your brain relax, you’ll get stretched too thin. This happened to me towards the end of last semester. But Schwartz’s simple advice actually makes things a lot better. Watching a little television or taking some time to get dinner with friends (as opposed to stress eating through a coding session in the dining hall) really helps to unwind and put your academic woes on hold.

I also want to point out that, if you actually love what you’re doing, work can be fun as well. Though it seems like all my problem sets are tedious and annoying, I actually enjoy them. And I wouldn’t be part of the clubs I’m in if I didn’t think they were incredibly rewarding and entertaining. So doing things that you love doing also counts as a source of fun. Just when all of those things have hard deadlines within the week do I stop enjoying them and freak out. That’s where juggling, watching a movie or just talking to someone comes in handy, and it really works.