Author Archives: sv324

A Resilient Hungary

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Professor Case in the Department of History at Cornell gave an incredible illustration of the current refugee crisis occurring in the world with the specific case of the internal tensions in Hungary accepting Syrian refugees. This talk has become event more important and interesting as countries, especially Western countries, are currently opposed to accepting Syrian refugees due to the recent terror attacks.

Personally, the most interesting thing that struck out to me is the dedication of Professor Case to go out in the field at Hungary and see the situation for herself up and personal. The pictures that she brought back to show us can help tell the story even better. She began with the pictures that showed the government was against letting in foreigners, including the Syrian refugees. However, the “Two-Tailed Dog” political party was able to humor the government in putting up their signs of opposition to the government over the government signs. This showed the people’s personal opinion in allowing Syrian refugees to come to Hungary.

Furthermore, I found it amazing how the people went out of their way to help the refugees by providing water, food, and shelter. It was beautifully captured by Professor Case as she is also stood by these people and understood their reasons and stories about helping the refugees.

Thus, I thought the talk was incredibly moving to see how the people helped others in spite of the governmental control.

Cornell Dining: Behind the Scenes

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Cornell Dining is one of the best services here offered at campus and being far away from home and mom’s cooking, I am thankful for everything Cornell Dining does for us everyday. I was able to get to learn more about the people behind the scene and what they keep in mind when serving students. One interesting cool thing I did not know about was the punch card for fruits and veggies. I knew there was one for drinks but not for food groups, which I feel shows Cornell Dining is caring about what students really eat in a healthy way. The head at the Rose House shared with us in how he evaluates the food choices in making sure he incorporates new food styles such as having more grains and couscous available for students to eat. Furthermore, I found it interesting that he had worked previously in Europe at a hotel learning catering management and in general how to take care of the guests primarily. The enthusiasm in how much he enjoys his job now as managing the food behind the scenes in going to serve students on campus just further shows the dedication Cornell Dining has for us in making sure we get good food everyday. Thus, overall I think Cornell is one of the few universities that actually has good food for students and that is all due to Cornell Dining and the decisions they make.

Helping the Ithaca Community

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This past Saturday I participated in the Into the Streets Event and helped racking and clearing the yards for the Greater Ithaca Activities Center. My biggest motivation for this event was to have the time to do service in the community for Ithaca. In high school and even in my club GlobeMed at Cornell, community service was emphasized as a way to understand the community better which surprisingly being a student in the town, I do not know much about it.

The nice thing that the GRFs did were that they asked the secretary at the Center to explain what the center did. It was very touching to see the programs that were created to establish a stable source of knowledge and help for the youths that really need help in Ithaca. It is nice to think that our work of cleaning yards would be going to having kids coming in the next week and seeing a better kept facility outside. Even though it was hard labor, it was worth doing it for the kids at the youth programs.

Also, I enjoyed my time in the service activity making some new friends and learning more about people living at Rose this year and for next year!

Learning about the Inspiration behind Marshall Curry

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This dinner was an insightful time in my Rose Scholar experience. It was my first time in having dinner with a guest speaker for the Rose Scholars. It was great to see the personal story of what it took for him to be where he is. I always find those type of discovery stories encouraging and adding to my dream to become a prominent scientist in the world. It amazed me in how much hard work he took to get to his position as an award winning director of documentaries and how technology history had shaped his career as well.

Mr. Curry had started at a small working in a radio station and realized over time that he was interested in making a story of sorts and wished to put the skills he gained to take a documentary. His most important documentary was made on an election that had powerful characters and made the documentary successful. Mr. Curry had shared that he had filmed his documentary with a small camera and no other fancy equipment. He thought that his film would be shown to his family and few friends but never imagined it being shown at a prominent film festival. His passion for documentaries had no expectations for rewards and it was more like they followed him.

I have seen some documentaries and like it how the stories are real in that every emotion you feel as the viewer is more or less the emotions captured in the character at the time. Documentaries take an unique angle on giving the honest stories of people in their adventures. This was almost the same thoughts that Mr. Curry supported in his talk over dinner and could be seen in his documentary that he is working on a guy who traveled to find his manhood.

Pondering the Environmental Crisis

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resonated with some of the topics that were discussed in my Ethics and Environment class. It was great to have the panelists themselves ask us the first question in what are our biggest environmental concern was. Sometimes, we don’t think much about the environment and the current possible events that are happening in our natural surroundings as we are leading our busy lives.

 

A main concern was global warming, which is an issue that has always been roaming around the news about climate change but has not seemed like an imminent threat. It is a good thing that now the recent democratic debate has brought global warming into the spotlight for more people to be educated about this realization of how much harm it can do. It is an improvement from previous political grounds. Another issue that was brought up was fracking, which was defined as the release of chemicals from the pipes running underground. It was interesting that I never thought before that fracking was not common around the world and that it was defined because we had people from different areas around the world. However, the panelists were common in one aspect that New York state and Ithaca in particular booming with environmental activism was very opposed to companies doing any fracking here.

 

Overall, I liked the set-up of the whole panel because it stimulated a more relaxed discussion about the environmental problems which are increasingly becoming and should become worries for society.

Engaging Discussion about International Laws

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Last week I had the opportunity to hear about the international laws that govern several terrorist and violence issues from the perspective of Professor Ohlins. As a naïve person who really only knows about terrorist issues and other war crimes through TV crime shows such as NCIS and the Blacklist, I am not the best informed citizen about these topics. I hardly read the news and do not know about many current events on international cases. Thus, this discussion with not only talking about the issues but also how to deal with them legally was a great intriguing and enlightening topic for me. For example, he informed me about the United States bombing a hospital in Afghanistan by accident thinking it was the location of a terrorist.

This issue was a perfect case study to talk about the implications of the wrong action done here. Professor Ohlin talked about how the concept of collateral damage can come in with war crime in which by basic definition a war crime is targeting civilians purposefully during a war. However, it is not a war crime if those civilians were accidentally killed when soldiers carry out a strategic mission for taking down terrorists or enemy groups. Then the deaths of those civilians become collateral damage. However, the big issue is that every time a similar story like this occurs overseas it becomes a subjective issue in if the United States or another country had committed a possible war crime. It is sad to see people die if they were not the targets of the mission and thus automatically by human emotions we think our actions were wrong. However, others seeing from a strategic perspective might feel their losses as collateral damages to reach our ultimate goal in the war and prevent any bigger –scale violence.

Thus, I enjoyed the engaging discussion on the current issues that are occurring internationally and also bringing the issue back to the root opinions of the issue. It has encouraged to try and stay engaged with more current events.

A Guide to Undergraduate Career and Life after Cornell

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Sometimes as we go through our undergraduate years at Cornell, we do not think about the many opportunities that we could utilize to maybe pursue our goals after college. Professor Schwarz was able to clearly convey to me what I should be thinking for my future as a junior. When I was a freshman, I did not know what to do as far concerning my career after undergraduate. I did not know how helpful it was to go to TA office hours and develop interactions with professors until my sophomore year. Furthermore, I feel like I did explore many opportunities as in extracurricular activities but sometimes got overwhelmed with it. Thus, I agree with Professor Schwarz that freshmen should be concerned with getting used to the Cornell environment first and then delve to more extracurricular activities tailored to your career interest in sophomore year. That was the ideal time for me to get involved in science research at a lab since i was interested in being a researcher with my engineering degree. Professor Schwarz is again extremely correct in using your junior and senior years to be the times to plan for any type of graduate school or job experience that will aid for a job or later graduate school.

I feel like this talk was helpful in showing me somewhat a certain way i should follow to reach some level of success. At least it did point me to right directions in the future. No one really tells you a certain recipe to follow for your dreams so it is really up to you and the advice of others such as Professor Schwarz to show you the way to what you want to achieve.