This wednesday, I went to the Rose Scholars event put on by Ryan Lombardi at Professor Avery’s apartment. Throughout the talk, Dr. Lombardi continually returned to the very high stress he sees Cornell students laboring under, and expressed his worries about the consequences of such high stress and pressure for students’ mental health and happiness in general. In my own experience, I have seen first hand, and experienced, much of what he discussed: the constant comparisons to peers, the stressing about internships and jobs, and the never-ending torrent of prelims, papers, and p-sets, all of which cause enormous stress for students.

But, I have also had a different sort of experience at Cornell. Yes, the work is ceaseless, but so are the opportunities. For every late night I’ve spent working on a Math p-set or English paper, I’ve spent part of a day in the Rare Books, seeing documents from the Middle Ages, or reading letters hand-written by the Founding Fathers themselves. For every week spent freaking out about prelims, I’ve spent another having the time of my life making new friends and hanging out with old ones. Perhaps I may just be lucky in my experience, but I think a lot of the stress-related problems Cornell students face arise not simply from high pressure, but from the inability to relax that pressure creates. Pressure itself can be, and often is, a critical motivator for success (as I’m sure Dr. Lombardi would agree), however it should also be tempered with an ability to “stop and smell the roses.” Every student here has worked too long and too hard to get here to not use Cornell to secure the best possible career for themselves, but they have also worked too long and to hard for them to be miserable while doing it.