This past week, I attended a Rose Cafe featuring the Vice President of Cornell, Ryan Lombardi. The focus of the talk was on student stress levels and ways the University can aid in helping students navigate their Cornell experience. Cornell is unfortunately known for its stress culture and high suicide rate, so creating an environment in which students can learn and excel without creating a pressure cooker of stress is very important. The most interesting point that Ryan made is that the entire focus of the American university system changed over the past 25 years or so. At one point, the goal of the university was to prepare individuals to positively contribute to society. However, the focus is more so what can the university give to allow the individual to better themselves.

This point really stuck with me because, while I still hold the former opinion about American universities, the latter is definitely the more common view among my peers. Instead of trying to learn and prepare for life after college, many people will just shoot for the A without truly understanding the course material. If the purpose of college is to be a staircase to the workforce, this mindset is wholly inadequate. If we want to use our education to move society forward, we have to learn to understand rather than just for the grade and we have to help out our peers, rather than letting them struggle for the sake of a better curve.