I love all holidays, including Halloween. It was so fun to paint a pumpkin while learning all sorts of trivia about Halloween traditions and where certain Halloween cultural aspects have come from. I learned about the roots of trick-or-treating and how many traditions center around women seeing signs about their future husband. Some traditions were born in Ireland, which was neat to learn. I enjoyed gained a better understanding of the roots of these fun aspects of Halloween while creating a beautiful decoration and allowing my creative juices to flow. This event did a wonderful job incorporating both learning and creativity.
Author Archives: ckg35
Fun and facts
Learning is always fun, and so much of our time at Cornell is spent learning. Learning about movies, music, popular culture, and random amazing facts is both fun and interesting, as it allows me to expand my knowledge while enjoying the questions about Disney and spooky characters. One particular fact concerned the weight of an average cloud, which I had no idea how to even guess. I was amazed to find that the average cloud weighs over a million pounds! This sparked my interest, and since then I’ve had multiple conversations with friends and family about this curious fact.
Catching some sunshine
Fall is one of my favorite seasons, and I loved creating a leaf suncatcher at the Leaf Suncatcher Explore! Event. Hearing why everyone else loves fall too at the beginning of the event was really neat, as I found many of my peers enjoy going for walks around Ithaca and apple-picking, just as I do. I was excited to hear that some individuals from various places around the country were so excited to see the foliage, as they haven’t had that experience before coming to Ithaca. Creating the suncatchers was fun, and I appreciate the care and effort put into preparing the activity!
Balance is key
Balance is key in both life and yoga, as I came to find out. I really enjoyed the Virtual Yoga Session, where we got to spend an hour centering our minds and bodies. I have been wanting to try yoga, and this was a great opportunity to do that. I hadn’t realized how much of yoga is about the mental exercises that go along with the physical motions, and it was fascinating to learn the meanings attached to each stretch and pose. I learned about the different groups of poses and how some of them link together, along with understanding how many variations of each one there are. The session was a wonderful chance to reflect, calm my mind, and gain a new understanding of yoga.
Recruiting season again…
It’s that time of year to be looking for internships and jobs, and I found attending the Get-That-Internship Panel to be really insightful. I really liked getting to learn about the job search process from the perspective of many different students in different industries. I had never considered some of the types of roles that the panelists mentioned, like interning in a Congresswoman’s office or starting a startup in Ithaca. It was also really helpful to hear their tips for interviewing. For example, one panelist mentioned staying in touch with her former manager, who helped her prepare for the types of questions she got while interviewing for her next position. I thought it was a great idea to get tips from someone in the industry, and began thinking about who I knew that I could learn from in a similar way.
Smiling to the beat
I really love hearing the different styles of music that others listen to. Expanding my musical horizons is something I have been hoping to do, and I found it so neat to hear everything from K-pop to disco to orchestral music. New and different notes and rhythms floated to my ears, which added excitement to my afternoon. I especially loved listening to the orchestral song, and I made a note to listen to it again later. Appreciating everyone’s musical tastes is just one more way to learn about and understand the great diversity of culture and personalities here at Cornell. This event was relaxing, interesting, and truly fun to listen to.
A ”Zoom-side” chat
I always love hearing from passionate people, and both Professor Alabi and Professor Yapici are inspiring to hear as they talk about their lives and their work. Professor Yapici described finding her passion for neuroscience while watching a science fiction movie and how she quickly learned as much as she could about the interface between the brain and computers. I always get excited when hearing others talk excitedly about their fields, and hearing about her fascination with neuroscience and Professor Alabi’s deep interest in polymers and biology made me fascinated with these fields as well (even though they are very different from the major I’m studying). The conversation strengthened my desire to take more classes outside my major and take advantage of all the opportunities to do so here at Cornell.
I also really enjoyed some of the more personal moments in the discussion with these professors. Strong mentors were instrumental in getting Professor Alabi to where he is today, and I found it powerful to listen to his story. He described overcoming self-doubt and credits his mentors with helping him to see pathways for himself that he never thought possible. Hearing his experience made me reflect upon the mentors that I’ve had during my life so far, and helped me to think about the importance of forming strong connections with others, both those on pathways ahead of me and others that I can guide along.
And finally, I really connected with the professors when the conversation turned to women in STEM fields. Professor Yapici spoke about being one of the few females in her field, and described that it feels great when you get to reach your goals, but it sometimes feels lonely when you walk into a room and you’re the only woman there. It is really important to celebrate the contributions of everyone to every field, and I really resonated with their conversation there.
A Dip into Creativity
Being creative is relaxing. Allowing your artistic juices to flow and contemplating symmetry, colors, and aesthetic beauty is an activity that I, and I think many of my peers, don’t do often enough. As an engineering major, much of my academic time is spent with numbers, facts, and scientific reasoning. However, creativity is key to so many careers, and engineering is definitely one of them. Designing products, circuits, programs, and networks requires ingenuity, thinking outside the box, and allowing our artistic intuition to take over sometimes. Engineering, after all, combines math and science with design.
Making cards was the perfect creative outlet to allow my thinking to run free and exercise the artistic side of my brain. In addition, I really loved that we made cards, specifically. Writing cards for friends and family on their birthday to show them how amazing they are is a passion of mine, and I was so excited to add more artistic flair to this activity.
Cornell as a center of learning in all ways
One of the things I love most about Cornell is the opportunity it brings to experience new perspectives and learn more on a whole range of topics, far beyond the edges of your chosen major. Cornell is a community of learners, thinkers, and intellectual minds, and it is fascinating to take time to learn about many really important issues and topics relevant to our society, and being able to learn about these topics with fantastic experts in their fields is amazing. I really enjoyed attending the “Criminal (In)Justice: How Mass Incarceration Disrupts Families and Communities” discussion held through eCornell partnering with the West Campus House System. Having the opportunity to hear from professors of sociology, a CEO of a Center for Urban Families organization, and a member of the Ohio government’s Commission on Fatherhood was wonderful and I learned so much from listening to them share their research, work, and experiences with this important topic. It was really informative to hear statistics about children whose parents are incarcerated, stories of experiences the panelists have had working with families in the community-prison pipeline, etc., and the discussion helped me to better understand the issues our country is facing and the work actively being done to help resolve these issues. One of the most important thoughts I came away with is a renewed desire to learn more about every such issue that affects our society and to take advantage of opportunities during my time at Cornell to do so in such a unique way.