Andre’s story about growing up in East German was really fascinating. It was especially interesting to hear about how the difficulty of travelling out of the country partially inspired to him to travel abroad as an undergrad to do research. He mentions in the middle that he learned more from those practical experiences than from any of his classes. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I don’t learn anything in my classes, but this semester I’ve been participating in astronomy research with a few graduate students. I’ll admit that I don’t understand everything, but just begin involved with other researchers and seeing what real physicists are doing has helped me learn in a new way.
Author Archives: ksl87
Green Cornell
Andy talked about how many of the older areas and construction sites in Ithaca are doing things that unintentionally arm harming the Finger Lakes. This was very surprising to me because I expected our town of motivated college students and environmentally conscious individuals to do something about this. I’m glad that we have people like Andy who are making that effort to change things from the past that we need to fix for the future. He also mentioned that in particular Ithaca likes to think that it is very green, but really it still has some problems with floods carrying waste into the water. I might have similar issues on a personal level. I like to think that I care a lot about the environment, but I still do things like keep electronics on or forget to recycle. Maybe I should start reevaluating my own choices first.
Trying to take up a hobby
I had a lot of origami paper stored in my room because back in high school, I really thought I’d take up origami as a hobby. I made origami butterflies for my graduation cap, and I remember hearing that a student at my old college did research at Cornell on how origami structures can be ideal for some bioengineering application, I don’t remember exactly what, but it seemed like an art form with a lot of possibilities so I wanted to try it. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow through with that, but this event was a nice way to use some of the pretty origami paper I still have. I got to see some familiar faces too, so it was a double win. Honestly, though, I don’t feel so bad about not taking up that hobby, because origami is very difficult and it takes a lot of time to make something really cool. But who knows–in the future I’ll probably be making origami butterflies for some other decoration, maybe my next graduation cap!
Drawing is peaceful
I appreciated this Thanksgiving event as an escape from the stress of semi-finals. I ended up making my own drawings for the garland and it reminded how nice it is to just draw whatever I want with a pencil. Drawing used to be my biggest hobby so it was a pleasant feeling. I drew an intricate flower, a rose, and a Yin Yang symbol surrounded by flowers. I do like to draw flowers.
I also really enjoyed the conversation we had among the few of us in the virtual event. As we all made our garlands, we chatted about what we’re doing over Thanksgiving and how we’re doing this semester, and it was really really refreshing. It’s always nice to get to know new people with no pressure, and it was especially nice since we were all part of Rose Scholars, so I felt like I was getting closer to our community. I’m glad I attended this event, and GRF Sam is very nice to talk to!
Time management
This post is ironic. The number one thing I took away from Professor Schwartz’s seminar on how to succeed in life is that the key to success is time management. Well, after hearing those words back in October, I now find myself writing this post months after the fact, apparently not having managed my time well enough to write it earlier. I had somewhat forgotten the importance of time management before that seminar. I talked to my friend about it, though, and he seemed to live by it. In my first year of college, I was so bogged down with work that life began to feel like a continuous stream of assignments and deadlines–when I was done with one, there’d be another to start on right away. So I didn’t think much about managing my time, it felt like the amount of work I had managed my time for me. But after attending that seminar I started to think about what I could be doing better.
The friend that I spoke to told me that he had been taught that if you do something now rather than later, then you are opening a possibility in the future. Some might say you are granting your future self time. I think this is true, but it makes me feel bad in a way. If I haven’t been good at managing my time, does that mean I’ve wasted my future self’s time? I don’t like the idea that I’ve “wasted” time. I watched a TED-Talk that began as a talk about procrastination and evolved into a deeper discussion of how we not only procrastinate assignments and essays but also put off our goals in life. The speaker showed an array of hundreds of circles, where each circle represented one week of your life (for an average lifespan). I felt a little uncomfortable to literally see my days numbered. I wouldn’t want to go through each individual circle and analyze if I made the most of that week or if I “wasted” it. Albeit, I don’t think that’s the message the speaker was trying to get across.
I have another friend who believes that everything happens for a reason and that there is no reason to regret. Hearing him explain that philosophy to me was honestly life-changing, and I agree with it. We couldn’t be who we are right now without everything that we’ve been or done before. All we can do is accept the past, accept the state we are in now, and move forward. This was a bit of convoluted way to get to my final point, which is that ultimately there is no time wasted. We can start from wherever we are right now and do whatever it is that we’ve been wanting to do. No doubt that time management is important, but life happens in a bit less organized way than that.
Brains
I forget sometimes that we all go to a school with a lot of history, and with that, a lot of shenanigans and wonders written in its past. I was surprised to learn that the brain of a serial killer named Edward H. Rulloff is stored somewhere on campus, purportedly the largest human brain in size on record. People who have passed through this campus have gone on to change the world, and such people attend this school today. I think we can all agree that this realization is both humbling and intimidating. I think we are all able to make some change in the world if we can only recognize what we are best at. Hopefully that doesn’t mean following in the footsteps of Edward H. Rullof for anyone.
Yearning for a Campus
The Color Cornell event with Ferra was a nice way to wind down during the busy school year. I think Ferra had a really good idea for a virtual coloring event. We “colored” by filling cells in with pre-selected colors to match pictures of Cornell’s campus. In all honesty, coloring in Google Sheets doesn’t exactly match the satisfaction of physically coloring in with a pencil, crayon, or paintbrush, but of course, in our circumstances, I’d say it was a really smart adjustment.
Looking at beautiful pictures of Cornell’s campus made me feel a little bit wistful. I just transferred to Cornell and I was really excited to live on the beautiful campus and enjoy the grand architecture and picturesque views, but with my classes being online and the buildings being much less accessible, I feel that I have yet to experience that moment of awe. Right now it feels like campus is just a lot of grass, the slope, and some stunning gothic facades, but I know that it is really much more than that and I am eager to see it in all its glory. I am very much a person who needs physical presence and experiences, so I am very much looking forward to the day we can all be together again.
The Evolution of Protest
Firsly, I very much enjoyed our conversation with Professor Roberts; I hope to take government classes during my Cornell career in order to continue learning about modern democracy and social obligation. We said that social protest is a cyclical process rather than a linear one, where there are periods of unrest and subsequent mobilization followed by periods of demobilization and perhaps general content. During the talk, I began to wonder how effective protest is in the forms it has taken today and in history. We talked about what protest does: it gives a voice to underrepresented groups, it brings unseen issues into the mainstream and thus forces larger political parties to take a side on them, and sometimes impacts public policies. The latter, however, is far from guaranteed. Professor Roberts talked about how movements with large public support might still not provoke institutional response, with the example of the gun control protests that arose after the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School.
I began to wonder how much change protest can really create. I think protest is very effective for bringing unnoticed issues to light. But how long after protest does tangible change occur, as in the issues being resolved? How do we quantify change in this context? i.e., how do we know when change is superficial or performative and when it is actually effective? By effective we usually mean establishing policy reform and new leaders, and perhaps also change in social norms and language. But often, even policy and elections can be surface-level.
2020 was a year for protest, and it certainly got me thinking more about what needs to change in the world, and how that change can be effectuated. The movement this year has changed the conversation and brought new leaders to the forefront, and we have made a great stride by electing a new president. But nothing has been solved yet. A new leader in office brings a lot of hope and maybe some reform, but there are still barriers in place that are embedded in our political and social system–other people in power with alternative agendas pushing back against change. We live in the same system. We’ve maintained a certain way of life and a certain status quo for a very long time, so how long does it take to change that status quo completely? How quickly can that be accomplished, and how forceful must the means be? Are there better ways to realign the agenda or change policy than the ways we’re doing that now? I have many more questions that I can’t perfectly articulate, and I think now that I am very eager to take a class in government or political science to learn more.
Chernobyl
This show put into perspective the devastating, bleak, and morbid nature of the Chernobyl disaster. In this episode one thing that struck me was the image of the firefighter Ignatenko’s decaying body and the dedication of his wife to him. It’s extremely disturbing to realize how radiation sickness, particularly ARS, slowly consumes your body in such a way, and to be afflicted by it is like watching yourself succumb to an inevitable doom. In the show, the wife Lyudmilla steadily watches her husband suffer through this terrible process as his entire body looks increasingly mutilated. To add to the tragedy of the situation, she was carrying their child, and so at the time she risked exposing the child to radiation as if sealing the Ignatenko legacy into a grim fate, forever cursed by radiation and the Chernobyl disaster. The image of the physical deformation of Ignatenko and other victims of radiation sickness viscerally captures the horror, regret, and ugliness associated with this disaster.
A New Language
I attended the seminar on American Sign Language. I enjoyed learning the language itself, and I had the realization that language is more general a notion than one would typically imagine. I really like learning new languages, but when I think of language in that context I think of French, Japanese, Chinese, German–spoken languages with strong associated cultures and histories. Of course, ASL has its own culture and history, but I think it is very distinct from spoken language in an interesting way–partially because it is a language that evolved from, one might say, the lack of language, and also because it is “spoken” in a completely different way.
I think it is particularly interesting how some ASL words are formed by compounding certain hand shapes with different movements–for example, chemistry is a combination of the letter “C” with the hand movements of “science”. There are other modulations like this that made me think: how many fundamental elements do you need to generate an entire language? I’d imagine that the basic forms you need are descriptives, like nouns, and then modifiers that can relate the objects to other things, for example auxiliaries like “is” and “have”, and action words like verbs, but what different forms can these elements take? And how few do you need so that all other elements can be generated from that fundamental set? I guess these are the questions asked by linguistics majors and people who write programming languages.
Thinking about grad school applications
I attended the talk last week by Zachary Grobe about applying to graduate school. I’ve known since coming to Cornell that I want to go to graduate school, but the real implications of that have only floated in the back of my head, and recently it has hit me that, indeed, grades still matter, even though I really thought I’d be done worrying about those numbers when I graduated high school. Thursday’s seminar reminded me of the talks I would go to as an anxious high school junior and senior still discovering what it means to be evaluated as a “promising” student and, ultimately, member of society. It also reminded me of what little value such an evaluation holds to my character and in the long-term trajectory of my career.
It was a gentle and necessary push for myself to remember that little things I’m doing now can mean a lot later–be it on my resume or in a technical question on an entrance exam–and also that I don’t have to wait to do big things right now if I want to, such as research and projects. Attending this seminar also made me a bit more introspective than I have been for while about what type of contributor and student I am, what my strengths are, and what I want to do with them. Overall I enjoyed the seminar and I think now that I have a lot of thinking to do.