We were lucky to have Professor Shwarz come in again to speak to us! I attended this event last year, but it was refreshing to hear some of the things he said again. There were also some things that stood out to me during this talk, like when Professor Shwarz mentioned that the biggest issue on campus regarding diversity is socioeconomic diversity. He thinks it’s an issue that there is such a big socioeconomic gap in the Cornell population, which I completely agree with! There was an instance where an advisee of his had a group of friends who wanted to go on a trip, but she could not go simply because she could not afford it. And the issue with this is that many people who come from higher socioeconomic status don’t realize that other people may not have the same financial abilities. My experience with this is similar! I went out to eat often with my friends, but I just could not keep up with them in terms of paying for the meals, so oftentimes, I wasn’t able to go with them.

Another big thing he mentioned was that students are not putting as much time into studying as they should be! Traditionally, there should be 2 hours of studying for each credit. A recent study shows that students are spending much less time than they should be on studying, but they are spending the time that they are not using to study on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Since social media itself is a fairly recent thing, it’s so hard to find ways to combat these trends! I have to admit that I often fall victim to social media or online games/entertainment instead of doing work, but that’s why we need to be aware of it! So that we can realize it and try to keep ourselves on track.

Professor Shwarz also mentioned that we aren’t putting as much work into school now because of technology. Traditional English majors used to have to go to the library and search for hours to find what they were looking for, but now that they have the Internet and search engines, looking up information is extremely easy now. Also, it saves A LOT of time just being able to type up essays instead of typewriting or handwriting them… Which makes me wonder how much more technology will advance in the next couple of decades. Maybe we will enter an era where obtaining knowledge will be 10 times faster than it is now, but at this point, it’s extremely hard to imagine!