Author Archives: Fiona

Managing Stress, One Meditation at a Time

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Stress is either the person who rides my shoulders right before an exam or a friend who stands by my side during a fencing match.  Since it is usually the former, stress and I must have a hate-love relationship.  I really enjoyed listening to last week’s Rose Café Series about managing stress and balancing a healthy life with academics.  Supposedly, an average student should get 9 hours of sleep and that shocked me.  I get at most 7 hours on a good night.  That is probably one of the major causes of stress for me then!  Fortunately, the speakers, Rubenstein-Gillis and Gerding, were kind enough to give the group useful strategies to manage bad stress.

One of the suggestions was a pre-routine workout, which surprised me because I typically do that before I start working.  I would open my laptop and check my email and texts to make sure I don’t ignore my friends or family and then start the assignments.  Another suggestion was to set small goals that can easily be completed during the day to make you feel accomplished by the end of the day.  I started over the weekend and it made me feel a lot happier about my progress in terms of finishing assignments and studying for prelims.  But the most useful tip was their instruction on how to meditate.  The group did a 5-minute meditation session to learn how meditation is helpful to refocus the mind and relax the body.  After the talk, I have been practicing meditation whenever I feel over-stressed, and I have to admit, these tips are very helpful!  I hope Rubenstein-Gillis and Gerding plan to do more sessions like this on campus.  I am sure other students would find these tips helpful and can be easily incorporated into their routine.

The Benefits of Researching Soil

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Last week I had the pleasure to listen to Dawit Solomon talk about his research on preserving soil in Africa.  At first, I thought this lecture would be focusing on how important soil is to every ecosystem and the implications of ignoring the impacts of soil degradation.  Dr. Soloman did briefly mention this, but I never thought that soil had a direct impact on climate change.  He explained that soil can be used as carbon sinks, which can have significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, soil contains more carbon than vegetation.  It is impressive to see how researching soil can vary from wide scale land research all the way to a microscopic level.

In addition, Dr. Soloman surprised me on his discussion about the quality of soil declining in Africa because of isolated communities and lack of resources in Africa.  Many towns in Africa do not have the money nor the power needed to import fertilizers that are usually cheap in developed countries.  Thus, his research focused on indigenous sustainability of soil management systems.  He worked in West Africa and transformed the resources within communities to transform infertile soil to fertile soil.  Dr. Soloman implemented his system by burning discarded cow bones, which are very rich in nutrients, and compacting them into tiny pellets of fertilizer.  This is an economical solution to making the soil fertile for future plantings and could be beneficial to many communities throughout the world.

 

 

Motivation to Succeed in Tennis Can be Related to Students!

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Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure to listen to Tennis Coach Silviu Tanasoiu discuss about his motivation and passion for playing and coaching tennis.  It was great to connect with someone who understands how tough it is to be a Cornellian student trying to balance academics with sports and social life.  He believes playing a varsity sport and keeping up with classes is similar to “pursuing a medical degree while doing military service”.  That is why he values time management and the adversity to excel.

Another lesson that he taught is to not get caught up with the outcomes.  This is the exact same advice my parents give me when I give it my all either during a fencing tournament or taking a hard midterm.  Being aware of what you can and cannot control is important for success because it is a waste of time worrying what you can’t do or what has happened in the past.

Overall, I enjoyed the coach’s stories to motivate students and tennis players and the strong relationships created as a coach.  Coach Tanasoiu is the motivator and the support group his tennis students need.  He believes that everything is a team effort and that your friends and family are the best support group to have at Cornell.

 

 

Controversy Over the DREAM Act

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Last week at the Rose Café, I had the pleasure to listen to GRF Esmeralda Arrizon-Palomera speak about DREAMers.  DREAMers are undocumented immigrant children who have very little to no opportunities to pursue higher education due to their status.  This can impact their future all together, especially when it applies to employment opportunities.  That is why the DREAM act provides these youths a chance for a better education. This act has not been signed into law yet but civil rights advocates are working hard to make it a reality.  But there is still a lot of people who have mixed feelings about the act.  The act targets and blames the children’s parents for their undocumented status and creates unwanted consequences of criminalizing the parents.  I feel that the DREAM act is a stepping stone to spread awareness of the limited opportunities undocumented immigrants have for education and a better quality of life even though it is creating some negative effects.

Basic benefits that citizenship gives such as social security, official IDs such as a driver’s license and government financial aid are unavailable to them. The current advocacy is building a strong movement to change immigration laws and people’s perceptions of undocumented immigrant children to end their plight.

Current Development of Cornell Tech

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Last week, Professor Adam Schwartz gave a talk about the Cornell Tech Program in NYC.  Being the director of the program, Professor Schwartz was able to tell us about the program’s current state of development on Roosevelt Island.  Cornell Tech focuses on building and integrating the entrepreneurial environment in an education system.  This could be seen in his descriptions and images of open work environments for classes and offices to promote communication among students and professors.  Cornell Tech offers graduate degrees in business and ORIE, but Professor Schwartz emphasizes that the program is open to any major and strives to connect business and technology through their integrated curricula.  Professor Schwartz showed the importance of project managers, people who are able to communicate what the technology does and find ways to promote and grow the technology.  The program is also very big on team-based assignments.  I was interested to learn how Cornell Tech focuses on a more project-based curriculum to simulate real-life issues confronted by startup and tech businesses.  The incentives for an academic group project are completely different from the incentives for a real life group project.

The talk provided insights into how Cornell is becoming an important player in promoting tech startups in NYC.  I am actually considering pursuing a graduate degree at Cornell Tech so this presentation gave me more knowledge about my future options.

The Struggles Writing Environmental Comedy

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I found Aaron Sachs’ talk to be quite entertaining, albeit dark and satirical, but that is why he called it “gallows humor”.  It seems from the examples provided that the most common form of environmental comedy is to poke fun of the environmentalists’ extremely serious attitude and privileged status.  This was illustrated in story about a woman who, while listening to environmentalists discuss building a highway for wolves, interjected by making population jokes.  I understand the difficulty of making a very serious topic funny especially if the comedy is supposed to promote environmental awareness and strengthen support for environmental sustainability.  “No Impact Man” and “Modern Family” did a pretty good job of making environmental comedy with a nice balance between seriousness and lighter entertainment, yet still had that satirical and extreme take on environmental comedy.  Overall, I enjoyed the ironic and dark humor, but wonder if there will be any chance for future environmental comedy to expand into other types of comedy.

 

 

The Complexity of Melancholy

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I still don’t understand the definition of melancholy.  After reading definitions, melancholy usually means “pensive sadness” or even “depression”, but these terms should be differentiated.  I think the best definition so far is “a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged”.  I hoped that going to last week’s Rose Café Series with Sara Schlemm would help me understand.  The talk helped me understand that melancholy is a very complex term that can be applied to a lot of scenarios and ideas.

It was an interesting topic to relate to literature such as Hamlet and film scenes in Vertigo.  I appreciated how melancholy was portrayed by Kim Novak in the femme fatale character as she solemnly and deeply looked down at the cemetery.  Or when she stared in numbing melancholy at a portrait of a person dressed in the same garb as her.

For now, I will continue to contemplate what it means to be melancholy.  But my favorite melancholy association is a hauntingly beautiful piece of music written by Erik Satie entitled, Gymnopedie No 1.  The melodies in the piano piece create mild dissonances with the harmony, emoting a painful and numbing sound to which I believe is melancholic.

Current and Future Development Plans for Ithaca

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On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of listening to Senior Planner of the city of Ithaca, Lisa Nicholas, talk about the development of Ithaca as a major hub of growth in the region.  I was very naïve about the development occurring in Ithaca and mainly thought most of its business came from the college students during the school semesters.  In fact, the population of Ithaca is linearly increasing compared to the population growth in Tompkins City. Unfortunately, the unexpected growth in Ithaca brought rising housing demand and associated problems with low property turnovers and low vacancy rates.  This can be seen in the high rents found across Ithaca housing.

Our speaker, being an urban planner, described how her department is trying to resolve the near term housing problems while trying to balance the longer term needs of the Ithacan community.  Ms. Nicholas plans to create more compact and dense housing to meet this demand in addition to designing more sustainable projects.  However, she also wants to maintain Ithaca’s culture and architecture and not work against housing and commercial projects currently under development.

Overall, Ms. Nicholas’ job is to optimize the town’s space in order to create the most value for everyone by bringing the community closer and providing a variety of uses to businesses.  It was impressive to learn how she designed certain parts of Ithaca such as the Commons to fulfill her ideals of the city while keeping her perspective on the future needs of the community.  One of the biggest projects I look forward to is the completion of the Marriott and Hilton hotels!

Africa’s Economic Development and Poverty Discussion

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Last week, I attended Nicolas van de Walle’s discussion on the current state of economic development and poverty among African nations.  I tend to find the intersection between geopolitics and the economy very interesting because of the influence one usually has over the other.  Over the last few decades, both indigenous and foreign powers have influenced the development of emerging economies in different African countries.  This is one of the many factors accounting for the stark differences in economic strength of each country.

The influence of foreigners through donations has hurt African nations rather than helped them.  Various Experiments were implemented in different countries to improve economic growth and tackle many problems such as corruption and lack of education.  Projects were implemented to build infrastructure and to build a new generation of influential political leaders.  Nothing seemed to have fixed the problem of corruption and the powerful influence of individuals or private interests.  In fact, during the 90s, countries became worse off than before and even the wealthiest of cities fared poorly.  What Nicolas van de Walle is trying to convey is that foreign support is actually hurting Africa instead of benefitting the emerging economies.  All the projects and foreign monetary aid were meant to bring economic and political stability to African countries.  However, without the foreign monetary intervention, Africa is unlikely to undergo radical change and accept experiencing huge instability.

I wish I was a little more knowledgeable about the economic development of African emerging economies when going into this discussion.  It made me aware of my lack of understanding of what is going on in Africa and the corruption that spread across all countries.  It seems one of the main problems in Africa is the foreign influence and impact it has on many African economies.  For example, China has a huge presence in Africa because of China’s goals to exploit Africa’s resources and use its excessive capital to grow.  I wonder how China’s influence and exploitation will further impact the development of various African countries and the continent as a whole.

Ice Skating Bringing Everyone Together!

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Band-aids? Check. Cellphone?  Check.  Extra pair of socks?  Check.  Today, I was ready to step into the Lynah ice rink for the third time with the goal of not falling down, but then realized I completely forgot how to skate.

Fortunately, there was a brief ice skating lesson teaching the basics of form and movement.  I was really grateful that one of the instructors came over to critique my movements. I believe ice skating brings out your most vulnerable self if you are newbie for fear of falling and making a fool out of yourself.  However, everyone purposely fell down during the ice skating lesson so that made me feel less self-conscious of myself.  After this experience, I think ice skating is best when you’re practicing with friends.  Whenever I was worried about falling, they would always be there to support me…until they were tired of how slowly I moved (haha).

Overall, I would love it if Rose Scholars could repeat this event to bring everyone closer together.  I think everyone had a good time.  Next time though, I plan to bring thicker socks.