To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I decided to attend the dinner reception with our president, Martha Pollack. In one hand, I’ve never met her in person or have had any communication with her whatsoever and had no judgment about her. However, our president has developed a reputation through social media and through the general consensus of Cornell students. Although everything should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because many of the remarks about our president have evolved through memes and jokes among the Cornell community.

I arrived at the reception in Professor Avery’s and our president was nowhere in sight. While waiting for her, I made a new friend in Rose Scholars and we were wondering what is taking her so long. We’ve waited for about a whole hour where we were expected to dinner by then and she still hadn’t arrived, which didn’t set the best first impression of her. When we had arrived at the dining hall for dinner, I really wasn’t sure of what to expect. I honestly thought I wouldn’t speak to her at all, just sitting in the side and listening to the other conversations. But before I knew it, I was greeted by our president and she decided to sit right next to us, much different than what I had expected. Initially, the conversation started off awkward, especially because I think we all felt weird talking to the president of our university. But the awkwardness quickly dissipated and we started to have a nice, normal conversation with Martha. This dinner was very nice because she told us about her career in academia and her duties as a president. Overall, I was glad that I went to this dinner because now I can imagine our president with the personality that I met her, rather than external points of view.