This week I had the opportunity to attend yoga session with yoga instructor Linda. I have to be brutally honest, the day I attended, I was having some major anxiety from stress and events going on around me. I wasn’t even sure if I should attend, because of all the things I had to do. However, the time was so worth it. I have underestimated the power of meditation and physical movement, which I have been ignoring for quite some time. When I was doing yoga, I had had the opportunity to re-route my mind and focus into inner peace, and rather than thinking too much about the chaos going on in my time, I was thinking more about my body’s position and flow, concentrating on the instructor’s voice. The little break given by re-routing of concentration gave me so much breathing room and opportunity to step back for a moment and re-assess my time and schedule. The body and flowing movement of Yoga in physical term gave me such a nice stretch. Before coming down to do yoga, I was working on the desk for more than 5 hr, without a break. The stretching movements and simply just lying down and breathing relieved so much of the physical strain I had on my body. Although the yoga itself was basic in movement, some were very difficult due to how inflexible I was. This was very helpful to me because due to physical activity and strain, I was actually thinking less about the stress and more about my body and how I am doing in yoga. The whole re-routing Yoga did for me was amazing and I hope that Flora Rose will offer more of these types of activity in the future. I am also planning to do more yoga and meditation in the future, which I know are offered by the PE department.
Author Archives: yk687
Beating Heart and Beating Drum
After I had the chance to see Yamatai at Breakfree, I decided to go see their full performance since I could not forget the powerful performance I got to taste. Once again I was blown away by the unification, energy, and beating of the drums by the team. One thing I have realized after the performance was that my heart was still beating loudly. I never really got to see any of this type of synchronization before, especially how their movement was so precise yet energetic and wild. I am thinking of joining their future workshop, and see how much energy is needed to beat the drum. I am also curious about how they were able to arrange all the different tones created by the drum. The interplay of different pitches of the drums are definitely unique and how they have been arranged to create a piece is amazing on its own. I hope that I will have more chance to see Yamatai performance.
Entrepreneurship on Health Industry: mixing hospitality design
This week I had the opportunity to attend an entrepreneurship event hosted by Cornell Hotel School. I attended a seminar called Health and Hospitality Innovation and Entrepreneurship: International Applications. The panel was Kelly Abramson, Executive of International Business Development, University of Pennsylvania Health System; Scott Rosen ’00, President & CEO, MDabroad; and Murat Uralkan MHA/Sloan ’14, Program Manager at Houston Methodist Center for Innovation. It was interesting to listen to people who were starting an innovative business in the field of healthcare. Some of the main topics were how hospitality can be integrated into health care design and some of the current progress being made in the industry. Some listers questioned if that would affect the health care prices that are already so high. The panelist talked about how it’s important for the industry to create innovation while maintaining affordability. They wanted to make sure the audience knows that increased healthcare quality should not mean increased price, but the progress that should be made while making healthcare affordable. I hope that this new idea would come true and that this idealism and idea would become what health care should be looking like.
Dancing to your Belifs
This week I had an amazing opportunity to go see a performance by Break free, a student-run Dance team at Cornell. Their central theme of the performance was ‘Breaking’ and presented their idealism through dancing. It was very energizing and I came out form the performance inspired and awed. The team focused on the idea of family, and it was amazing to see it since their dance was so synchronized. In addition, it was interesting to see their idealism performed through dancing. I never knew that an Idealism could be presented through dancing and gave me fresh Ideas on how I can place my idealism in my own design pieces.
Cleaning the Gorge
This week I participated in Gorge Cleanup service. The gorge, after being closed for so long after long winter, was in need of maintenance. The gorge was beautiful as ever! It was one of the rarest days in Cornell where it felt like spring has finally arrived. I was able to enjoy the nice weather and be one of the few people to enjoy gorge before anyone else. I have realized that Gorge, which is the main part of Cornell’s ecosystem, was in more help from the community in order to maintain its beauty. Although there were many students there to help out the cleanup, there were definitely more works to be done before official opening to the public. I have never seen the behind the scene of maintaining public recreation and ecosystem of Cornell and it was definitely an eye-opening experience. I hope that in the future, there are more such events more open to the public so that the whole Cornell community can come help maintain the beautiful scenery of Ithaca and Cornell community.
Dinner with Trustee and their scope on Cornell as Alumni
This week I was lucky enough to have dinner with members of the board of trustee. I was able to talk with some of the older Alumni back in the 1990’s. What was interesting was how many of the alumni were very open about listening to some of the current issues or problems student face about school. I mustered up courage and started to talk about lack of mental health support Cornell is providing, despite the rigorous and competitive academic system Cornell has to go through. What was surprising was that they were very well aware of the issue and they were actually sympathetic toward the students about it. They were very well aware that Cornell university can get very mentally burning and that Cornell needs to step up in their game to support the students. They also talked about how it was frustrating for them since although they do have some power in hand to make decisions for school, they are not the ultimate decision maker, which, they hope that in the future, they will have more voice in school to bring different issues to surface and work between the student as a catalyst to deliver messages. It was refreshing to see someone who has experienced or been here in Cornell at past to have such a huge interest and support toward current students at Cornell. I hope to have a continuous connection with them and also become part of the legacy as someone who will soon be alumni.
Meeting the President: Conversation Beyond Emails
Last Wednesday, I had a unique opportunity to have meet and greet + dinner with president Pollack. At first, I wasn’t sure about what it would be like to meet the President of Cornell University, whom I have only known about through email, press, and facebook meme. I have to be honest, president Pollack did not have the biggest picture in Cornell life, nor I wasn’t sure what kind of influence she had in Cornell (besides the social network jokes which I often see). In such a big scale university that body branches of administration, it is hard as an undergrad to learn about the administrative system nor witness the impact they have on campus.
However, when I got to meet her personally, it was eye-opening to an aspect of how she was opening her ears to even the smallest opinions. When she sat down to eat with the student, she first briefly talked about her personal knowledge and information about Cornell University. She personally talked a lot about how she is trying to maintain her practice as president align as much as possible to the beliefs and foundation of the school. This was impressive to me on the fact that she was maintaining the core value of the school while adapting to ever-changing flow within the school. I wanted to ask her if that ever got in the way of her position as a president. It’s nice on how she was trying hard to maintain the value of school. However, there were man voices on how her action to school’s need and problems, such as mental issues, financial aid, education system (such as funding and school merging), have not been addressed properly. As such a progressive school that changes every semester, it was hard to see as a student if the value from the past can be extensively maintained. However, I was able to see her enthusiasm and willingness to listen to students and take things into consideration, which gave me hope. It was eyeopening to learn more about her life and position at Cornell University and how the system of administration come together to manage such a diverse and a large body of student and staffs.
Chocolate for Thought
During this week I was able to meet with Ben Conard, who is Co-founder and owner of Five North Chocolate Company. He came in to talk to members about entrepreneurship, product development, and his personal story on starting and developing his own brand and company. For me, the most interesting aspect was his process of creating and designing his own chocolate. His products were mainly bite-sized cubed chocolate, which he created for easy consumption of the chocolate. As a UX design major, it was interesting to see the entrepreneur’s take on a user and product designing. His focus on the easy going and mindful healthy chocolate intake and how the company’s unique cube design of the chocolate supports that experience for buyers was very surprising. He talked to me about how he wanted the chocolates to be a sensory experience and gave me some by taking on the designing process. I was surprised to find that some of the design research methods were applied to actual product making. For me, I was doubtful if some of the research methods in designing were actually applied in real life. However, although very generalized, the majority of the design research methods I have learned were applied to create the sensory experience of the chocolate. It was interesting to see some of the educational information from school were being applied in real life. Another interesting aspect of the talk was package designing. Ben talked to the group about the package and how he wanted the design to be an interactive experience. By changing simple parts of the packaging, such as making the bottom part of the pouch a different color with fun FAQ about the chocolate, the packaging became an interactive tool for the company. It was unique and also gave me some ideas on what I want to create for future product development. Overall the talk and conversation was very inspiring to me as a future designer, who hope to create unique designs.
Interview for Thought: reflecting on my past experience
The past week I attended a job interview workshop by Christina Downey, who is head of Cornell Engineering Career center. As a research-based student, I did not have lots of experience with interviewing and since summer internship was rolling around, I decided to take chance on the session to revitalize my knowledge on interviewing. The session was very helpful, especially when I was provided with the information sheet I can use to reflect on who I am and what are my strongest characteristics are. What I found out was that I am best at is critical thinking and my weakest is the deliverance of critical thinking. I am good at thinking about the question and breaking them down. However, I was weak at delivering them verbally. I was told to focus on how I want to bring the answer out step by step, instead of jumbling them up in the process. I had to make sure I was in a calm state and that there was no need for me to panic about speaking my thoughts out loud. It was nice to receive an opportunity to rethink about what my strength and weakness are and have time to test out strategies and methods of interviewing. I hope this kind of opportunities is available more in the future.