The Starting Line

It has finally began. After a long week of campus visits we have now started our classes. My roommate Alex (not Alex Wing) some me up with his alarm at 6:45 PM but I somehow fell back asleep and didn't get out of bed until 7:15 AM. I washed up quickly and met up with the other Cornellies. At breakfast, we met Andrew who is taking Architecture. Not wanting to be late for class, we left the dining hall at 8:30 AM. When we arrived at our lecture hall, I was surprised how many people were earlier than us. Once Professor Kramnick arrived he quickly wrote out the outline of the subjects we would be covering on the calculate and went over a weird tradition in Cornell Summer College. Apparently, when a professor takes off his watch and places it on his podium, it signifies that class has started and we need to greet him as such: "Good morning, Professor Kramnick!"

The lecture was more like an in-depth orientation. He talked about the workload as well as the grading breakdown. Overall, it was similar to the orientation but with extra bits of information thrown in. After the lecture, we broke up into discussion sections of 10-12 people in 4 groups led by the TAs. My TA was originally from India but moved to the United States to pursue a PhD.

During the discussions section, we explored the subject of freedom. My TA was asking extremely philosophical questions about our viewpoints on life and our interpretations of freedom that seemed to stump all of my group-mates. Lunch was a warm welcome after all the deep thinking involved in to sections. I made an additional three friends: Jordan, Brian, and Margo. During lunch, the Cornell cohort and I had a quick catch-up with Mr. Chan-Law and Mrs. Kronenberg. The only downside was that the Trillium Food Court was packed.

The second half of the group section consisted of writing an essay on what we thought freedom meant to us. Afterwards, we went into a long discussion of morality. In fact, we went about 30 minutes overtime but it was the most engaging 30 minutes of discussions.

Once our class was over, we decided to explore the Cornell Store and Collegetown. We didn't explore for that much since we had to meet up with Mr. Chan-Law to give him a rundown of how our classes were.

The Hotelies are now back in class and we have some reading to do. Tomorrow, the class will actually kick into gear.