Raduation Column News Today

Cornell can be cacophonous. There is so much going on at all times, so many dialogues and conversations, that it’s easy to feel like your voice doesn’t matter. But it does. Find your version of The Sun, a place where you know that your voice matters.

Even at graduation’s door, I am finding out more about what I could love further.

Not to go all opinion-writer-run-amok, but recently, I haven’t had the rosiest feelings for McGraw Tower. Its quarter-hour clanging feels obnoxious. I get it! Time is running out! No need for the constant reminder!

We carry with us some part of those who shaped our lives in any way, and I am happy to have known her, just as I am happy to know those who also shaped my life at Cornell and elsewhere.

We’re not only good learners but also good listeners and thinkers too. We learn from lectures and, even more, from the conversations that we have with each other. 

So, you tell yourself that graduation is not for a while –– that you have plenty of time left. “Senior year will feel like forever,” I remember thinking to myself back in August. Yet, here I am in May, in what feels like the blink of an eye, preparing to depart. College students are always given the cliched advice to “make the most” of their four years. But what does that mean? I certainly didn’t know.

When I’m sixty four, I want to remember it all. Cornell has not been one story for me. It has not been one lesson for me. It has been a frenzied, beautiful time. It has been the greatest honor of my life so far. And it has been three and a half years that I do not believe I could ever possibly forget.

When I look back on my three years on the Hill, my experience at The Sun will be one of my defining memories. I believe that the one defining vote from my freshman-year election at BC set me on a new path. My foray into journalism has given me so much in the form of skills, friendships and ultimately, unforgettable experiences. 

No other student newspaper is brave enough to cover the story of what happens in the bedroom, the often unreported stage where so many current events happen, like someone losing their virginity or orgasming for the hundredth time. So many actors strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, a tale told by an idiot like me full of sound and fury signifying nothing — but that’s what life is. Life is one big sex column we’re all writing in our heads.

In all of my columns, I’ve sugarcoated the truth. Whenever I’ve talked about bad things that had happened or ugly truths, I added a big fat BUT. Yeah, life kicked my ass this semester, BUT it was a learning experience. I continually fail to live up to my expectations for myself, BUT I’ll do better next time. I’m tired of the “BUTS.”