Hi! If you’re reading this, congratulations on your admission to Cornell University! You’re in for an amazing four years.
My name is Sarah, and I’m a sophomore majoring in Operations Research and Information Engineering. My time at Cornell so far has been incredible – I’ve gotten to explore my interests while getting a world-class education in engineering and meeting passionate people from all around the world. One of my favorite parts of my time here, however, is what I’ve gotten to explore outside of engineering. Cornell offers 80+ majors and thousands of courses, and students of all majors have the opportunity to take any of these courses and pursue a passion or discover a new one!
A new passion that I discovered while at Cornell is linguistics. At the suggestion of a friend, I took LING 1101: Introduction to Linguistics last semester and absolutely loved it. The course pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to practice problem-solving methods completely different from what my engineering courses taught me. I learned so much about the science and history of language, and I have a much better appreciation for the language skills that we take for granted every day.
I liked the course enough to continue with linguistics this semester. I’m taking LING 2248: Native American Languages, which focuses on giving students the linguistic and historical context they need to research an Indigenous language of their choosing. I encourage students of all backgrounds to take it – there are no prerequisites, and the opportunity to engage with the culture of Indigenous tribes in the Finger Lakes area is very valuable.
Some other just-for-fun courses that I’ve taken include AMST 2340: The Beatles and PLSCI 2010: Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds. It’s so much fun to take a course that’s completely unrelated to engineering as it adds some much-needed variety to my curriculum and makes my days more exciting. If you have the room in your schedule to take courses like Introduction to Wines, The First American University, The Art and Science of Birds, or Theatrical Makeup Studio, go for it! You won’t regret the choice to experiment with something completely new. Who knows, you might even love it!
~Sarah, operations research and information engineering