A Day in the Life of a Cornell Engineer
Hi there. I am Daisy, and I’m a rising Junior. As a freshman, my daily life wasn’t super interesting but it was one of the best years of my life in terms of the friendships I made and things I learned in college. So here we go. On weekdays, I would wake up to more than 10 alarms on my phone first thing in the morning. I lived in a double in Court-Kay-Bauer Hall (CKB). Usually, my roommate would already be awake when I woke up because she always had earlier classes. She would already be dressed and ready to go when I got out of bed. I would go to our pod bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. Then go through my morning routine of moisturizing and putting some light makeup on my face, and getting dressed. I’m super indecisive when it comes to picking out clothes for the day, and would stare at my closet for a couple minutes before checking the weather app. Ithaca weather can be unpredictable! So if it was raining, I would wear my rain boots and make sure I brought an umbrella in my backpack. Then I would check my schedule and make sure I brought my laptop, all my chargers, and my notebooks for the classes I had that day.
I would walk down the CKB hallway, and under the Balch arch, then down the hill to the Risley bus stop while I refreshed the Ithaca Transit app. Sometimes I would walk to my classes with friends who were going the same way. But I usually took the TCAT bus everywhere because I thought it was more convenient than walking 20 minutes to my classes, especially if I was running late. The bus would drop me off in front of whichever building I had my first class in, and I would attend that lecture. Usually, I would text my friends in that class beforehand and if I was running late, ask them to save a seat for me.
Then I would eat lunch with my friends from class or text other people beforehand to see when they were free for lunch, and where they wanted to eat. My friends and I always ended up in Mac’s Café, or Terrace in the Statler, or Trillium where, in my opinion, they had the best food on campus. After lunch, I would grab a cup of Gimme Coffee from Mac’s or Gates Hall to wake myself up before my next class or discussion. Depending on my schedule, if I was done for the day, which didn’t happen very often, I would go home and take a quick nap. Usually, when I find myself with free time, I would take advantage of that time to go to office hours for a class that I was having a hard time with, or had questions on the homework/assignments/problem sets. Then twice a week, I would have a project team meeting, one with the general body, and the other with my subteam.
After all my classes/discussions, office hours, and meetings, I would go back to my residence hall to finish up any work I have due in the next week. Since my room or floor lounge is fairly quiet, I enjoy doing work at home. If I was passing through a library, then I would do work in Uris Library, or now what is referred at as the Cocktail Lounge. If the homework assignments or problem sets were too difficult for me to do alone, I would invite friends from those classes to my floor lounge to work on it together. After I finished all my work, I would sometimes workout at Helen Newman Hall or run around North Campus. I usually bothered my roommate, my suitemates, and the people on my floor to hang out. I hung out in friends’ rooms in other residence halls if people on my floor were busy. Then, we would all go to dinner at Robert Purcell Community Center or Appel together. We do the occasional dinner on West Campus if we wanted to spice things up. Depending on my work load for that day, I might finish some last bits of work after dinner or if I didn’t have work, I would hang out with the people on my floor or go to other people’s residence halls. Normally, we would talk about random things, play loud music, and watch a movie and eat snacks together. Whenever I got bored waiting for other people to finish up their work, I would watch some Netflix TV shows on my laptop or go on my phone. When it came to bedtime at around midnight for me, I would then shower and set my alarms for the next weekday. Then sleep and repeat.
—Daisy, computer science