Going back to a fully in-person campus was amazing because I was finally back to the same Cornell University from two years ago, before the pandemic. I was able to attend lectures with all of my friends and classmates present, spend more time on campus, attend office hours in person and actually converse with my TA’s without technical issues from zoom. Although the workload was a bit overwhelming at first, I quickly found my rhythm and was able to manage my time wisely. I felt that being able to physically attend my classes and having one on one conversations with professors helped me learn the material in a more in-depth way than before and it helped me think about my future. I realized that I want to learn more about computer science and hope to find an internship that can combine mechanical engineering with computer science. I plan on focusing more of my time next semester on networking in order to build connections so that I can find such a job or even do research at Cornell or another university over the summer.

I was able to reconnect with so many people whom I lost touch with over the pandemic. I spent most of my time at my fraternity house, everyone wanted to pick up where we left off last semester and have the best possible time. We organized many social events and even attended a Patriots/Bills game as a house. I loved having something that could distract me from school when I felt overwhelmed and it was something that I missed last year. Despite the Covid outbreak that happened the last two weeks, having the first three months feel normal proved that we can handle this pandemic and I can’t wait to go back in the spring.