If I were to hitch a ride on the DeLorean back to ’05 to chat with my freshman self, I suspect that we’d exhaust our limited avenues of conversation not too long after the obligatory pleasantries and false promises to “send myself a text the next time I’m time-travelling.” I imagine we’d have little in common, as I have changed quite a bit since my days of maintaining flawless lecture attendance and wearing beaded Abercrombie tank tops as evening-wear. Of course, I would certainly have been polite, but, beneath the thin veil of enthusiasm, my freshman self would probably have met my senior self with sentiments similar to those I felt toward the other senior girls I met my freshman year.

As I looked optimistically ahead at my imminent four years of college while receiving the seemingly undivided attention of some of Cornell’s older, Greek-letter-emblazoned males, I believed that the senior girls at this school must have been feeling completely and utterly obsolete. Having learned the astonishing statistic of Cornellians who marry each other (which, for the record, is highly inflated), and watching far too much Gilmore Girls, I had envisaged Cornell as a veritable breeding ground for the academically accelerated. The notion that any time in college could be enjoyed without the attention of the plaid-short-wearing, Anchorman-quoting frat guys I saw peeing off the porches at parties was unfathomable to me. With these romanticized views, I accordingly wrote my column, “Cornell Unzipped,” on college romance. And then, just as suddenly as did Lindsay Lohan’s sexuality, things changed.

Just in case two more years of college hadn’t provided me with a sufficient wake-up call, I spent last semester on the other side of the planet cramming as much life experience into six months as one could possibly imagine, and learned, among about a million other things, the following:

1. Thanks to the outrageous price of food in Australia, even I, possibly the least domestic girl ever to have come out of suburban Long Island, am capable of cooking my own dinner (as long as it’s pasta).

2. Bungee jumping is, in fact, harder than it looks.

3. No matter how high-tech your Skype camera may be, the picture is always blurry enough to hide even the most horrifying of deformities. It’s thebeer goggles of the 21st century!

4. “No worries” is an appropriate response to anything.

5. Surfer dudes may seem relaxed and carefree, but those muscles are capable of feats of strength the likes of which we puny humans can’t even imagine. I, myself, can barely lift a surf board, which is why when I hear words like “gnarly” and “awesome” I don’t make any sudden moves.

6. The Australian accent? Yeah, it never gets old.

7. Their techno music does.

8. The Outback Steakhouse is actually more insulting to Australians than flattering. How would you feel if they had a restaurant full of fat cowboys running around with fanny packs?

9. You don’t really notice the flush of the toilet in the opposite direction unless you get really close. As it happens, the drinking age in Australia is 18, so that’s a fairly good possibility.

10. You’ll never truly appreciate CTB until you’ve had to search for edible food in Indonesia.

More than anything else, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more to experience while you’re in college than romantic relationships alone, and that focusing all of your efforts on answering love’s unanswerable questions is a surefire way to miss out on it.

Being abroad, I was able to focus on experiencing all that Australia had to offer. Whether through bungee jumping, sky-diving, hang-gliding, surfing or even just by tasting Kangaroo meat, I tried it all. I met all kinds of people, and discovered that there are friends to be had even (gasp!) outside of Ithaca. The veil which once obscured my vision of Cornell was lifted and I’m now able to appreciate all of the amazing things Cornell has to offer, as well as the exciting and interesting relationships to be had here that aren’t necessarily restricted to the romantic.

My new plan is to graduate having left no stone at Cornell unturned, and to experience all that I can while I’m still in college.

I’ll be acting as a social anthropologist of sorts, seizing every opportunity to uncover something new about college life, and, of course, writing about my findings here.

And from now on, I am not going to worry so much about putting myself out there — in life or in The Sun.

Nikki Nussbaum is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at nnussbaum@cornellsun.com. Cornell Uncovered appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.