Before you continue reading I would like to make a disclaimer, if you are my Cornell archnemesis and you are reading this, this is not about you. If you are that person and you think you are, you’re a narcissist. With that being said, I would like to remind I don’t think about you, I don’t care about your opinions and you are probably not reading this because you definitely don’t care about my opinion either (unless they’ve looked at my Linkedin recently, which I believe is probably true).
Now that the air has been cleared, the introduction is an exaggeration. I do not have an archnemesis. The term, meaning, “a main competitor or opponent that a person cannot win against” does not apply here. The dynamic is a little bit more nuanced than that, specifically because this person has no idea that I have defined them as my archnemesis and they hopefully never will.
For context, without giving away my position, I met this individual very early-on in my first semester. We had a mutual acquaintance and ended up speaking in a group context. The conversation was civil but, as you can tell, the outcome wasn’t productive and now it's counterproductive.
We don’t fight. We don’t even talk. I don’t see this person often. Yet, every time I do, I leave with the satisfaction that I have, in some small, imperceptible way, annoyed them — or at least said the right thing in the right way. This could be a common Cornellian mindset: always analyzing how you say things, wondering if it was the right thing to say at the right time. But this? This is different. I have no intention of sounding better than this person, one-upping them, or putting them down — that is not my speed. Instead, all I hope to take away is a laugh and the satisfaction of having ever-so-gently trolled them.
The beautiful part of this dynamic is that they are slightly deadpan and bitter and have actually insulted me once or twice. The even better part? I don’t typically get personally offended. So, on my birthday, when they told me I was dressed like their dad, my ego wasn’t bruised. But, I was motivated to lean into the bit. If I was going to be their dad in their eyes, I was going to be the best dad possible – fully embracing the role with humor and a commitment to well-timed, utterly harmless antagonism.
The reason that I’m sharing this story with you, is because, I think it is reflective of a larger epidemic that we as Cornellians and academics face — a competitive, unrealistic expectation that everyone is an archnemesis.
At a school like Cornell, where ambition runs high and imposter syndrome lurks around every corner, it’s easy to feel like every interaction is a battle for intellectual dominance. Conversations can turn into subtle power struggles, where people measure their worth based on how articulate, well-read, or quick-witted they appear. The pressure to prove yourself, to be the smartest in the room, or to come out of a discussion feeling victorious can turn even the most mundane interactions into something unnecessarily adversarial. This mindset isn’t always explicit but it is present in our day-to-day lives.
We internalize this idea that success is comparative, that our achievements mean less if someone else is doing better. And suddenly, without even realizing it, we find ourselves assigning archnemeses in our heads — people we view as obstacles, as benchmarks, or even just as characters in our own personal narrative of obstacles.
But the truth is, most of these so-called rivals have no idea they’ve been cast in this role. They’re probably just as wrapped up in their own anxieties, their own ambitions, their own imaginary competitions. And when you take a step back, it becomes clear that this dynamic is, more often than not, just another symptom of the high-pressure environment we exist in.
That’s why I’ve chosen to approach my own “archnemesis” with humor rather than hostility. Instead of letting this dynamic bother me, I’ve turned it into a running joke — one that lets me release anxiety rather than feed into it. And maybe that’s the real lesson here: we don’t have to take these unspoken rivalries so seriously. We don’t have to see every person we disagree with as a threat. Sometimes, we can just laugh, let go and recognize that we’re all just trying to navigate this place the best we can.
The Cornell bubble is an anxiety-inducing place as it is and it only gets worse when you start keeping track of what everyone else is up to. My solution (not always, but a good amount of the time): a laugh. So when I see my favorite person on campus — alternatively known as my archnemesis — and I tell them to “have a good day” and they shoot back a “stop lying,” I smile. Because at that moment, I'd already won (a laugh).
Kaitlyn Bell is a first-year in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached at kgb57@cornell.edu.
