Have you seen that TikTok trend where people imagine their worst possible day in a specific place? That idea has lingered in my mind and made me wonder: What would the worst day at Cornell look like?
The worst day at Cornell starts the way too many Cornell mornings begin: an 8 a.m. lecture all the way out on the Engineering Quad on a Monday. The plan is the same: Drag yourself out of bed, throw on whatever is warmest and make it to the TCAT stop with 20 minutes to spare. Of course, plans at Cornell have a sense of humor. You miss the bus anyway — not because you misread the schedule, but because Route 30 waits for no one. The sheet of black ice outside your dorm doesn’t spare you either. One rushed step, one heroic attempt at a sprint and suddenly you’re horizontal, staring up at a sky as gray as ever while strangers pretend not to notice.
You brush it off, but now you’re covered in dirt, sore from the fall and it’s minus 5 degrees outside. Your face is red from the cold, your once-beautiful white coat is practically black and of course — you make direct eye contact with your campus crush. Eventually, you make it to lecture at 8:07 a.m.
You sit down, take off your winter layers, open your laptop and it’s dead. Then, your professor announces a pop quiz. You did not do the readings last night. You did, however, complete every game on The New York Times during your lectures. You take the paper, read the questions and accept your defeat before your pencil even moves.
After class, you have a two-hour break before your 11:40 a.m. class in Goldwin Smith Hall. This is usually when you stop at Temple of Zeus for a chocolate croissant and a drink. The trek there is its own obstacle course. There’s a large crowd near Statler Hall, and you run into everyone and their mother — people you like and people you don’t. Every conversation is just a little too fake, and your social battery is draining before the day has even started.
By the time you get to Zeus, the line is out the door. You consider leaving, but you’ve mentally promised yourself that croissant, so you decide to stay. When you finally order, your usual drink tastes wrong. You decide this is a personal attack from the universe.
You grab your chocolate croissant and your bitter beverage, looking to find a seat, but to no surprise, Zeus has no open tables. You stand awkwardly, scrolling on your phone, until you see someone you kind of know — a friend of a friend — sitting with one of your best friends. They wave you over and you pull up a chair. You eat your croissant, sip your bitter beverage and scroll for 40 minutes. Then, Canvas sends a notification: your pop quiz score is out. You load the page and see that you scored a 30%. Your heart drops in a way that feels both dramatic and completely deserved.
Lunch is soon, theoretically, but Trillium’s quesadilla line is overflowing and Terrace smells like burnt coffee and regret. You settle for a granola bar from the bottom of your backpack when your phone buzzes again: a GroupMe reminder about a group project you forgot existed. The meeting is tonight at 7 p.m. on Zoom with people you’ve never met in person.
One more class stands between you and the illusion of freedom. It’s your ‘easy A,’ the 1:25 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. lecture you usually treat like a guided nap with participation credit. For a brief moment, you consider skipping. But some stubborn fragment of integrity — or maybe just fear — pushes you toward Uris Hall.
You get there early, almost proud of yourself for surviving your interesting morning. You slide into a seat in the middle — not too eager, not too invisible — and text your friends about dinner plans, clinging to the idea that the day might still be salvaged by North Star Dining Room’s burrito bowls and gossip.
Then the projector flickers on. In cheerful Arial font: “Prelim 1 Guidelines. All devices must be put away. You will have 75 minutes.”
There is absolutely no way you forgot about your prelim.
You open Google Calendar hoping for mercy. There it is: “PRELIM 1. DO NOT FORGET” marked for today’s date. Around you, people zip up their backpacks and sharpen their pencils like they’ve been preparing for this moment since birth. The packet lands on your desk with a soft, final thud.
You take the prelim and turn it in, deciding that if you get a 50% or above, you are almost as smart as Albert Einstein.
The afternoon dissolves into that specific Cornell haze where time both crawls and disappears. You try studying in the ‘Harry Potter Library,’ the A.D. White Library, but every seat is taken by someone who looks like they were born an expert in Excel. By 4 p.m., you’ve opened six tabs, absorbed none of them and developed a headache that feels academically motivated.
You decide to nap in your dorm. You set an alarm for 6:25 p.m., giving yourself just enough time to prepare for the group meeting you haven’t started.
The Zoom is exactly what you expect: one person with perfect lighting who began the assignment in September, another who keeps saying, “Sorry, my Wi-Fi is bad” and you — pretending to scroll through readings while actually googling the topic for the first time.
Your roommate walks in and asks how your day was. You consider explaining everything that happened, but there aren’t enough words in the English language. So you just say, “Very Cornell. Let’s debrief over North Star’s burrito bowls.”
Because the worst day at Cornell isn’t one big disaster. It’s a collection of tiny humiliations held together by caffeine and denial. And tomorrow, for reasons you can’t explain, you’ll wake up and do it all again.
Maya Rothbard is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at msr295@cornell.edu.
