Welcome to Cornell, freshmen! If you couldn’t already tell during Orientation Week, Cornell is a huge campus — home to many unique fields, people and backgrounds. However, during your first year, it’s inevitable that you’ll experience the so-called freshman year ‘canon events.’ These are things that, no doubt, every Cornell student has experienced, and are in fact, what makes Cornellians, Cornellians. So while you embark on your first semester, feel free to explore all of what Cornell has to offer and use this bucket list as a starting point. Here are the must-do experiences to check off before your first year is through:
- Go on multiple coffee chats for a single consulting club, then get rejected.
- Take a calming walk around Beebe Lake.
- Attend a hockey game at Lynah Rink.
- Email a TA or professor after midnight to request an extension. Just don’t expect a reply.
- Grab a comfort meal at Louie’s Lunch after failing a brutal 7:30 p.m. prelim.
- Pull an all-nighter in the Cocktail Lounge.
- Use all of your excused absences for lectures before Fall Break.
- Take the Flix Bus to New York City for a day trip.
- Go on a first date in Ithaca Commons … dinner at a dining hall doesn’t count!
- Host a friend from another college for a weekend. Be sure to show them a waterfall or two!
- Run late for class on the date of an important exam or lecture, then miss the TCAT.
- Have at least one study session in every library on campus. Cornell has over a dozen!
- Eat a meal at every dining hall on campus.
- Attend a concert in Bailey Hall.
- Go sledding down Libe Slope.
- Research potential transfer schools, then ultimately decide to stick it out.
- Attend Homecoming and St. Paddy’s Day darties in Collegetown.
- Slip and fall on an icy sidewalk because you forgot to wear snow boots. Extra points if there’s an audience.
- Explore Cornell Botanical Gardens.
- Play a round of Tuesday night Trivia at Collegetown Bagels.
- Read a physical copy of The Cornell Daily Sun.
- Attend a Mary Donlon Hall dorm party (extra points if it gets shut down by your RA).
- Use up all of your Big Red Bucks before the end of first semester.
- Lock yourself in the Olin Library stacks as punishment for procrastinating.
- Eat apple cider donuts at Apple Fest.
- Watch the sunset on Libe Slope.
- Tour the Johnson Museum of Art.
- Have brunch at Milkstand.
- Use a projector in Goldwin Smith Hall for a movie night.
- See an a cappella concert.
- Survive CHEM 2070: “General Chemistry I” (just barely).
- Join a bunch of clubs, attend their first G-Bodys and never show up again.
- Spend an evening at the Fuertes Observatory.
- Take a walk across all four parts of campus (North, Central, West, South).
- Watch a movie at the Cornell Cinema.
- Go to office hours at least once.
- Sit at the base of the A.D. White statue while drinking a Temple of Zeus matcha.
- Take a picture with Touchdown.
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