My morning was basically the same as it has been the past few days. I got to sleep in, and then had some food and walked to class. This time I was determined to eat at Trillium. I started walking to the ILR building when I found out that Abe, one of my classmates, was in the library inside the ILR building studying. Before I got there I went to Trillium and found out it didn't open for meal swipe until 11 AM, so I would come back later.
I got some work done in the ILR library, until it was about 11:30 AM and Amelia and I went to get some food. I got a grilled chicken sandwich with fries, but I didn't enjoy the chicken so much. Tomorrow I'll probably get something different. Hans joined us not too long after and we discussed the hypothetical situations the professor had given us during class yesterday. Soon enough, it was time for class and to hear some more hypothetical situations.
In class, we got yet another strange and difficult hypothetical situation. In this one we had to pick whether we'd kill one person in order to save the lives of 27 people, or let those 27 people die but not sacrifice anyone. Most people thought the answer should be quantitative and not qualitative. One life is worth less than 27 lives, or so some said. But who is to decide who is worth how many lives, it was such a dilemma. After debating for a while, we got the same sort of question. Except, in this case our lives would be the ones that would be taken in exchange for 10 people's live. In this case, most people valued their own lives more than 10 other people's. This class really gives us a lot to think about and makes us question our morals.
We received a break from the controversial conversations and started learning about Policy debate and Worlds debate. In Policy, you already know the resolution and you're supposed to have done your research. When you arrive at the debate, you're told whether you'll be affirmative or negative. That one seems simpler to me than doing Worlds, because if it's a narrow topic you can definitely research in-depth and get to know every positive and negative angle. In World's, you find out the resolution 15 minutes before the debate. Most of the topics tend to be about stuff that's happening in the world, and or common sense. You also don't get to research anything online. The part that's probably more fun about World's is that even if you don't know a lot about the subject, there's ways to attack the task with an angle that could still result in a win. Tomorrow, we'll get a demonstration of both and I'm eager to see how it goes.
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| A.D White Library |
Once class was over, I walked over to the Cornell store to buy some flashcards and I took some time to visit the A.D White library inside of the Uris library. Everyone says it looks like it came out of a Harry Potter book, because it's from the original building. It was aesthetically pleasing to walk around it and look outside through the small windows. One of these days I'm going to study there, but it's very quiet I'd feel bad even turning a page and making noise.
A few hours passed and I studied and went over to Shuxin's dorm for a while until I went to the Yearbook club meeting. I was worried I'd miss dinner, but we mostly introduced ourselves and talked about how we would want to theme the yearbook this year and did some FAQ. For example, someone asked if the yearbooks would be shipped internationally, and of course they do. Because yearbook was cut short, I was able to make it to dinner time with Valeria, Victoria, Connie, Ericka, and Paula. It's always so much fun. At 8 PM it was time for the Newsletter meeting. Newsletter was far more intense than yearbook. A lot of people had great ideas of what to put in it, and we're actually going to incorporate a section similar to Human's of New York. Basically, we'll take pictures of people and write their stories. I'm helping with that and some entertainment portions. Then we went back up to Victoria's room to study some more. Despite being in different classes, we all got work done. At 10 PM we went to our usual Donlon Hall hangout, until it was time to check-in back at Balch.
I'm trying to change up my days a little bit, maybe run in the morning and take advantage of the swimming pool sometime. I'm also pretty sure yearbook and the newsletter will help me out with constantly taking pictures for my blog and getting ideas of what to write. After only 4 days it feels like I've been for weeks, but I really like the people and atmosphere.
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