<p>I didn't even look at the book since I was so busy this whole summer with going on vacation, friends and enjoying my summer.</p>
<p>Will this affect my gpa if I don't attend the mandatory small discussion where we hand in our essays o-o</p>
<p>Did anyone actually read the book and do the essay?</p>
<p>Actually, you’ll get rescinded…JK! 
</p>
<p>Relax, it won’t affect your GPA. :p</p>
<p>Two of my friends, who were freshmen at Cornell last year, told me that they didn’t go to the small group discussions (having not read the book). The discussions (both the large lecture and the small group) are pretty much optional from what I hear. I don’t plan on going either because I already have things planned with friends for the next few days.</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about consequences for not doing it, although most people do go and it really doesn’t take up that much time.</p>
<p>Haha ! I didn’t do sh** for the book either. Don’t worry, your good. I would skip the book group thingy too.</p>
<p>You should read the book.</p>
<p>It’s interesting.</p>
<p>Skorton joked at Convocation this morning about how most people didn’t get his Androids jokes because they didn’t read the book. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, but try to get it done even if you don’t want to read the book (I’m not a huge, huge scifi fan so I didn’t really get into it either).</p>
<p>The book is usually pretty good, but avoid the tedious activities around it.</p>
<p>In my group session the professor had clearly not read the book himself, and spend most of the time extracting a plot summary from us. The big session just drags on and on.
The essay may get you some kind of prize if it is incredibly good, but I never even heard the results of the competition last year.</p>
<p>This whole thing is backfiring because it basically starts off new students with some pointless busywork with no consequences for non-completion.</p>