<p>Has anyone here ever thought about keeping a daily diary about your college experience?</p>
<p>I figure I have enough electronic records. I wouldn’t want to spend the time, I guess. between facebook, Twitter, emails, and message boards I can basically tap how I was feeling any time since I was 16.</p>
<p>gotta second faustarp here. if you have enough time to keep a daily diary, you fall into one of 3 categories:</p>
<p>-you’re not doing too well in classes
-you’re not taking enough classes</p>
<p>and, most rarely,</p>
<p>-you’re a super genius and cornell is too easy for you. </p>
<p>i’d say it’s about 90% in the first 2 categories, and 10% in the third.</p>
<p>I actually like to keep a private blog. It’s easier to type than to write, and it’s nice to record memorbale (or mundane) events or vent when I’m stressed.</p>
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<p>Give me a break. How much time do you kids spend time surfing the Internet, watching Youtube, playing video games, gossiping with friends, or imbibing in certain activities.</p>
<p>There’s plenty of down time as a college student to keep a diary or blog. I do think a private blog is the best way to go. Either that or a molepad.</p>
<p>cayuga,</p>
<p>surfing the net, watching youtube, playing video games, gossiping with friends, or imbibing (a assume this is a reference to alcohol):</p>
<p>all of these essentially approach zero as my academic career has gone on. “surfing the net” to me means checking email for school related stuff or looking at blackboard for coursework. youtube/video games… wow, can’t remember the last time i had a spare hour for those. i scope youtube for a song every now and then, and that occupies a whole 5 minutes or so, but video games and gossiping? these are as familiar to me as speaking tarkzeshian (100 bucks to anyone who gets this reference… oh crap, google).</p>
<p>as per imbibing, i drank my first year of college, because everything was easy and structured. i’ve had a handful of nights that have allowed for it since.</p>
<p>i don’t mean to sound like a square. i’m an avid artist who isn’t an art major. i would love to have time to draw or paint something every once in a while. it just doesn’t come around between school, labwork, meals (apparently we need to eat to stay alive), and sleep.</p>
<p>What major are you? Among my friends of physics majors, engineers, chemists, ILRies, and humanities majors, we had a lot of downtime. We all graduated with 3.5+ GPAs and did very well on the job market/graduate school.</p>
<p>Now maybe we were all just smarter than the average Cornellian. I doubt it though. Maybe a bit harder working and more prone to spend a Friday night at the library until 8PM. But if you are taking 4-5 courses a semester, you simply shouldn’t be <em>that</em> bogged down. 50 hours of school-related classes and studying a week, tops.</p>
<p>I’m already quite introspective, so I don’t feel like putting the time into a diary, but I certainly would have the time if I wanted to. I’m currently watching about three hours of planned television a week, plus an hour or so more for podcasts. and I like to keep up with a handful of blogs too, and I always end up reading cool articles at Scientific American and similar sites.</p>
<p>Only 3 hours? haha. Hulu and I have a love-hate relationship…but I study/do homework while I watch so that’s my justification for it ._.</p>
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<p>Probably not the most effective way to study. But whatever works for you.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know. I mainly do it while practicing characters for Chinese…writing hundreds of them over and over would bore me to tears otherwise. lol. [Sorry that this diary thread has gone so off topic…]</p>
<p>"What major are you? Among my friends of physics majors, engineers, chemists, ILRies, and humanities majors, we had a lot of downtime. We all graduated with 3.5+ GPAs and did very well on the job market/graduate school.</p>
<p>Now maybe we were all just smarter than the average Cornellian. I doubt it though. Maybe a bit harder working and more prone to spend a Friday night at the library until 8PM. But if you are taking 4-5 courses a semester, you simply shouldn’t be <em>that</em> bogged down. 50 hours of school-related classes and studying a week, tops."</p>
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<p>i’m doubling in math and molecular biology. i also transferred here so i’ve had to take 18+ credits a semester to get requirements done on time. perhaps you are your buddies were just smarter than most. i know some engineers who spend every firday and saturday working on problem sets but end up with GPA’s in the high 2’s or low 3’s. i’ll be attending medical school this fall, and i needed to have a solid GPA for that goal to be realized. spare time was spent just to clear my head-- at the gym or at some event. sitting in front of books most of the time, i couldn’t imagine spending ‘downtime’ writing in another.</p>
<p>downtime exists, but i guess my main point is that i wouldn’t spend it writing in a diary. to each his own, just my $0.02</p>
<p>If you’re attending med school in the fall, your last semester grades aren’t going to mean that much. I’m not saying for you to tank the semester but getting a 3.6 instead of 3.9 isn’t the worst thing in the world. I say that because it sounds like you’re working hard. Hopefully, you won’t burn out in med school.</p>
<p>well, my post was more retrospective. i mainly refer to my first 7 semesters of college-- definitely experiencing some signs of senioritis here and there but what keeps me going is thinking about how expensive it is to get an education these days. i’m going to be in some major debt for a significant portion of my life just trying to obtain an education. it wouldn’t be wise to just blow off my last semester, for which i am dishing out a lot of money, when i will have this summer to relax and travel a bit.</p>
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<p>To be fair, that’s not what you said in your original post. You suggested that most Cornell students don’t have any downtime because they are studying all the time. </p>
<p>Part of being a doctor is learning how to put yourself in other people’s shoes and relate to them. While writing in a journal may not be the way you choose to spend your time, it’s a worthwhile activity for many people, and to suggest that one wouldn’t have the time to do so while at Cornell is a bit disingenuous. You already mentioned that you spent your downtime in the gym and attending various events.</p>
<p>A double major in math and molecular biology probably puts you in the top 5% of most difficult course loads at Cornell. I barely survived Real Analysis. So congratulations to you for doing so well.</p>
<p>I’m a junior in engineering and I write 3 or 4 times a week. It’s surprisingly common to have stretches of days where you have zero downtime, but I still find time to check my e-mail, facebook, blogs, etc during not-busy weeks. My GPA isnt that bad either.</p>
<p>cayuga,</p>
<p>i suppose what matters most is how well people want to do. it’s relatively easy to maintain a 3.0 GPA- getting B’s in classes is not too difficult. this can be done with tons of downtime.</p>