GOLDWIN SMITH HALL—Each semester, thousands of freshmen are encouraged to engage with Cornell’s vast breadth of knowledge in the form of its abundant and diverse Freshman Writing Seminars (FWS). However, for Blake Perry ‘28, there lingers a feeling of unfairness in the system due to fun classes being filled up quickly.
“My first choice was ‘Sunshine and Rainbows: A Study On Frolicking In Fields’, but someone looked over my shoulder, sniped the class, and then offered the spot to me for fifty bucks,” she complained. “My second choice was ‘A Thousand Depressing Statistics On Climate Change’ so I ended up paying them.”
Perry currently remains enrolled in a class on French colonialism, which had already assigned its first essay, a six page monstrosity with a bibliography in MLA format. Her friend, Ezra Campbell ‘28, claims to be shocked at the very idea of a written essay. “I didn’t even know FWS’s even had essays,” Campbell said. “My assignment was to write a review of The Hangover on LetterBoxd. I wrote ‘literally me’ and got full credit for it.”
For their second assignment, both Perry and Campbell had been assigned to watch the same French film. But while Cambell was instructed to “have fun”, Perry’s directions were to “remember the pain and anguish of a thousand cholera victims during each jump cut.”
Still, Perry remains optimistic at the opportunity to take eccentric classes not offered at other universities. Next, she plans to take the PE class “Skydiving At Sunset”, or her backup option, “Light Jogging”.