A Day in the Life at Cornell University

If you are anything like I was, you might be curious what life at college is like. Will it be like life at home? Is it fun? Is it manageable? If you’ve ever asked yourself these things, you’re in luck. Keep reading to learn about a day in my life as an undergraduate freshman at one of the top universities in the country, Cornell! 

Starting the Day at Cornell

It’s a Tuesday morning, which means my first class is at 10:10am, so I like to wake-up around 9:10am. After my basic morning routine: taking a shower, creating my to-do list for the day, etc—I pack my bag and get ready to leave my dorm. 

Since I am a freshman, I currently live on North Campus, where all 3,500 or so freshman students live. Cornell recently made the change to require students to live on campus for both their freshman and sophomore years. To accommodate this, Cornell has built a number of state-of-the-art student dorms on North Campus. These dorms are ultra-modern, and all have air-conditioning, something that is essential in Ithaca during the first month, and last few weeks of the school year. 

If I am not running late, I walk five minutes to stop by Toni Morrison Dining Hall for a quick breakfast. This dining hall is brand new in 2022 with the new dorms, and offers a wide selection of breakfast, lunch, and dinner options all day long.

At Cornell, each freshman is automatically placed on an unlimited dining plan, which allows you to enter and exit each of the 10 dining halls on campus as many times as you like. In addition to that, each freshman is given $400 Big Red Bucks (BRBs), which can be spent on campus at Cafes and convenience stores. 

After breakfast, I head to class on Central Campus. To get to class, I can either choose a 20 minute walk or a 10 minute bus ride. North Campus has a number of easy and accessible bus stops, with buses running to all parts of campus every 5 to 10 minutes. Today is a nice day, so I chose to walk. I am a Computer Science major, and my first class of the day is a lecture for a core major class, CS2110 (Object Oriented Programming & Data Structures). The lecture is in the Statler Auditorium, and has roughly 600 students—large for a class at Cornell—but standard for an introductory Computer Science course. Although the class is large, one of the perks of the introductory CS classes at Cornell is their expansive course staff, consisting of more than enough course consultants and teaching assistants if you need help with anything at all. To learn more about the Computer Science major at Cornell, check out my other blog here!

After my first class is done at 11:00am, I have a 2 hour break to grab some lunch, socialize, and get some work done. One of the perks of having such a big campus is that there is food everywhere. Nearly every single building at Cornell has a convenient place to grab a coffee and a snack, if not more. Today my friends and I decided to get food at Terrace, a campus eatery inside of Statler Hall that accepts BRBs and has a wide selection of food including Burrito Bowls, Pho, Salads, Gyros, and more.

An Afternoon on Campus

After lunch and some studying, my next class is at 1:00pm back in Statler Auditorium, a Psychology/Business class titled Better Decisions for Life, Love, and Money. This particular class is taught by six different professors, each having a few weeks to teach their own “module” on a field of their expertise. While this class does fulfill a distribution requirement, it is also extremely interesting and I can say for certain that it has made me a better decision maker. One of the perks of studying at Cornell is that it is easy to select classes that count towards graduation requirements but are also of great interest—true to their motto “any person, any study”. It is also not uncommon to be in a class taught by a professor who is the foremost expert on that very subject—something that I am still getting used to. 

After this class finishes at 2:15pm, I walk back to North Campus for my third and final class of the day at 2:30—bowling. All freshmen at Cornell are required to take two P.E. classes, and while there are nearly 100 options, bowling is one of the most popular. I have made some of my best friends from this class, and I must say there is nothing like finishing a day of class at the lanes (and actually getting credit for it).

Today, like most days once I am done with class, I head to the library to get some work done. While Cornell offers over 15 libraries and countless study spots, I like to go to the same place—Mann Library, on the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences quad. Mann is a large library full of quiet and secluded places to get work done. It looks over a luscious green forest, which is one of the reasons I enjoy studying there. 

Around 6:30pm, I leave the library and walk down to West Campus to meet friends for dinner at a dining hall. West Campus houses primarily sophomores, and is where I will be living next year. To get to West Campus, I walk through campus and down the famous “slope,” a long (480ft) and steep grassy hill currently full of Cornell students awaiting the sunset.

Today is Tuesday, which means Taco Tuesday at Flora Rose, which is also a sophomore student dorm and dining hall. Another one of my favorite parts of Cornell is the presence of a dairy manufacturing center right on campus, which fortunately for students means unlimited fresh ice cream in every single dining hall.

Wrapping Up the Day

After dinner, my friends and I walk back up the slope to take a seat to enjoy the sunset. While Cornell is well known for its daunting winter months of frigid temperatures and countless snow storms, it is also known for providing unforgettable sunsets.

Afterward the sun sets, we walk back to our dorms on North Campus. Usually in the evenings, I spend a bit of time in the community lounge in my dorm socializing with those who live nearby. For me, debriefing our days in the dorm lounge is one of my favorite parts of my day. The conversations can go on for hours, but eventually I will find myself back in my dorm. Once home, I typically have more work to finish up before ultimately winding down and heading to bed around 12 or so. 

While there are certainly nights where I am up much later, studying for exams or completing assignments, this is not every night, and there is definitely the possibility to have a balanced lifestyle at Cornell. With a little bit of time management, planning, and hopefully not too much procrastination, it is completely doable to work hard while also having a ton of fun. 

Written by Owen Rector, PathIvy Cornell University Ambassador