"Boring" Summer Plans

By: Christopher-James Llego '17

Last night, as I was eating my salad bowl of spinach and baby carrots (and loathing my friends who were on their cheat days), a thought went through my mind: my summer plans stink. I hadn’t really thought much about my summer plans—and if I did, it usually wasn’t in such a negative way—but after hearing about Friend A’s internship in New York City, Friend B’s plans to backpack through Europe, and Friend C’s plane tickets to XYZ LOCATION (I kind of zoned out at this point), I really got to thinking about how utterly boring my summer would end up being. To be fair, I might just be exaggerating, though Cornell students seem to have a peculiar habit of “doing the most.” So here’s my attempt at trying to look on the bright side: this summer, I’ll be conducting research for my honors thesis on Global Horror Cinema and Transnational Feminism, studying for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) and contemplating graduate programs in Comparative Literature or Asian Studies or English (so many options!) and fulfilling an Arts & Sciences distribution requirement.

Within Arts & Sciences, seniors on the honors track (i.e. those with a high enough in-major and overall GPA) have the opportunity to write a ~50 page thesis on any topic that interests them. I have a weird obsession with cult classic horror films, foreign languages, film and media theory, and feminism, so I decided to combine my eccentricities and start a project examining the “Final Girl” Teen Slasher trope and its various permutations, as well as its variations across foreign film movements like the New French Extremity, Giallo all’italiana, and Tagalog Aswang films. Nifty, huh? I like it. In fact, I like it enough to have spent my past year watching and re-watching over 300 horror films—and will spend this summer and all of next year watching hundreds more.

And why am I doing all of that, you ask? To fulfill a deep-seated desire to validate my obsessions, to find the feminism in a misunderstood cinematic genre, and to practice for what will most likely be several more years of research. Yes, graduate school! This summer, I’ll be self-studying for the GRE. Locked away in a small apartment sublet with blank walls and piles of GRE prep books and card sets, I’ll be cramming for an exam that will decide my FUTURE (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). Such a scary thought. Will I get into graduate school? Which field will I pursue? What will I do with my life? Well, the answer sort of depends on whether or not I can graduate first. And so, we come to the last part of my summer: an online course on Human Evolution. Arts & Sciences has a few distribution requirements, which allow students to choose courses in fields that they normally wouldn’t pursue. I discovered my Gender Studies major through the Cultural Analysis requirement and Comparative Literature through both the Foreign Language and Literature & the Arts requirements. Unfortunately for me, I have a knack for procrastinating and have avoided any math or science courses these past three years. So now, I’m finding ways to fulfill these requirements during my breaks.

Cornell is awesome in that it offers Physical & Biological Sciences courses that aren’t as intensive as, say, Organic Chemistry. In other words: non-science-minded students need not be afraid of the distribution requirements! Also, pro tip: don’t wait until the last minute (senior year) to start taking these courses! So yes, I may not be backpacking through Europe, but at least I’ll get to do something that I love: conduct research. And hey, thanks to Cornell’s dedication to providing students with online courses, I’ll get to spend my summer blasting my A.C. and avoiding the blistering heat that I’m so unaccustomed to as a Cornellian.