There was a chill in the air, but with all of the energy buzzing around me, I couldn’t feel it. Everywhere I looked, I saw red: the leaves were red, faces were rosy and adorned with paint and stickers, and everyone was wearing Cornell apparel. It was September 21, 2018: my freshman year Homecoming.
I remember standing in the middle of campus among my adorably awkward, very new group of friends, and pausing to take in the moment. I had been at Cornell for about a month, but I don’t think that the realization had truly hit me until that moment. I finally felt like I belonged among the crowd of enthusiastic kids, swarming around campus like a school of vibrant fish. And for whatever nerves, reservations, or fears I had about traveling to the other side of the country for college, I suddenly felt a pride and gusto rise from within me, and laid all of those concerns to rest. I could yell, celebrate, and parade around campus with the rest of the crowd, because, in that moment, I realized that I was one of them: I was a Cornell student.
This frozen moment in time will forever be one of my favorite Cornell memories — which is a category of equally deserving nominees in itself. After all, there are all of those picturesque weekend trips to the Ithaca Farmers Market for breakfast burritos and Cuban sandwiches, and of course, Panhellenic Bid Day, and how could I possibly forget sledding down the slope during the winter finals week of 2019? While each day — even the perfectly average ones — at Cornell brings about new memories for me to hold onto, somehow, the completely random moment that I knew Cornell had gone from “my future college” to “my home” is the one I will cherish most.
And, as much as it makes me laugh, a memory I will remember just as vividly is uncannily similar. Standing among a crowd of friends — a few who had been there with me that day freshman year, some sorority sisters, and a bunch of others picked up along the way — I watched that same, red-clad commotion pass triumphantly through Collegetown to celebrate Homecoming 2021. A bittersweetness came over me, as I knew that, while my time at Cornell was coming to a close, for another freshman — one just like me that fall day years ago — theirs had just begun.
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