College Sickness

One of the many wonderful perks of college is that it isn’t too difficult to become very close with a group of friends. You see these people every day, you eat with them you study with them and in many cases you may even live with them. While these are all great things, they do come with a price. Because of this closeness it doesn’t take much for sickness to spread.

When it comes to sickness, dorm life is basically a breeding ground for infection. All it takes is for one person to get sick and suddenly everyone has it. It only makes sense that you would catch what you neighbor has, especially when you share a shower. As I walk into my residence hall I immediate hear the sounds of coughs and sneezes. Despite the fact that everyone has hand sanitizer in their rooms, people still manage to get sick. It doesn’t matter if you wash your hands every ten minutes because in that time each person has come in contact with germs at one point or another. Also in those ten minutes, each person has touched their eyes nose or mouth already and this is how sickness spreads.

Swine flu has become a big deal all over the country. You would have a hard time trying to find a food distributor on campus that does not have a swine flu poster of pamphlet. Thankfully we haven’t had any outbreaks of swine flu here at Cortland but if we were to, it wouldn’t be long before it spread all across campus. The same way we pass along the common cold, we could pass along swine flu. Although swine flu is very similar to the regular flu it can be fatal if the afflicted person is worn down enough. Any student can attest to the fact that it is easy to get worn down between late night studying and partying on the weekends.

While it is important to wash your hands and eat healthy it is our responsibility to make sure we are getting enough sleep and taking care of ourselves. It stinks for the person who gets sick but, we don’t think about the fact that we might be getting others sick too.

The Fall Season

In just four short days, the summer season will have come to an end. We all had fun during the hot summer days, whether we had summer jobs, took classes or just relaxed at home, it’s not hard to appreciate the summer. But about three weeks into the semester we have all forgot about those lazy days and are now fully into the swing of the school year and fall season. In my opinion there is no greater season than fall, because of all the great changes and excitement it brings.

The beginning of football season is the perfect way to start off the fall. You have all 32 teams all having the same shot at winning it all. Whatever happened last season is ancient history because everyone starts with the same record. The teams that were good the previous year have to prove they’re still they team they were while the teams that struggled get to establish themselves a threat.
With football just starting, we also have baseball coming to a close. The entire baseball season has led to the month of October. With the arrival of the playoffs we can expect some of the best games of the year. And finally we have the World Series to cap off the season.

With the arrival off fall, the weather is starting to cool off to that perfect “jeans and t-shirt” temperature. With the beautiful weather comes the changing of the leaves. In a few weeks, brilliant reds, oranges and yellows will line the paths to class. Being from long island I can appreciate nice fall foliage but up here there are so many trees to show off the beautiful changing of the season.

Some other perks the fall season brings are Halloween and Thanksgiving. Who doesn’t enjoy dressing up for Halloween, or at the very least seeing the people who do dress up? Thanksgiving is personally my favorite holiday. I enjoy spending the time catching up with my family over a feast of seasonal food. I look forward to these upcoming months of beauty and excitement.

The Transfer Experience

Hello, this is my first ever blog post and I would like to use it to describe what it's like to be a transfer student here at SUNY Cortland. While it is exciting to be in a new environment and meeting new people, it can be frustrating to be a transfer student.
While it is a priceless feeling to be out of my former school, there are many instances where transfer students get the short end of the stick. Even as early as the application process, the transfer student is at a disadvantage. Despite having already completed at least a year of college, transfer students have their applications viewed after the incoming freshman class. With this disadvantage it becomes increasingly more difficult to even earn acceptance.
The next leg of the transfer process is orientation, which at many schools comes after freshman orientation. This means that the transfer students are left to fight over the “bottom of the barrel” classes. This becomes increasingly difficult when the new students need specific courses because many of their credits did not transfer from their previous school.
On a more personal level I can attest to the fact that a lot of effort is put into helping transfers become comfortable in their new surroundings. Since I am a transfer student I was placed in a residence hall with other transfers as well as freshmen. It doesn’t really bother me that the building itself is practically falling apart. The part that does bother me is that all of the resident in my hall are being forced to move out in the spring 2010 semester. So despite going to a new school and having to meet new friends and get settled in to a new environment, we will yet again have to move into a new hall and a new redo the whole process. I understand that the priority should go to the returning students but there must be a better way of going about the transfer process.