I have a confession to make: Cornell wasn’t my first choice. It wasn’t my second, or even my third. But after being rejected from the school of my dreams — I don’t want to toss out any names here, but let’s just say it was more Swarthy — and receiving a pittance of financial aid from a few other tiny “we put the liberal in liberal arts” bubble-schools, the Cornell College of Human Ecology’s (comparatively) reasonable in-state price tag was looking mighty nice.

With a reluctant sigh, I dropped my college decision postcards into the mailbox; declines were routed to sunnier climes, while my acceptance card climbed ever northward.

I didn’t want to go to Cornell primarily because of its size. Thirteen thousand undergrads seemed like an unfathomably large number, especially when stretched across a massive campus where it could easily take you half an hour to get to class. I had a feeling I would never get to know anybody at such a huge school; I would become a recluse, crouching in a corner of my dorm room with matted hair and tattered, grease-stained clothing, gnawing on a chicken bone.
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