CornellWatch

Dear Aunt Edna,

Would you happen to know who paints the footprints on the Arts Quad between the statues of A.D. White and Ezra Cornell? My friend told me that when he toured the campus before freshman year the tour guide says that legend has it that the two statues come alive at midnight and meet in the middle of the Quad to shake hands after a virgin has passed through. But if the legend involves them meeting in the middle of the Arts Quad, then shouldn’t there be a trail of white footprints leading one way and a trail of red footprints leading the other way? It doesn’t make any sense that their footprints suddenly turn red. Care to explain?

                    Confused Cornellian

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Dear Aunt Edna,

I am a Freshman in the Arts and Sciences school but I am very unclear as to what I would like to major in. I started off as chem but gave it up after about a month (It’s a long story). Basically, I don’t know where to begin to look for a new one. Currently it feels as if I’m choosing my major based on process of elimination and this is far from reassuring. Sometimes I feel like I would like to study business or economics because it’s what my dad did but is this a wrong reason? How can I be sure? Where can I look for help? I tried the Career Center but all I did was sit behind a computer for hours lying about my interests (I don’t know what I’m interested in). I am constantly asked by my friends and relatives what I’m studying and I hate not knowing but feeling like I should! Oh well.

-Undecided

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Dear Aunt Edna,

I have been here in Cornell for nearly three years now, and I know that my reason for coming here is to get a degree in Econ.  I feel that nothing is of higher priority than my studies, and I do very well academically.  Socially, on the other hand, I seem to be lagging behind.  I’m a junior and I have never been on a date!  Although this didn’t really bother me my freshman and sophomore years, since I was caught up in college and working hard, by this point I really would like to get out a little more and learn to relax and enjoy myself.  For some reason, I have a great deal of difficulty meeting women (I even have difficulty getting them to notice me!).  I’m a really shy guy, and I have a fear of rejection, but by no means is it crippling.  On a campus which probably has about 9,000 females, there must be at least one out there who would be interested in me, right? What advice can you offer on how to improve my situation (and with that, my self esteem)?

–Looking to Date

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This week, we debut another new feature: Dear Aunt Edna! It’s CornellWatch’s answer to years upon years of constructive advice by the tyrannically helpful and unceasingly good-natured Uncle Ezra. If you’d like a question of your own answered, please email watch@kitschmag.com with “Dear Aunt Edna” in the subject line. Dear Aunt Edna will appear Thursdays.

Dear Aunt Edna,

I am a 21 year old male who has been smoking nearly 2 packs a day for four years. I read somewhere that smoking takes an average of 20 years off a person’s life, and I was wondering if that means it takes off more than that from other smokers’ lives, depending on how much they smoke. In a nutshell, if I quit smoking now, should I worry that I could get cancer at, say, age 25? Can people that young get cancer from smoking? I’m currently in the process of quitting. Can you tell me whether or not it’s too late?

Quitter

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