First Day of Summer College

So today was our first official day of Summer College at Cornell. Nobody got much sleep last night, thanks to nerves, but thankfully we all managed to stay awake. Our professor (Isaac Kramnick - Freedom and Justice: Law in Theory and Practice) informed us that each day, he would be taking groups of six alphabetically, and eating lunch with them in the dining hall in order to get to know everyone better. I was lucky number six in the first group.
As Professor Kramnick went around asking students to introduce themselves, he kept asking them where they were from and where their parents went to college. Most of the answers were that everyone was from somewhere along the east coast, and that their parents went to universities like Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and Georgetown, and so naturally, I was a bit nervous when I explained that I was from the San Francisco Bay Area, what our program was about, and well, that I would be the first in my family to be attending college. This caught the attention of all of the students, and it was the first time that I truly realized how fortunate I am to be here. While we may not come from the same social or financial background as them, we are all just as eager to learn and just as interesting to listen to.
I guess it was a real eye opener. For me, and for them.

-Theresa Berger