Invasion of Privacy: Copy Editor Abigail Cornelius

Photo courtesy of Copy Editor, Abigail Cornelius

Cornelius is a great example of how accepting The Lamron is to all majors at Geneseo, not just English. She has made incredible contributions to the paper and we will miss her sparkling energy.

The Lamron’s Copy Editor, Abigail Cornelius, is a senior Anthropology major at SUNY Geneseo. When not doing classwork or editing The Lamron, Cornelius likes to spend her time crafting, reading “cheesy romance books,” playing The Sims 4, doing nail art, and hanging out with her puppy, Hazel, and boyfriend, Zephyr.

Cornelius chose to attend Geneseo specifically for its Anthropology department. She applied to several schools with similar departments but chose Geneseo “because they had way more anthropology…more opportunities and a much more solid program.”

“I will admit that I did not know what anthropology meant to the full extent before going to Geneseo,” she explained when I asked why she had chosen this field. She noted that she had always been interested in history and social studies but wasn’t unaware of their differences. “History is written. Prehistory is pre-written,” she expanded. “Social Studies is getting into the who, what, where, when, why, and how. It's really about the actual people themselves.”

Cornelius is currently focusing her studies on archaeology specifically. When I asked if that had always been the plan, she clarified that she had been very against archaeology originally: “Because of what I saw in pop culture, of what archeology was, I was actually deeply against it. I was deeply against the whole treasure hunters, tomb raiders, grave disruptors. That was really upsetting to me.” 

As it turns out, to study undergraduate Anthropology, students must study all four subsections of the field: cultural and biological anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. While she enjoys all four subjects, she had originally been focused on cultural studies, and upon taking courses, realized that archaeology isn’t just “treasure hunting” but is the physical side of cultural anthropology. “It's just looking into cultures,” Cornelius explained. “Whether they're past or present. I had taken an Intro to Archeology class with Dr. Paul Pacheco, and I had learned the truth about archeology…and then I fell in love with it.”

Cornelius recently did a semester-long directed study focused on the Vitale collection. A few years ago, the Geneseo Anthropology department had a collection of artifacts donated by an amateur archaeologist, and undergraduate students, including Cornelius, worked to catalogue each artifact, clean them, and prepare them to go to the Livingston County Historical Society Museum. “[I was] mostly working with lithics, which are any things that are made of stone, mostly projectile points, or you might think of as like an arrowhead,” she explained.

This summer, the department is doing a dig, resuming a short project from last year in Bristol Valley. Cornelius will be joining students and professors who worked to uncover the foundation of a barn, and in May, they will be attempting to discover remnants of a farmhouse.

“There's not just one way to do archeology. There's not just one way things can get to a museum. They're not always grave robbing,” Cornelius said. “It's not all Indiana Jones.” Although cliché, when I asked if she had a favorite Indiana Jones film, she answered with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

The year I met Cornelius, she was dealing with what she described as the worst mental health of her life. “I had a very, very rough transition from high school to college, my anxiety had gotten basically out of control, and it had completely disconnected me from everything around me,” she admitted. For several months, she was convinced that because of this setback, she was not ready for college and couldn’t engage in new things, like joining clubs or making new friends. “I didn’t see any longevity here,” she explained.

Things have changed a lot for Cornelius in the past three years. “The reason I stayed is because nobody came to pick me up,” she joked. Her family pushed and encouraged her to try, no matter how hard it was at the time. She explained more about what else helped: “My freshman roommate is probably the only reason that I have actually stayed here this entire time.” (She flatters me). Cornelius did all the hard work herself, though, pushing herself to make friends and join activities. Despite thinking that she wanted to transfer from Geneseo for years, she is now sad to leave it behind.

When I asked if there was anything she would have done differently, she said she would have gotten involved earlier, then backtracked. She is glad to have taken the time to work on her mental health and instead said, “It's not too late to go back into things. I joined things as a junior, and I had just as wonderful an experience in college as anybody else did. So it's not too late to join things. It's not too late to make new friends.” I told her that I think her freshman self would be happy to see her now, and she agreed: “She'd be thrilled. She'd be very happy.”

I asked Cornelius if she had advice for incoming students, and she said, “You are way more capable than you think you are. I am way more capable than I thought I was. My confidence is maybe insane now…but that's so much better than being scared in your dorm… It is never too late to try to test how capable you are, and college is the perfect experience, a perfect chance to do that.”