(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Grant Gilbert.
I'm a junior Animal Science Major here at Cornell,
with a concentration in Pre-Veterinary Medicine.
Outside of campus I'm in Greek Life, I do Hillel,
Pre-Vet Society, and a lot of other organizations
Cornell has to offer.
(upbeat music)
- So right now we're at the Dairy Bar.
What is that?
- So the Dairy Bar is a place on campus
where Cornell makes it's own milk,
it's ice cream, with food.
This is also where the Food Science Majors
will come have class.
It's a big hub for basically the people in CALS.
- So you guys make a lot of the food right here on campus?
- You can, there's a place down in the building,
you can see them actually making the food.
It's really cool.
- [Interviewer] Big Red Refuel.
This is like the chocolate milk super drink.
- Yeah, so they make a low fat, high protein
chocolate milk and I know all the athletes get it
after they have their workouts.
- Yeah, what is it about chocolate milk and athletes?
Is that like a thing at all schools?
- Apparently that's like what you are supposed to
drink after you work out to get the most gains.
- You can also get gains from it without working out.
- I mean, every day here is leg day.
We're on a hill.
- To walk from the furthest point to the other
furthest point, how long would that take you?
Is that like a couple of hours?
- Well, the thing with Cornell, there's no,
it's not kind of like a direct shape.
It just goes in all different directions.
Cayuga Heights is kind of where it ends for
the North campus end, and that's where I live.
- Gotcha.
- And probably the other furthest end would be
over here at the Vet school.
So that's like a solid 40 minute walk.
- [Interviewer] So you live as far away as possible from?
- [Grant] Yeah, that's a good way to put it, yeah.
- [Interviewer] So you entered as a sophomore?
- [Grant] I did.
- So, what was the transition like academically?
Like what was the environment like?
- I feel like one I've never seen before.
Like you have to go through all those weed out classes,
but the biggest thing is finding out your method of success.
There's a lot of resources on campus to help you succeed.
But it's up to you again to go find them.
A lot of people come in and they're like,
oh I want to be a Veterinarian,
so you have to take pre-requisite classes for vet school,
and a few classes are meant to show the school,
the university who's willing to put in the work.
And they, you get a ton of work.
You will be up, you will be seeing the sun rise a lot.
- So what is CALS?
- So CALS stands for the College of Agriculture
and Life Sciences, and that's anywhere from
Animal Science to Communications,
to Applied Economics and Management.
We have Agriculture Science.
It's basically just classes that are more bio-focused,
you know, agriculture focused, and we're out
by the Ag Quad or up at the Vet School.
So every spring semester we have finals
and on the Arts Quad here, people will put a balloon
on the ground with a little note card,
and it's about someone lifting them up for the summer,
or just their whole life, finals,
and it's another way Cornell just likes
to make us more, I guess, relaxed.
(upbeat music)
- [Interviewer] Okay, so where are we now?
- So right now we're in Morrison Hall,
this is the Animal Science Building.
Particularly we're in the domestic animal biology lab.
- [Interviewer] So tell me a little bit
about the research you're doing.
- So I'm in a dairy cattle research lab room right now.
We're focusing on inulin pathways and stuff
that's blocking insulin production and
insulin getting into the cells.
And then I'm taking it a step further
and doing an honors thesis next semester,
and the other semester of my senior year,
where you do your own research and you write your paper
and specifically in Animal Science you have to
defend your thesis.
- [Interviewer] And is the goal of all that research
to basically find ways of having healthier animals
that are being used to produce dairy?
- So from what I've gotten out of it so far,
agriculture is a business, and if your cow is diabetic
it's not going to be as beneficial to you
if you're a farmer, and we're trying to
help the farmers get more money.
- So, this back here, this is a cow?
- Yeah, this is our teaching cow skeleton.
You will, at the end of the course, know what every bone is,
even more so than you know your own bones.
We've had to dissect whole chickens, cows.
- [Interviewer] Oh man, What a time.
- Like you walk in to lab, and just like -
- [Interviewer] There's just a chicken on the tables?
- That and then like, well not here, but in our,
it's called a butchery room, like really scarring,
there's just like a headless cow, like fully covered,
and they give you a scalpel with your group,
and they're like -
- [Interviewer] Have at it.
- Yeah, and they're like, oh by the way,
next class you have to know every bone, muscle,
organ, the functions, what it looks like.
They're not kidding, they're not messing around.
So we have Pepsi here, as you can see.
The CEO of Pepsi casually went here.
No big deal.
(upbeat music)
So right now we're at the teaching barn, and this is
the essential you are in Animal Science right now.
And here you'll have a couple classes that do barn chores,
and you're trekking out here by eight in the morning.
You're cleaning pens, you're feeding the animals,
giving them water, doing a health check,
which is like, are they doing alright?
- So you're coming out here taking care of the animals
and so that's cool.
Is this like where you sort of first learn
how to be around animals?
- Well, most people come into the Animal Science Major
already, like while they're working at a vet,
stuff like that from a farm.
But this is also, it was great for people like me,
from Long Island, New York City area,
who never touched a cow in my life.
Like I come in, they teach you like, this is how you
approach a cow, this is how you change it's food,
this is how you change your water,
you have your TA's who also will help you
for the entire process, but won't do the work for you.
Like you are going to be doing it
and learning how to do it.
Alright, so here we have cows with a fistula in it,
and everyone who knows about Cornell,
like have you stuck your hand in a cow, this is it.
It's surgically placed in, the fistula.
- [Interviewer] So the fistula is what exactly?
- It's like an opening right to their rumen.
So cows have four chambers of stomach,
rumen, abomasum, omasum, and reticulum.
And so where you're going into in the rumen
is where microbial fermentation is happening.
Like they're digesting.
- So you open up the fistula and you can see it all?
- It's like, there's a little hole you take out,
you go in and you see the churning of what they ate
this morning, yesterday, the day before.
- [Interviewer] Wow.
So how do the animals play into your classes?
- Well aside from being Animal Science,
it's really getting out of the classroom, hands on.
We have a couple classes that are
solely based on the animals.
We have dairy cattle, beef cattle class.
You're taking care of the animals the whole semester,
how to raise them, what they're for.
We have another class called Sheep.
You're out here taking care of your sheep,
learning how to handle sheep, learning how to do AI,
which is artificial insemination.
- So your sheep gets impregnated, and then what happens?
- And then when it's your turn to help give birth,
you're getting a phone call to help birth the lamb.
It could be any time of the night, you're out here
for your grade, birthing your sheep.
- Jeez, so you're like responsible for
bringing a sheep into this world.
- Yeah, from what I've been told from my friends
who have taken the class, like you are assigned
a sheep, and it's like your sheep.
- Is it emotional?
- I would assume so.
Like animals have bonds with us.
It's real. - [Interviewer] Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- Alright, so where are we now?
- Alright, so right now we're at my fraternity house,
Beta Theta Pi, Beta Delta Chapter at Cornell.
We're actually a substance free house,
which is something pretty unique with us.
This year I live here with 20 other guys.
Definitely an experience, but it's one of
the best I've ever done.
We get a lot of help, help each other with school,
personal life, we've got our chef, what else could you want?
(upbeat music)
- Alright if you like this video and want to
learn more about top colleges, make sure to subscribe.