How to 'help' your friends move

So I'm finally back in VA and out of that cramped forced triple in Hell Rise Five. While I'll miss my friends over the summer, I sure won't miss that awful dump. Seven stories of misery and pain, filled with the pungent odor of weed and the awkwardness of sharing an elevator with five other strangers who live next door to you. I'll forever remember the joy of the elevator stopping at every freaking floor on the way down, the tiny little kitchen I was forced to share with far too many other people I hated, and how the stairs didn't go down to the ground floor. Apparently, that was supposed to make the building 'riot-proof'

But before I could hit the road and head home, I had to get all of everyone's crap out of my dorm room. And since my mom drove up to get me in her minivan, I offered to help my friends get their stuff into storage. Ayesha's going back to India over the summer, so it's not like she can take all her stuff on the plane (heck, the way airlines are these days, they probably make you bring your own crappy peanut bags and charge you for them). Asta's off to Baton Rouge. Audrey and Sarah will be up here over the summer and don't want to haul all their crap back to the midwest.

 The common sense solution would be to rent a storage locker until Audrey and Sarah get back, at which point they can move everyone's stuff into their apartment. If they split the costs four ways, they'd only need to pay fifteen bucks each. But we're college students. What's fifteen bucks when you could store your expensive textbooks, favorite clothing, and cookware people actually eat off in a dark pit filled with spiders?

We loaded up a cart I'd dragged away from a bunch of boys busy loading bedding into another minivan. They're men, they can lift their own freaking sheets. So we pile the cart with boxes of bedding and that freaking annoying fan that keeps falling off the window and drag them out to the car. We shove in Ayesha's clothing, which is partially stuffed in plastic trash bags we stole from the bathroom, and we shove in Audrey's snowboard and climbing gear and ski equipment . . . you know, I'm thinking she should probably pick one sport and stick with it.

Then we drive down to the ski house, the vaguely remembered site of the salsa incident, and carry heavy boxes across the street, dodging buses and vans and whatnot. Turns out, the basement where Audrey's friends promised she could store her stuff is nothing more than a gigantic hole in the ground. A hole guarded by bees, filled with flies and old newspapers, smelling of mildew and decay. The Pit.

Also, you can only get in there by stooping under the porch, so carrying boxes under it is a whole lot of fun! (Not really).

The next day, we had to help Asta and Xinting get Asta and Sarah's stuff out of Balch Hall--the all women dorm, build before the invention of wide hallways and elevator access (but after the invention of dark, horrible pits). We grab the first cart we can find and wheel it over to the elevator. Then we wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Because the elevator is one of those primitive contraptions with a gate you need to close by hand, it can often take hours to arrive at your floor, especially when people on all other floors are trying to do the exact same thing as you. And of course, my friends live on the sixth floor. The elevator only goes up to the fifth.

Yes, this building has six stories

So there I was, waiting for half an hour on the fifth floor as my friends ran up and down, bringing boxes full of random crap down to the cart. Boxes of stuff like cookware that probably should have been taped shut were instead just hanging open (to provide easy access to the spiders in The Pit). Sarah also left behind a binder full of loose-leaf paper and a CD that, despite it being flat and square, she decided to balance precariously on the top of the box, instead of putting it on the bottom. It fell out four times.

We played charades in the hallway until Asta finished packing her last box. I was always it, either because I'm the most creative one or the only one willing to act out pop culture milestones. Ayesha and Audrey are surprisingly good at guessing my charades. TV show? 'Game of Thrones'. Book? 'A Game of Thrones'. Book? 'A Clash of Kings'. They cut me off before I could act out 'A Dance with Dragons', which is a pity, because I had some great dance moves planned.

Somehow, we manage to get everything in the car and back over to the ski house. I decided to wait with the car as the girls carried their stuff down into the parts of The Pit that aren't even lit by a single bare, dangling bulb. As we leave, up pulls a pick-up truck driven by a girl wearing a headlamp. Clearly, someone came prepared.

The Dumbest Classes Cornell Offers (and how to BS them into something that looks good on your resume)

A few weeks back, I wrote a modest proposal for a new class and was approached by quite a few people who wanted to know if it was a real thing. Sadly, Cornell does not offer deer hunting as a class. But it does offer some interesting substitutes. 

College is supposed to be the place you go to learn the skills you'll use to build your career. One of the many  useful skills you learn there is bullshit--the art of making something useless, pointless, and worthless sound important, pertinent, and complicated. What follows is a list of the most useless classes my university offers and a helpful guide for explaining to your future employer why you took them:

AAS 4550

Race and the University

On the surface, an in-depth examination of the role race plays in higher education sounds like a good use of your time. You might learn about the historical struggles of minorities to obtain higher education, or the debate surrounding affirmative action. But you'll be hard pressed to explain to your future boss why this counts to your major in Asian American Studies. 

Not a racial stereotype. At all. 

That's right. The class on race and higher education is in the Asian department. Since I'm white, I can't exactly say this is racist--but the course says it will focus on examining America's 'major research institutions' and explore how it is 'that certain knowledge formations and disciplines come to be naturalized or privileged within the academy?'

How would I explain this to my future employer? Hand them the course description and say, 'I understand this'.

ASRC 6517

The Oprah Book Club and African American Literature

Yes. This is a real thing. I understand that Oprah's a major icon for the African-American community, but she has more classes named after her than Martin Luther King Jr, President Obama, and Fredrick Douglas combined. I could understand a course on Oprah's role in the African-American community--perhaps focusing on how she's inspired black women, or on how she's worked outside cultural boundaries. But a class on Oprah's Book Club? 

ASRC 6517 promises to 'draw on a range of critical and theoretical resources related to the Oprah Book Club archive', a sentence your average Oprah's Book Club reader can't even understand. The very fact one watches Oprah indicates you don't really have that much to do during the day. Next thing you know, the American History department will be offering courses on Honey Boo Boo and What Not To Wear. 

How do you explain this class to your future boss? 'It was a requirement for my major. The department chair was Oprah herself'.

EAS 1220

Earthquake!

You can say this much about this introductory Earth sciences class--it sounds like a direct to DVD sequel to Airplane!, but one that'd be slightly better than Airplane! II. I understand the importance of making your course sound memorable, bu t come on, this is Cornell. Part of the Ivy League tradition is taking classes with pretentious names. 'Introduction to Anthrobotany in Geographically Isolated Systems' just sounds better than 'People Farming On Islands'. Adding an exclamation mark after the course title will convince absolutely nobody to take it. 

Or watch your horrible, horrible movie.

This class is supposed to be about understanding how natural disasters occur and are mitigated. The first half of the course focuses on building earthquake proof buildings, which is probably good knowledge for society to have. There's a lot of stuff in there about analyzing data and public communication, which sounds pretty boring for a class with an exclamation mark in its title. But this class doesn't just focus on plain old earthquakes. Rather, it covers volcanoes, tsunamis, and the ever exiting 'threat of extinction from a future impact by an extraterrestrial body' 

How to explain this to your future boss? 'Ever seen Armgeddon'? 

SHUM 4864

Pirate Humanities

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! This class (which is BYOR, by the way), sounds like it can't quite be what it sounds like. This is about media piracy? Right? Nope. Offered through the Cornell Society for the Humanities, this class 'examines pirate assemblages as an ineluctable underside of capitalist modernity'. In other words, where you've got money, people are gonna try and steal it. This is an actual class about actual pirates.

You will always remember this as the day you almost  had Professor Jack Sparrow!

And yet the course description makes it sound like the most boring class ever. 'Within a framework of control and emergence (derived largely from contemporary theories of risk, biopolitics, and securitization), the course seeks to develop a posthumanist understanding of the pirate'. Seriously? What does that even mean? It's a course on freaking pirates! Stop trying to make it sound all smart and stuff. Anyway, there might be some good stuff in this seminar  but it's limited to 15 people, so I suggest illegally downloading Pirates of the Caribbean instead. 

How to explain this to your future boss? Tell him it was a current events course about crime in the failed state of Somalia. Try to look somber. 

DSOC 4210

Theories of Reproduction

Is this class about . . . reproducing machines? Reproducing ancient texts? Nope. It is exactly what it sounds like. A four thousand level course on human reproduction. Keep in mind, this is something human beings have done for thousands of years without any real need for explanation, but apparently Cornell students are so nerdy they need an advanced class on the correct procedure for baby-making. 

This class will empathize 'gender-based' theories of reproduction. I'm assuming this lecture will begin with 'When a man and a woman love each other very much . . .' I'm not sure how you could have a theory of human reproduction that wasn't gender based. It will also examine what makes 'families have any, few, and many children', and I assume the answer will be closely related to sex. Isn't this material taught in ninth grade health classes across the country. The very existence of this class puts the future of the American educational system in doubt. If you take this class, it actually lowers your chances of getting laid. Or you might just be a developmental sociology major, in which case, sorry. 

How to explain this to your future boss? Don't.

How to be a nerd at college

You ever seen one of those movies where it's the nerdy college students versus the evil greek students?

Like this movie. All my female friends made me watch it, and you know what? I'm comfortable enough in my own identity to say that it sucks.

In the idiotic chick flick, Sydney White, a girl tries to get into her mother's sorority only to get humiliated. So she joins up with a bunch of nerds, including one who has a beaver puppet (I only realize just how dirty that is now), and runs for student council president. For some reason, this works, when it never would in real life.

They say the greek population at Cornell is about thirty percent  of the student body, but it feels a lot bigger. Judging by the number of shirts I see reading 'I'm not slacking off--my code's compiling', the number of nerds hovers around thirty percent as well. But you never see a group of nerds whaling around North Campus in a makeshift mobile pool made by sticking a tarp in the back of a pickup truck.

Here's the secret: greeks just organize better. There's no difference between Pi Phis and Tri Delts and Alpha Chis and Junior Mints. But there's about fifty shades of nerd at Cornell, and they all have their own habitats, cultures, and patterns.

For example, last Saturday night I watched the Asian pop acapella, went to a rock concert hosted by my friend Tom's frat (himself a nerd), watched Ring of Steel (the theatrical swordfighting group) perform, and then found myself watching giant robots fighting other giant robots with the anime club. Four different nerd groups with very little overlap. Music, electronics, theater, anime . . . the problem is, the word nerd has come to describe someone who cares about something a little too much.

For instance, it's totally possible to be an echinda nerd

Speaking of nerds, my professor is leading a discussion on Snow Crash right now. I wonder why she only ever wants to talk about the first chapter of every book.

I think there's two main species of nerds at Cornell--the Risleyites and the engineers. The Risleyites live in the theater dorm and engage in card games, role play, and a little light kinky sex. The engineers live on the engineering quad, build solar powered cars, eat ramen, and smugly contemplate their rich future salaries since they're ensured jobs. Much like matter and antimatter, if they meet, they explode. But thankfully, they don't often do it.

The Risleyites are mostly Arts and Science students; the engineers are, of course, engineers. Human Ecology doesn't produce nerds. I'm not sure what it produces. I think it used to produce housewives, but it's not supposed to do that anymore. It's not surprising that a college who's unifying theme is 'Stuff Involving Humans' can't coalesce around a single nerdy subculture. I suppose the Architecture school might count as nerdy, but if obsession around a single weird subject counts as nerdy, the average architecture student's level of obsession comes off as 'cultish'.

There's also the hotel school, which produces event planners, master chefs, and the only people who take Intro to Wines seriously. I've never met a nerdy hotel student, but I've only met two hotel students, and I've never been able to get either one to conclusively explain why they chose hotels to dedicate their lives to. There's the Ag school, comprised half of farmers and half of business majors (Cornell was founded back when farming and business were synonymous), neither of whom are known for their love of Japanese childrens cartoons and/or building robots out of duct tape, wire, and chewing gum.

I can't help feeling that I've forgotten a particular school, but can't remember what it is. Dentistry? Do we have a dentistry school? And if so, where can me and my baseball bat find it?

So if you're the kind of socially awkward person who likes to hang out with nerds, you'd better narrow down your search criteria for friends at college. Here's a primer for spotting nerds in the wild. Computer science nerds tend to wear dingy black tee-shirts with coding slang written on the front. Their hair is usually matted and unkempt. For some reason, this is the species of nerd that finds it easiest to get a girlfriend. The girlfriend will also be a computer science nerd.

Theater nerds are trickier to identify. You don't want to go looking for them and ending up with a theater punk instead. Theater punks will dye their hair and wear leather outfits that I can only describe as 'steampunk  from a thrift shop'. Also, they and theater nerds will tend to hold their hair back with goggles. But theater nerds generally share the unkempt hair of computer science nerds (come to think of it, all species of nerds don't really have good hair. Must have something to do with our brainwave radiation). They can be identified by their necklaces, which will contain either sword pendants, wolf's head pendants, or a pair of dragon wings.

There's also bio nerds. These are the most boring class of nerds (when they don't overlap with another pre-existing nerdy subculture). Their top concerns are MCAT scores, research positions, and their orgo grades (in that order). Of course, I myself am a bio major, but one look over at Cornell's biological research tower will tell you everything you need to know about this class of nerds. They live in a tall, windowless tower with a single door and spend their entire day working to improve their med school application. The difference between a bio nerd and a worker bee is size (of their social lives).

Come to think of it, it's probably time we stopped using the word 'nerd' and came up with our own distinctions. Any ideas?

A Modest Proposal

Do you know what the most deadly animal in the United States is? The white-tailed deer. Boy, is that a let down.

Come on, man, get your game on.

Deer cause almost two hundred human deaths each year. That's more than naked mole rats, Cher, and yodeling combined. As my fellow Cornellians know (from the barrage of emails from Police Chief Kathy Zoner), campus safety is a big issue right now. Sexual harassment, petty theft . . . everyone wants us not to swim in the gorges, but Ms. Zoner fails to notice the deadly threat starting students (and worse, faculty) in the face. Deer-on-car assault.

Picture this: your math professor, driving up Jessup road. He was up late all last night preparing your final exam, which sits in the back seat of his car. Wham! He slams a deer and ends up in the hospital, cancelling your final and ending your last chance of the semester to show how much you learned. Every deer on campus is an accident waiting to happen. Even one deer is one deer too many.

Fortunately, there are more cost effective ways to handle this problem than building a giant fence around campus and/or throwing all the deer into Bebe Lake. That's where my proposed elective comes in: HE 4580, Introduction to Wildlife Management. This four credit course, offered through the College of Human Ecology (otherwise known as the College of Miscellaneous Studies), will be open to all majors and will integrate anatomy, food science, physical education, and Native American history in an effort to holistically and academically end Ithaca's deer problem once and for all.

HE 4580 is not a traditional course, limited by the four walls of the classroom. Instead, students will journey across campus armed with shotguns, quickly and efficiently eliminating every deer they encounter. Whether it be on the crowded green of the Arts Quad, or the crowded green of the Ag Quad, or the deserted, slightly pathetic Biotech Quad, the students in HE 4580 will fire at the first glimpse of brown (Note: This may require slight change in the campus dress code).

This is the back of the football stadium. No one ever goes here, right?

The addition of HE 4580 to Cornell's course offerings will have many benefits for students enrolled. According to research done by the NRA (citation needed), the addition of more guns to campus will lead to drastic cuts in violent crime (murder, assault, peeing on the A.D. White statue). Much like meditation teaches students the traditional Buddhist way of dealing with stress, HE 4580 will teach students the traditional American meditative practice: pumping a living being full of lead. Field dressing their kills will teach aspiring doctors the proper way to prepare a corpse for the dinner table (Dr. Lecter could give a guest lecture!) and cooking the meat over an open fire will teach history majors why they don't really wish they could travel back to whatever time period before decent cookware they're currently studying. Rarely does a proposed class have such interdisciplinary appeal.

Through HE 4580, students would prepare themselves for the eventual collapse of society as we know it. In keeping with Cornell's reputation as the most apocalypse-proof Ivy League (take that, Princeton!), HE 4580 will prepare our students for the high paying jobs of the future, when one deer will be worth a bag of potatoes, a single dose of antibiotics, or two nights of sex. Whether the end comes via zombies, natural disaster, or plague, hunter-gatherers will always find themselves in high demand. Students in HE 4580 would have the time (or end of) their lives!

The entire campus would benefit from the implementation of HE 4580. Ever since The Cornell Review (our preeminent conservative newspaper) ran a headline exposing the lack of white male professors in our Feminist Studies and Africana Studies programs, I have been working tirelessly to imagine a position that would attract this coveted demographic. The teaching staff of HE 4580 will greatly improve the diversity of Cornell's faculty.

Dr. Jackson and his TA demonstrate the proper way to humiliate a carcass

By distributing the fresh venison in our dining halls, we will save the university the burden of having to purchase the usual rat and horse meat from wholesalers. Our suppliers may protest, but one look at ( the good being done by) our shotguns, and I'm sure they'll change their mind. We will also engage the greater Ithaca community by partnering with local shotgun manufacturers like the Ithaca Gun Company (shipped its jobs overseas to Ohio in 2007!)

If this course is successful, which I have no doubt it will be, I suggest that the university make it a required course. I have seen deer eating the shrubs outside the A.D. White house in between classes--wouldn't it be better if a horde of armed students was there at the ready to protect the integrity of our campus gardens? My fellow students, I urge you to share this with one another. Only you can prevent deer from jumping into our cars. Only you, with a gun.

The disgusting reality of being a bio major

Edit: My professor just showed us a picture of a gigantic spider eating a bat that was caught in its web. Remember, kids, do a STEM major!

So we're sitting in my bio study group and talking about the body plans of starfish--about how they show twofold symmetry in their larval stage. Then we google starfish larva.

You see this thing that looks like a squished fly/booger/Cthulhu hybrid? This is a baby starfish. 

But I'm not really creeped out. Because as a bio major, you see far, far worse. 

When I was in sixth grade, I was obsessed with weird medical disorders. Progeria (a weird disease causing premature aging)? Parasitic twins? Extreme multiple births? Whatever lead to Lindsay Lohan? We had the Discovery Health Channel, which meant I had a neverending supply of shows on weird, unexplained medical conditions, and I really didn't have a social life, so I spend all my time learning about just how weird the human body could be.

But the animal body is weirder. One of the first thing every prospective bio major has to do is learn to sex flies. The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has a long and storied research history and has enabled many advances in the theories of genetics. However, it looks gross under a microscope and every research assistant's first job is to look very, very closely at them in hopes of telling them apart.

You see the obvious difference? See, see, see? Maybe looking at the disgusting real versions would help. 

The thing you have to look for are the male sex combs. The tiny hairs on the male flies arm are called sex combs. They are very short and are very hard to identify. To properly identify your flies, you have to look at their gigantically enlarged legs under a microscope for far much longer than anyone would. They are disgusting. To make matters worse, sometimes you need to examine and sex multiple flies. People, the reason bugs are small is so we can see one and not automatically throw up. If looking at an insect's magnified sex organs for six hours has no effect on you, you're either a serial killer or a biology major.

Another horrible thing about fruit flies: they are model organisms for the study of mutations. Their job, their duty to the world of science, is to devolve into progressively twisted and deranged forms. Some of the mutations are harmless, like the ones that change their eye color from blood red (I hate fruit flies) to a normal shade of brown. Some are pathetic, like the mutation that gives them tiny shrunken wings. C'mon, nobody wants to see a fly who can't fly! That's gotta be the one upside of being a fly, right? Flying!

But the absolute worst mutant fly is the one that occurred when one sadistic scientist decided to 

implant some tissue from a fly larvae's leg in its face. Surprise! You got a fly with legs growing out of its eyes. I could post a picture here, but won't, because even looking at it make me want to vomit. There is absolutely no greater good that can be served by creating such an abomination. It has legs growing out of its eyes! There's a reason I don't play zombie-themed video games, but zombie games are tame compared with the crime against nature that I know I'll see pictures of at least once a semester for the rest of my life. 

Even this makes me queasy.

But the horrible things humans do to animals are nothing compared to the horrible things animals do to other animals, the horrible things that, for some reason, it's vitally important your bio teacher show you colored pictures of. Goodness knows that I wouldn't be able to understand what a parasite was without seeing pictures of a fungus bursting out of an ant's brain, or a wasp's egg emerging from an unsuspecting beetle and devouring it. Any time your professor says, "and this next part is really cool", be warned, you're about to see a worm slither from a kitten's eyesocket. 

And tapeworms. Never get a biology professor started on tapeworms. The magical fun worms that live in your stomach, where every segment is a single hermaphroditic individual. Horroray! 

The worst part is when they make you help. Just the other week, we had to slice open small tumors on goldenrod plants and look for the beetle larvae on the inside. Oh, and some of the beetle larvae were being attacked by parasitoid wasps who'd laid their eggs in the larvae in the tumor, dooming the beetle larvae to being eaten alive. Because there's nothing like cracking open a husk of wood and finding a writhing parasite larvae to make you never want to eat rice ever again.

Or try exploring the bug collection in Comstock Hall. Thousands and thousands of dead bugs, preserved in  vaults that reek of formaldehyde. The butterfly collection is quite pretty, until you remember these beautiful animals were flapping harmlessly from flower to flower until some lunatic jabbed a pin through their abdomens. The beetle collection makes me think the pin jabbing isn't that bad, since some of the beetles are the size of my hand. 

And then there's the collection of mites, neatly displayed on the tips of cards attached to pins, since the mites are smaller than the pins themselves. What's the point of displaying something that looks exactly like a  black speck? Is there one? Maybe the specks look better under a microscope . . . 

No! I'm turning into one of them!

Six Dining Hall Meals No One Eats

So I'm giving a young friend of mine a tour of Cornell later today. Right now, I'm in my Creative Writing class analyzing poetry with my hipster teacher, who has the exact same beard as every other graduate student in the English department. I'm thinking about three major sales points for Cornell: great academics, wonderful diversity, and excellent food. The all-you-can-eat sushi bar is a major component of that (I live for sushi).

But no matter how good the dining hall food is, there's some things that no one ever eats.

Any Ice Cream Flavor Beyond Mint Chocolate Chip, Cookies and Cream, Chocolate, 

and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

It's not that difficult, people.

The ice cream freezers in Cornell dining halls have room for four flavors. Listed above are the only four flavors which anyone ever eats. The obvious conclusion is to put those four flavors in every ice cream freezer. I'm not sure if they've got a weird contract with the distributor, or if there's some weird kid over in Dickson who eats absolutely nothing but lemon sorbet, but the dining staff insists on stocking the freezers with flavors nobody likes. 

My English teacher just admitted the poem we were analyzing was probably meaningless, and continued analyzing it anyway. 

No one eats that purple sludge they call raspberry ice cream. Or the white sticky stuff they pretend is Italian ice. Or the strawberry that has frozen bits of what are supposed to be fruit and are actually just big chips of ice. They just sit there for days and days, until someone (maybe the mice) finishes them off. Drop in a tub of the flavors everyone likes, and it'll vanish in a nanosecond. 

I was out to dinner with a group of six people once, and the only ice cream flavor left was raspberry  Only one of us got any, and she took one taste before throwing it out. There is no greater waste than raspberry ice cream

Soup

This is one of those foods that's great for spilling on yourself and not much else. The main campus dining hall, Oakenshields (named after that dwarf from The Hobbit, probably due to an alumni with a weird sense of humor), has a soup station in the middle of the room that never sees a line, and in other dining halls, the soup containers are tucked so far into the corners that most people don't even know they're there.

This is because soup isn't a food. It's not really a beverage, either. It's some weird hybrid of both. When people think about what they want for dinner, they never think of soup. Seriously. They have this cream of broccoli stuff that's heavier than your average textbook and this sweet and sour stuff that is filled with unidentifiable particles. The clam chowder may or may not have actual clam in it, and the french onion has neither cheese, bread, or actual onions.

My hipster English teacher doesn't know he's got one strand of hair sticking up straight out of the back of his head. He's like a freaking backwards unicorn.

Vegetable Sushi

This stuff tends to contain carrots, and we all know how much I hate carrots. But that's not the real reason no one ever eats it. Sushi is for fish. It's supposed to be exotic. It's not just a wad of rice and carrots.

Now wrap it in rice. Yay. 

Also, they always serve California rolls on the worst possible nights. I hate California rolls; they taste exactly like soy sauce. Maybe that's because I put too much soy sauce on them. Some nights they have tuna rolls or shrimp or even horseradish--the girl next to me just asked if D'Artagnan was a character on a TV show. Seriously?--but they never have the good ones on the nights I'm actually there. 

Vegetarian sushi is a horrible invention. Sushi implies fish, preferably raw. Making sushi without fish is like making a sandwich with only two slices of bread.  

Stir-Fried Bok Choy

This dish lives at the Asian station. It is suspiciously shiny. Never trust food that looks like the hood of a BMW in a car commercial. Also, they put scrambled eggs in it, and sometimes the eggs are only runny blobs that look suspiciously like saliva. It smells like salt, possibly because salt is the only ingredient, possibly because the only way to make bok choy edible is to drench it in salt. In fact, I think I hate bok choy worse than carrots. At least carrots have an interesting color. 

Sometimes they put meat in the stir fry. They favor seafood, which is why you'll occasionally see tiny octopus tentacles sticking out of the green, shiny strands, covered in dripping bits of runny eggs. This is not appetizing. I don't even think it's legal. I see the chefs mixing up bowls of stir-fry the size of a Mini Cooper, throwing tentacles and bok choy and eggs into the air, and all I can think it, I used to like Asian food.

The 'Fresh' Fruit

Cornell is big on locally grown fruit. But sometimes, they can go overboard. I'm pretty sure the oranges were grown in New York, because they're tiny, tasteless, and covered with little black spots. Also, they're quite flammable. 

If the blond girl in the Alpha Phi v-neck turns to the left, she'll give half the class a peek at her nipple. Seriously, wear a camisole!

Every banana in the fruit bin is covered with spots--though they make excellent props if your roommates are reenacting Charlie's Angels and pretending to shoot each other in the hallway. All the apples are bruised and some have been chewed on by bugs. And those are the only three pieces of fruit you always see, unless you count that bucket of pathetic honeydew melon slices that no body likes but for some reason appears in every fruit salad.

Does real honeydew melon ever look this appetizing. No. No, it does not. I'm expecting there's some kind of melon growers conspiracy going on. They're keeping all the pretty melons somewhere else and selling the gooey green cubes. 

The Gluten Free Corner

There's a big sign in the corner of one of my dining halls that says 'Gluten Free', but there's never any actual food there. Cornell's the second most vegan friendly college in the country, we have a kosher station in the--geez, Alpha Phi girl just used the word 'like' eighteen times!--Appel dining hall, and we have soy milk in every freezer--and now the shy premed girl is talking about her yeast infection!--but the gluten free section is as empty as the stomachs of every man, woman, or child on campus with a gluten allergy.

I really don't understand what they have against gluten free food. According to Taylor, it's only about 1% of the population who's allergic to gluten, but we mark our vegan dishes, and veganism's a (really weird) choice. The gluten free zone's more abandoned than the old observatory, which is probably haunted.

And my hipster professor wants to know why I'm staring at my screen so intently. I could tell him that's because he knows absolutely nothing about good writing, but I'm relying on him to give me an easy A, so I guess I better start paying attention. 

The Five Worst Ways To Amuse A Girl Scout

About fifty percent of the people reading this were Girl Scouts at one point--I think it's a requirement for all American girls between the ages of six and twelve to spend at least one winter hawking cookies. Eventually, you wise up to the fact that the other girls in the troop are badmouthing you behind your back because you're not in a training bra yet, and quit. 

The girl on the left has some insanely big hair. I bet the other girls mock her for it.

Until you hit that point, there's nothing quite as rewarding as earning a badge. My roommate, Ayesha, is a member of the Society for Women Engineers, and spent yesterday helping eleven year old girls earn their Entertainment Technology badge. Apparently, there's no better way to get girls interested in math and science than explaining, don't worry, math and science aren't just for solving important world problems and improving the living standards of mankind, they're also the same forces powering your powder pink Nintendo DS on which you're currently feeding a virtual puppy. 

Here's some of the ways they got the girls 'interested' in 'math and science', as explained by the activities packet I 'borrowed' from Ayesha. 

Note: I wrote this fully with Ayesha's permission. SWE is a wonderful organization not only because it takes my roommates out of the dorm on a Saturday morning. 

Animate Your Own Artwork

This one sounded kind of promising. The introduction starts by explaining how a flip book works. Because the packet was written by engineers, it starts a sentence with 'Did you know' and end it with a period. Not a question mark. And after explaining in depth how flip books work, it informs the girls they will not be making flip books, but something called a thaumatrope. This is a thaumatrope:

Because he is in quest of prey! Ha, ha, ha, gets me every time!

You tie the things together and spin it really fast. The images blend. This is supposed to teach the girls how animation works. Unfortunately, this isn't how animation actually works, since all animation has been co-opted onto computers and even Disney says it won't make any more hand-drawn pieces. So what it really teaches the girls is that advances in technology will render all but the most skilled labor obsolete, casting them down into a pit of poverty they'll have to struggle all their lives to emerge from. 

Also, the standards of children's film have gone way down

Video-Game Development + "Blue Screen"

I'm not sure what blue screens have to do with video game development. I think the main connection is that they couldn't get a film studies professor to talk at their event (those clove cigarettes won't smoke themselves, people!) so they had to settle for a CS professor who specializes in data management. The packet begins by proving it was written by a woman, since it asks "Does Superman and Batman actually fly in the air like you see in movies?". Obviously, an eleven year old girl would know by now that men can't fly. And neither can Batman. Next thing you know, they'll be asking "Does getting bitten by a radioactive hawk turn you into Hawkeye?"

The packet explains blue screen by warning the participants can't wear any blue, which is actually the favorite color of most girls who know that, like, pink is for babies. Good thing they didn't actually have a blue screen, even though I knew kids in my elementary school who could work one of those things. Instead, they had the girls cut out pictures of themselves and stick the pictures against magazine cutouts. Note: this also counts to the scrapbooking badge.

Create An Amusement Park

The packet tells us that there's a thing called physics that makes roller coasters work. But is there? To find out, a courageous team of girl scouts will create a roller coaster out of paper towel tubes, pieces of cardboard, and 'other available materials'. The packet instructs girls to start at a high place and make hills and loops, an task we all learned from Roller Coaster Tycoon. It normally ended like this:

It always amazed me how a 4-byte NPC would wait in line for six game hours to ride this deathtrap without noticing the screams of doomed pixels falling to their deaths. Also, this is the real definition of entertainment technology, far as I'm concerned.

After the girls test their roller coasters by dropping a marble down them, they get to vote on who has the best coaster. I bet that bitch Stephanie wins. Everybody thinks she's so cool just because she's already gotten her period. 

Sound Waves

Sound counts as part of entertainment technology, right? Like, music is sound. Movies have sound. Sound is how preteen girls express their appreciation for Justin Bieber. And ears are how we hear sound, so ears must be part of entertainment technology, and therefore part of this badge. Right? It's not like we're stretching for ideas. We genuinely know what we're doing. . 

According to this packet, an elephant's ears help make sounds from far distances sound better. According to Wikipedia, they actually allow the elephant to access low frequency noise while acting as cooling devices, which is close enough to what the packet is for it to not matter that the information they're basing their whole demonstration on is incorrect. The packet also tells us that acoustics are important to 'avoid room to room transmission' of sound. Living in a dorm, I can affirm that avoiding room to room sound transmission is indeed important, although eleven is pretty young for learning about those sounds.

Lab Tour

This is an excellent activity if your group is getting restless and you want to shut them up--the only material listed as 'Required' in the packed it 'Killick the AUV'. I'm not sure what Killick is, but I'm thinking murderous robot. The last item under 'Activity Instructions' is 'Vehicle demos--torpedoes, blinking lights, visual recognition, ect.', so my murder robot hypothesis is pretty well supported. And I'm pretty sure this is the part of the movie where Queen Bee Stephanie takes control of the murder robot and begins her reign of terror. 

Come to think about it, that's the most entertaining use of technology we've seen so far.

Editor's note: Apparently, I wasn't supposed to keep the copy of the packet I took off Ayesha's desk. Does 'Can I take one?' not mean 'Can I keep one?'

The Eight People You Meet In Your Dorm

There's nothing quite like moving into a dorm the first time. 

My home away from sanitary bathrooms. 

There's all these strange people you've never met and you're being forced to play all these dumb icebreaker games. But you've been there before. You did this in high school and at summer camp. You know that in about three days, these people will splinter into the same old roles and cliques. Here's a few. 

The Absent RA

The RA is supposed to support students, answer their questions, and help them get used to college life. Unfortunately  no one's seen him all semester. You glimpsed him at the Homecoming game sitting in a flock of Beta Phis and in the kitchen three weeks ago making pancakes on your tiny dorm stove, but he's really more of an idea than a school employee. He hasn't blown the whistle on the stoners who hang out in the lounge because he's feeding off their pot stashes. Lives in a frat and uses his room in the dorm to store extra clothing. 

The Stoners

They're the reason the lounge smells like pot. I don't have a very sensitive nose (I need my mom or Taylor to tell me when food's gone bad), so I can't really tell if they've been smoking or not. It doesn't really bother me, since I don't use the lounge in the first place, but they can be annoyingly loud sometimes and I can't really steal the brownies from the kitchen because I think they're been spiked. 

The Girlfriend/Boyfriend Combo Pack

This technically counts as one person, because they are together all the time. They sit in the hallway where you can't help but step over them every time you want to use the bathroom. They are joined at the hip in a way that most Siamese twins can't achieve, and spend enough time kissing that they not only share diseases, but long stretches of their DNA. The Boyfriend doesn't even care that the Girlfriend has been brushing her teeth with a Q-tip for the past week and a half. Answers to a single name, like 'Janica', and are never seen alone. If they break up, you can expect to hear two people crying in the hallway every night for a month. Loudly. 

The Roommate of the Girlfriend/Boyfriend Combo Pack

Despite the fact she lives with the Human Centipede, she seems oddly nonplussed  If you peek in her room, you'll find her typing away on her English paper while the Girlfriend/Boyfriend Combo Pack spoons in bed. You'll see this over and over, and eventually you start to wonder if she's actually okay with it, is too polite to say anything, or just kind of . . . likes it.

The Starcraft Nerd

You don't see much of him. He's usually in his room, but he will come out of his den to eat and attend classes. He brings his computer (usually an expensive one) everywhere he goes. And he will always be playing Starcraft. The only time he isn't playing Starcraft is when he's studying. Always an engineering student and almost always a male Asian, the Starcraft Nerd rarely speaks to people in person. Despite this fact, he's a member of the Starcraft club and spends every weekend hanging out with friends, so in a way he's much more social than you are.

. 

The Hipster With The Dumb Tattoo

Like this, plus stupid tattoos

According to the other architecture majors, she really regrets it. Who on earth would regret getting quotation marks tattooed on their wrists? This California chick has a really dumb name and has a big Bob Marley poster hanging on her wall. She's the only one in our suite with a printer and I'd rather walk down to the community center than use hers and actually have to spend time in her room. She and her friends get together and never ever shut up. If someone says something ironic, I bet she'll hold up her wrists and everyone will laugh. At her. Also, she has several nose piercings.

The Sorority Girls

In their matching knee-length coats, expensive scarves, and eyeliner, these college students are notorious both for their pack-hunting behavior and their high-pitched roars. It's not unusual to see a herd of twenty or more hanging out in the lobby of the community center. They posses high tolerance for inclement weather, as they'll walk out in 20 degree weather without any pants on. The only tee-shirts they wear are ones with Greek letters on them. White, Asian, or black, they all look the same. Possibly, it's because they're all sisters.

The Naked Person

There's nothing offensive about this! Honest!

Some people just don't like to wear clothing. You know what? That's okay. We're all born naked. We all shower naked. The human body is a beautiful, organic form. Perfect the way it is. Fat, thin, short, tall (as long as you don't have copious acne). Anyway, this is the one person in the dorm who isn't afraid of the human form. They rarely wear a shirt and have no problem with sitting nude in their dorm room when nobody else is there. This is why it's important everybody knocks before entering the room. If you knock, this person will generally be more than happy to put on a shirt. Just knock. Please.
Less benign forms include the girl currently standing in the kitchen, making hot cocoa without any pants on. Her mug is shaped like a naked female torso. 

The Seven Professors You Meet in College

The blond chick is still unconscious.

Don't panic, it's seven AM on a Tuesday, and said blond chick is my sleeping roommate, Audrey. I can't blame her for sleeping; I wish I was still asleep. But no, I've got to do this Spanish worksheet that's due today. And I can't do it in another class, because Spanish is my first class.

Yeah, sometimes I do work for other classes (or my blog) in class. It depends on how good the professor is. Fun fact: there's only seven professors in the world. The rest are just faceless robots standing behind a podium. Here you go.

The Communist

This professor emigrated from the USSR in 1991 and believes Gorbachev was a CIA plant sent to destroy the greatest empire of all time. Lecturing in a thick Eastern European accent, he's nearly as hard to understand as the thought process behind the Bay of Pigs. No matter what class he teaches, he will find room in every lecture to explain why the West is corrupt and evil. You will learn a great deal about American imperialism, mutually-assured destruction, and Karl Marx.

Every dude in the class will try to grow this beard.

For a few weeks, you will hang a hammer and sickle over your desk, until you get your tuition bill and realize that only through the ownership of private property will you ever pay off your student loans.

The Overpaid Humanities Professor

She's finally got tenure and no longer has to pretend to be interested in students. Makes eighty thousand a year teaching classes like 'Television in Society' and 'Early Modern Erotica', and 'Introduction to the French Cinema'. Despite being a tenured professor, she nevertheless pretends that she's no older than her graduate students and feigns a kind of manic enthusiasm for practically everything. Her specialty is something like 16th century Ottoman rug designs or traditional Mongolian fashion design, yet her work is considered much more valuable than that of a high school teacher in the inner city, trying to encourage students to escape poverty.

The Cool TA

This is the TA who comes to class every day wearing a tee-shirt from a classic rock band and prefers chilling with students as to doing any work. She will never mark you absent nor take off points for late work. Will teach you several innovative curse words and the locations of the best bars on campus. Best professor imaginable until you go on to the next level in that class and realize you didn't learn anything at all.

The Lame TA

A hipster just out of graduate school who can't keep his eyes off the curvy Indian girl with the plunging neckline in the front row. He'll read the types of genetic mutation off the Power Point and get the definitions wrong. If this is a subject matter you know very well, you will be supremely irritated by all these little errors. He'll keep looking over his shoulder as if he hasn't yet internalized the fact that he, and he alone, is the only teacher of the class. Now the scantily dressed Indian girl is talking about her favorite poem, using language from her Feminist Studies class and explaining that she likes how defiant said poem is, because it's about defiance. The Lame TA stares at her in reverence, says something flirtatious, and hopes that she'll teach the class for him.

The Mad Scientist

Everyone's favorite professor. Welcoming, low-key, and eager to direct students to follow their passions, it's nevertheless difficult to take him seriously because he looks like this.

It's like his hair is trying to run away from his thoughts

Will have a lab on campus and several species of bug named after him. He's the reason the bio department has a walrus skull sitting in a cabinet, along with a ratty stuffed platypus and the head of a miniature deer (I'm pretty sure it's a dik-dik, and I'm pretty sure the name comes from what you have to be to cut off one's head and toss it in a cabinet). An expert on animal communication who knows nothing about the mating patterns of his own species, The Mad Scientist is the only person who knows why the word 'sperm' is written in tiny text in the corner of every lab manual. His breath also smells like old gym socks.

The Made Up Professor

This professor only ever appears in bars and at parties, usually right after some kind of bet has been made. From about 9:00 to 10:30, he's known as Professor Daniels or Doctor Morgan. Then the good stuff runs out and you hear about Doctor Chair and Professor Beer Pong. A longtime member of the Trivia department, he's an authority on everything from the Oscar winners in 1977 to the main exports of Tajikistan. Only possesses a 50/50 accuracy ratio (as compared with Wikipedia) at best. The accuracy ratio declines over time.

The Professor Whose Tests Are Easy (For The Professor)

This man wants everyone in his class to get an A. If only the students wanted it as much as he did! Seriously, people, these questions aren't that hard! They're all true or false! Unfortunately, this professor teaches biology, and so the answer to about half the questions happens to be It Depends On A Wide Variety Of External Factors, Which May Or May Not Matter, Depending On How The Question Is Worded. As you struggle to pick apart the minute inflections of grammar, you'll get an excellent course in English and psychology. You will develop excellent critical thinking skills (starting with thinking critically about your professor). Despite the fact his tests are perfectly easy, he will nevertheless interrupt the final exam six times to explain typos, clarify ambiguous wording, and strike questions from the test after he's realized we didn't actually cover the material. By the end of the semester, you still won't know what the ADH/RAAS cycle is, but you'll be secure in the knowledge you can always look it up in that two-hundred dollar textbook he made you buy.

Nine Reasons Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would have been Better at Hogwarts

So this has been rattling around in my head for quite some time now--an inappropriately long time. It wasn't until I was driving down a certain snowy road when it popped into my head, this really weird chain of thoughts (it was really early in the morning and I hadn't had coffee yet. So sue me): Once, when I drove down this road as a kid, I was watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the backseat. That snowy forest over there looks a lot like the forest where Harry and his friends spent a lot of Book Seven camping. Pity they weren't at Hogwarts in Book Seven. 

 The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I (as so rarely ever occurs) was right. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows should have been set at Hogwarts. Yes, Harry's isolation from his peers creates a sense of foreboding and doom. Yes, Hogwarts had been taken over by the Death Eaters. Yes, it allowed us to further explore the wizarding world. But I argued this point with my equally Harry Potter obsessed roommate last night for an hour and a half, and she finally gave in (according to her, she didn't give in, only admitted that I have a point. Whatever. It's the first argument I've ever come close to winning). 

The ability to spend an hour and a half arguing about a work of fiction is one of the more useful skills they teach you at Cornell. 

First off, four plot reasons.

1. Harry would be safer at Hogwarts. Now, obviously, he couldn't just hop on the school train and motor down there, but there's other ways to get there. He and Ron fly to school in an invisible car in Book Two, and Harry's an expert on ways to sneak on and off school grounds. He could have had Kreacher Apparate him in (the chapter at Malfoy Manor establishes that house elves can bring people with them under wards and Voldemort doesn't know this). Heck, eventually he uses a tunnel into the Room of Requirement (which I will now call the RoR, because I'll be talking about it a lot) to sneak in. Why didn't he just tell Neville to open one at a set place and time? Or why not use a Portkey? We know from Book Four that a Portkey can get you in and out of Hogwarts. Once you're in the RoR, you're safe--you can make it so that no one who'll hurt you can get inside. Yes, it's dangerous, but so is wandering around in the wilderness when you have minimal camping experience and, besides, Harry  functions best when he's in mortal danger, as every single book goes out of their way to demonstrate.
2. It's easier for Harry to find the Horcruxes at Hogwarts. Obviously, there's one hidden there, but there's more stuff he can use. Harry knows there's one thing there that can destroy Horcruxes--the basilisk fangs. He destroyed a Horcrux with one in Book Two. This entirely eliminates the need for the Sword of Gryffindor subplot (on a side note, Harry could also go and hide down in the Chamber of Secrets. Only Voldemort can open it and why would Voldemort think to look for him there? Voldemort doesn't know Harry can speak Parseltongue). Harry and friends would have an easier time doing things like plotting their break-in at Gringotts if they had access to the books in the Hogwarts library. Also, if they could access the school's employee records, they could have discovered Umbridge's address and her emergency contact information. Using those things, they could have ambushed her and stolen back the missing locket without having to break into the Ministry of Magic. 
3. At Hogwarts, Harry has way more help. Neville, Ginny, and Luna form a secondary trio of characters that help him quite a lot in books Five and Six. We get tidbits of information about them during Book Seven and learn that they're trying their best to resist the Death Eaters controlling Hogwarts by restarting Dumbledore's Army. You remember, the student anti-Dark Arts club Harry started in Book Five and spent a good part of the book training to fight against the Death Eaters. That's exactly what they do in Book Seven . . . unfortunately  we don't get to witness any of it until the final battle. Instead, Neville Longbottom takes over from Harry as the leader of the student resistance. Not only do we not get to witness the student resistance, Neville is nowhere near as good at fighting the Dark Arts as Harry is. Which brings me to my next point.
4. Harry has a moral responsibility to come back to Hogwarts. When he meets Neville in the tunnel leading back into the RoR, right before the final battle, Neville offhandedly mentions some of the things the horrible Carrow siblings have been doing to students. Kids get beaten up, tortured, are forced to torture other kids, get knife wounds to the face, taken hostage, chained up, tortured some more--some as young as eleven years old! In The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to be sent to certain death to save a twelve year old (who's her sister, but still). Harry's reaction to the same kind of evil is to go into hiding. He got the highest OWL score in Defense Against the Dark Arts of any student in his year. His presence, even if he was in hiding, would have provided a huge moral boost for the student resistance, and he could have coordinated with the teachers to help protect the kids. If you give Hermione the Invisibility Cloak and put her in the library, she will eventually find out where the Horcruxes are hidden. There is no need for Harry to be on an extended camping trip that doesn't actually help him accomplish anything. Yes, it's dangerous, but there are children being tortured, Harry. You're the hero. Hello?

And here's my five literary reasons. 

1. It would have allowed the Harry/Ginny relationship to develop much better. In a story that's primarily about Harry and his two best friends, this romance always seemed a little forced. Harry and Ginny are friends, but I never detected any real chemistry between them. Sure, that's normal for a teenage relationship--but Book Seven is about these characters progressing into adulthood. Part of that progression is (I hate to say it in a Harry Potter article) sexual maturation. Now, I'm not saying I want an actual sex scene (Ron would kill him), but the proximity of danger could have sparked a little more chemistry between the two. Instead, we see the lonely Harry sitting in his tent and following Ginny's movements with the Marauder's Map. Tracing your girlfriend's every move may be a typical (horrible) teenage behavior, but it sure doesn't make me hope they get married at the end.
2. We would have seen the resistance. The text mentions that Hagrid threw a 'Support Harry Potter Party' and then fled into the woods with the help of the giants. This would have been a great scene, had we actually seen it--Harry, discovering the plans and trying in vain to talk Hagrid out of it, brief moments of joy and celebration, and fleeing as the Death Eaters swoop down on the hut. While he's not searching for Horcruxes, Harry could lead guerrilla forays through the halls of Hogwarts. This could have filled in quite a few dry spots and, come on, Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Resistance is a way cooler book title. Since the Deathly Hallows don't really have much of an impact on the way the story turns out (the wand can just be a really powerful want, the cloak has been there since day one, and the stone doesn't really matter), let Harry connect with his friends and supporters, instead of isolating him from everything at the key point of the story.
3. Hogwarts is so important to Harry. When he walks into Gringotts for the Great Horcrux Heist,  he thinks of how Hagrid brought him here on his eleventh birthday ("the best birthday of his life") and how he could have never dreamed he'd return to steal. It's a real poignant moment, but one that's a thousand times stronger at Hogwarts. This is the first place he ever felt happy, his childhood sanctuary, and it's being defiled by the Death Eaters. Instead of welcoming new students, they're torturing them. To see his powerful teachers made helpless and his sanctuary turn into  a war zone would kill Harry inside--which is exactly why he needs to be there. Seeing this would both push him into adulthood and galvanize him to keep fighting. There would be no time for Emo Potter sitting in the woods and wishing he had the Deathly Hallows, which again, have no real impact on the story at large. The Death Eaters have violated his most sacred sanctuary. So does Harry run or confront them? What makes a better story? 
4. Finally, without Hogwarts, it's not a Harry Potter book. Lots of fantasy stories have wandering around in forests. Only Harry Potter has Hogwarts. There's a formula the books follow: Harry spends miserable summer with Dursleys, something magical happens, Harry goes off to school,  learns stuff, there's something weird going on, Harry solves the mystery, big fight, and Harry goes home. The reason this formula is so successful is that everyone who's ever been to school can relate to it. Hogwarts isn't just a set piece, it's the universe in which these stories take place. Without it, we loose our key connection to this world. We're just as isolated as Harry. The rich world Rowling has created is meant to be explored, of course--but not in the forests. In the places she's created. 
5. Come on. Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Resistance? Awesome title or what?

And for those of you who say that Harry would have never found out about the location of the Horcrux  in the Lestrange vault if he hadn't been taken to Malfoy Manor, keep in mind that this happened over Hogwarts winter break and Luna had been captured and brought there. Harry might have very well decided to rescue Luna and gotten captured for his troubles. And if Snape had given Harry the real sword as per Dumbledore's instructions (which would have been easier at Hogwarts!), he might have very well had it on him there!

How NOT to find a party

Ahhh, Collegetown. Cornell's capital of cerveza consumption. The landscaping is beautiful, if you're the kind of person who thinks landscaping should be done with a lawn of red Solo cups and a tasteful asortment of crushed beer cans.

Collegetown. It's peaceful about half the time. Peace and quiet in Collegetown are strongly correlated with time of day.

So when you've just finished your first final and have a few days until your next one, Collegetown is the perfect place to go to kick back, relax, and enjoy yourself with your friends, roommates, and that one skinny guy who keeps vomiting in the bushes. So early last Saturday evening, just past midnight, me and my friends decided to go down to Collegetown in hopes of finding a party.

It was, as usual, way more crowded than it ever was during the daytime. People filled the sidewalks, not really caring whether or not you had room to walk past them. Everyone's smoking. Let me tell you, it's not the drinking that's weird, but the smoking. Regular old cigarettes, not weed. At least alcohol gets you drunk, which can be kind of fun. Smoking just makes you smell bad.

Also, I don't know people who party. I know people who know people who party, though, and these are the people I rely upon to help me find said parties. Normally, this involves them texting their friends who party and asking where those friends are. This allows us to gather valuable information, such as 'at the football house' and 'some frat'. Surprisingly, drunk people don't really remember the street address of their locations too well.

So there we were, walking around Collegetown, looking for a party. There were a lot of girls dressed in Santa hats walking around in stiletto heels. One of the unique things about the Cornell Collegetown is the hills. Collegetown is located on a very steep hill, and it is extremely entertaining to watch drunk girls in five inch heels walking up and down the slope. I've yet to see a truly spectacular wipeout, but I have faith that sooner or later I'll witness the awesome spectacle that is maybe four or five sorority girls falling into each other, domino style, and tumbling over into someone's lawn.

My roommate Audrey assures me that's not sadistic at all, as long as I don't actually push them myself.

So we go and stand outside one house that's having a party. Turns out the friend of a friend who was there is now leaving. Onward to text other people! We walk down the hill, then up the hill, then past the shoe store, the pizza place, and the liquor shop. Guess which one is busiest? Actually, it's the pizza place, seeing as how everyone's too drunk to climb up the steps leading to the liquor shop. It's suggested that we try texting a boy someone knows, but that's vetoed after said girl says she hasn't talked to that boy since the time she made out with him while both of them were drunkenly leaning on me.

As we walk past Collegetown bagels, one of those delightful locations open from six thirty in the morning to two in the . . . next morning, we spot a bus heading back to North Campus, where the rest of the frats are.  We hop on. The bus driver's out taking a smoke, so I don't bother swiping my ID card.

The inside of the bus happens to be pink. Because why not?

While we're sitting on the bus, Audrey points out a guy she says she went to high school with. He looks like he's having a good time, so we all go back and talk to him and ask where he was. Apparently, it was a private party for the men's swim team. So we weren't invited.

Sans alcohol, we had no choice but to retire to my dorm room with a bag of Doritos, mozzarella sticks, and an individual pizza with pineapple, mushrooms, and garlic. And that's how NOT to find a party . . . but still manage to have fun.

How NOT to study for finals

First of all, just want to say that this is my fiftieth post. Isn't that neat? Second, it's finally December. Which means final exams are coming. Which means I should be studying.

Okay, my parents read this blog, and I don't want them to think I'm wasting my time at the very expensive school they're sending me to. Let me reassure them that I'm trying my very best to study, and . . . is that a lighthouse? Yes, it is!

Pretty.

Darn natural beauty gets me every time! Also, so does listening to music and watching the men unloading the FedEx truck parked just below the window. I've got a nice comfy chair in Uris library, I'll probably go running in a bit . . . is it really worth it to just sit down and study for a few minutes? What do you mean, it's already three o'clock? The day is halfway over and I've accomplished about a paragraph of this twelve page paper.

Two paragraphs now! And someone's stuck an Orange Crush wrapper on the library window! Wow, I'm actually making progress on this paper! If only I could make as much progress on studying for these three gigantic tests.

Audrey says that the pressure leading up to a test makes you study most when it's really important, so procrastination is okay. Ayesha says she'll think up something to say about procrastination later.

Has anyone every procrastinated from procrastination? Procrast-inception? Like, when you decide you'll totally write that essay after you finish watching one more episode of The Vampire Diaries, and then you put off watching that episode by screwing around on the internet?

Speaking of which, you'd be surprised how cozy a notebook full of equations becomes when you've banished yourself to the library and forced yourself to try and study. And how hard it is to maintain interest in the book I brought with me to read if I got bored with studying.

Okay, ten minutes wasted with SNL. Kate Middleton is having a baby? OMG! So much British everywhere!

The best thing about studying in the Cornell libraries are the exhibits. Did you know Morrill Hall is the oldest building on campus and is named after the senator who authored the law that . . .Ayesha found the location of Hogwarts on Google Maps! That's funny!

The FedEx truck is driving away and Ayesha wants to know where Scotland is. I realize we're learning a lot. Unfortunately, none of it will be on our finals.

Yes, I realize I'm supposed to be reviewing American foreign policy as it related to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but all I can think is, Wow, that place was huge.

Three more paragraphs down. Seven more pages to go.

Good luck with finals, everybody!

How NOT to freeze to death at college

Editorial note for January 22nd: I wrote this piece when it was forty degrees outside. Fool that I was, I never imagined I'd see a day when the temperature dipped below fifteen degrees. As of now, it's ten degrees and the wind is howling like Penny with her tail stuck in a door. 

Most of you know me as the girl who likes to run shirtless in December. What you may not know is that I've got another side: an adventurous, polar explorer type side. I can climb up icebergs and go surfing in Antarctica. Or at least I tell myself that. Because I'm actually a total wimp when it comes to cold weather. 

For example, this is me studying

You might ask why I decided to go to college in the northeast. Hubris, I say (also, it was the best school that accepted me). To those of you who've heard me brag about my stupendous cold resistance and to all of those I've encouraged to come to Cornell . . . lo, let not my arrogance drag you down into the cold, frozen pit known as New York.

But for those of you foolhardy souls determined to brave the freezing north, I have only these scant pieces of advice to offer you. Choose your clothes wisely, for they determine thine status of freezingness.

Let's start with jackets. A jacket is most people's solution to the problem of Cold. Jackets come in all shapes and sizes. I have a brown sweater I love, but can't wear, because it's too thin to keep me warm. I have a ski jacket that keeps me very warm, but weights about as much as carrying around an extra cat and isn't nearly as good a conversation piece. Most of the time, I compromise on my brown fleece, which feels like real fur and was in fact part of my famous Chewbacca costume last year. I still feel a bit like a wookie when I wear it, but it keeps me warm, so I don't really care.

Shoes. Shoes are important. I have a collection of shoes I love dearly. Unfortunately, I live almost a mile from campus and end up walking that distance almost every day, so my pretty wedges and strappy flats sat in my closet all August while I wore my sneakers everywhere. Thankfully, now that it's practically winter, I can wear my boots. Once upon a time, I refused to wear Uggs as a statement of individuality. Then I tried on    a pair and never went back. Leather boots and plastic snow boots are also in fashion up here. I still see some girls wearing strappy shoes, but they're the ones struggling up the hill at nine AM on a Saturday morning still wearing little black dresses and smudged makeup, so I'll keep my boots, thank you very much.

Pants. Jeans. That's all I own, save one pair of formal pants and a dress so short it's technically illegal in 36 states (plus wherever Taylor is).

 Long underwear. This stuff is a skier's best friend. It's also a wimpy college student's best friend. Those who know me know that, for whatever reason, my pants tend to sink so low on me that my underwear becomes visible. I don't know why. But this winter, all people are seeing is that so-called "black bodysuit" I've got on under my clothes. To all those who mock me: I'm warm. I'm sooooo warm.

Hats. I own several hats. My favorite hat has big fluffy pompoms that swing in my face when I run. I also have a North Face hat I got for free at an event I attended in October. It's very cool looking, but every time I take it off my hair stands on end.

Mittens and gloves. I got a few pairs of three dollar gloves at Target last month and wear them religiously, even when inside. I have a bad case of chronically cold fingers. I also have a pair of big, fluffy mittens, which make it so I can't move my hands, but I wear them anyway, because it's cold outside.

Armed with all my clothing, I am prepared to set foot outside and bravely walk to the bus stop, where I catch the nice heated bus that takes me to campus, where I bravely set foot outside again and step into a heated building, repeating this pattern until spring. Five more months to go!