Alex Tries His Hand in Acting February 1, 2010
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I received a quick message about the launch of a Cornell sitcom looking for actors. Described as Seinfeld about Cornell, I thought this was my opportunity to finally launch my acting career in case this whole Cornell degree doesn’t pan out. I had the audition and needless to say while competing against those with unnecessary things such as acting experience, and classes about acting.
My main attribute was raw emotion and talent. The audition didn’t go too well, with the director giving great tips about my reading such as, “That was good, but this time can you do it with emotion.” or “Tone down the emotion, be a little softer”. My brain only functions two ways: go home or go hard literally. I’m either spending four or five hours in the library or I’m playing Madden at the apartment for four or five hours.
I’m excited to receive the results of my audition, fingers crossed I will be able to fully show my acting range with this sitcom and eventually I can leave the world of corporate finance and live the rest of my life as a celebrity. Maybe I can get a show like for the Love of Ray J, because my love life could use the boost!
First Week of Classes Completed January 30, 2010
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The first week of the last semester is complete and I feel really accomplished, not because the amount of work I put in during the week, because I haven’t yet realized classes require work to be done. It’s all because that feeling I get when I say my last semester, it tingles my lips and I can’t help but smile. I hope this week is an indication of the senior lifestyle, 12 credits of coursework. 12 credits mean a max of two classes a day and with my reduced student involvement that means even more time to do nothing. This week was capped off with a three hour nap on Wednesday, followed by a two hour relaxation session on Thursday. All my afternoons are either occupied with my work study, sleeping, or slowly plucking away at my guitar. Hopefully, I’ll be a rock star by the end of the semester. So far, all I have is my two string version of twinkle, twinkle little star.
Diet has also been very consistent with that of a struggling Cornell student with no Big Red Bucks, no City bucks, and not going to the grocery store out of laziness (8 degrees is not the temperature for me waiting outside for the bus). My diet includes oatmeal in the morning, PB&J for lunch, and grilled cheese in the evening. You can’t make up diets such as these. Hopefully, I’ll end up losing some weight, because my goal at the end of this year is to get sexified for the full-time job so I can be out and use my Cornell alum status to its full advantage!
Last Week of my last Winter Break EVER!!!!!!! January 19, 2010
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A very dramatic title for a very dramatic moment in my life. As I start to pack up for my last semester at Cornell, I can’t help but feel mixed emotions. First, excitement about the last semester and all the bottles that will be popped for celebration. Also, big excitement that this might be the last time I wear my big North Face puff coat feeling like the Michelin man every time I go outside during winter in Ithaca. Lastly feel sadness, this marks the end of days because I have to get rid of the college lifestyle: no more naps, no more all nighters with friends where I was supposed to do work but ended up having a 3 hour conversation about nothing, and most importantly no more mornings I can sleep in just because I don’t feel like it. Nope those days are coming to a close and I have to get ready to put on the shirt/tie combo every day and look forward to casual fridays!
That’s the pretty face of Corporate America!
A Break is A Break January 13, 2010
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Alot of my friends are busy working hard during their winter break, studying for GMAT/GRE/LSAT, applying to graduate school, etc. etc. Like all my previous breaks I took this break as an opportunity to do nothing. It’s alot harder than it sounds, it takes dedication/tenacity and inner strength. My day pretty much entails this
9:00am Half sleep-drunk, half semi-awake say goodbye to my mother as she heads off to work
11/12pm: Wake up, watch my favorite Cartoon Show of Chowder
1-2pm: Eat lunch, most of the time sandwiches and Ramen or some leftovers
2-7pm: TV Marathon and Endurance race. Provided all the necessary supplies: snacks, blankets, water, and my much needed slippers
7pm: Prayer that my mom brings something to eat
8pm-2am: Facebook/TV marathon, also texting.
That’s pretty much it! My break in a nutshell.
Alex’s Version of Hangover, Cornell Greatest (Almost) Upset January 8, 2010
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So I celebrated New Year’s at Universal Studios Citywalk to usher in the new year/decade. It was alot of fun sipping comfortably on Cosmos (not mine, but the friend I celebrated with loved them! nothing wrong with a sippy sip) and Coronas celebrating my new found 21dom.
After New Years, my friends and I decided to live up the new decade in style staying at the Wynn Hotel. While I can’t go into significant details about the five-day extravanganza I can provide you with some highlights. Meeting Eddie Griffith at one of the casino bars (friend almost called him Chris Rock by mistake), doing the Dougie and dancing in an empty parking lot at 4am in the morning while walking back from Circus Circus, my friend winning 250 dollars the last night on his last 20 dollars, my losing streak of 150 dollars that capped off my night playing with the nickel slot winning 10 dollars and proceeding to buy them all on drinks, and spending two hours with this lovely homeless man who was by day pushing shopping carts by night a part-time comedian still pushing shopping carts. His words, not mine.
After returning home, I attended the Lakers-Clippers game and anxiously kept updated about the Cornell’s men basketball team. We played #1 Kansas with the longest home-winning streak in the nation and lost in the last minute. I couldn’t help but feel Cornell pride! We are actually receiving Top 25 votes for basketball, it’s incredible. These men are real scholar-athletes competing against the best. The Clippers won too and are only one game from .500. This week has been awesome to say the least.
Gorgeous view!
You gotta catch Zzzzzzzz whenever, wherever you can in Vegas.
Winter Break! December 31, 2009
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After two weeks at home, I already feel the death grip of boredom choking around my neck. I have done everything I need to as far what I want to do while home. It’s a pretty short list: visit friends (check, went to the bar and had lots of fun), eat (check, people are more willing to cook for you if they feel like they haven’t seen you), receive Christmas presents (check, pretty sweet receiving money.), and catch up on my TV shows (the season finale of Glee was so good!!!! They won sectionals, next up regionals!) After that, all I can do is sit on the couch and sing to myself. I need something to do!!
Quickest Final Ever December 16, 2009
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10 Minutes, I arrived at 7:10 and by 7:18pm I was re-checking answers and handing my final to the professor, that’s all it took for me to finish my final.
Senior year can be considered the peak of your college career, because you have a full understanding of the game of college at Cornell and you know what to do in order to get by and be successful. Coming into EAS 1050 also known as dinosaurs, one-credit pass/fail course I knew all I needed was a C- and no one would know if I slept through all of the class and studied only a few hours and I would be good to go. The final was a different experience both good and bad.
A dinosaurs class full of non-majors you think maybe talking briefly about T-Rex, spending a class or two watching the Jurassic Park triology (or is it four I don’t remember anymore), but no this professor who mysteriously looks like Santa Claus with his long white beard and his jolly belly wants to give us the gift that keeps on giving: a long technical lecture.
By the time the final arrives, he asks if anyone is going to go for the record of finishing the final in three minutes, and I think this class is a joke, but come the final it was anything.
Question 1: Which one of these is not a dinosaur? Ornithischian, terapod, therapod, tetrapod.
Uhhhhhhhh, were is the simple part about matching the dinosaurs name with its picture I know what a T-Rex is!
So I blindly checked any answers which made sense and hoped that I pulled out a solid C- in the class to show that I was satisfactory in my knowledge of dinosaurs. Judging by the looks on my friends’ faces, all I could do is just laugh and say on to the next.
Study Week December 10, 2009
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Nothing like study week to have a few unscheduled days to catch up on a semester’s worth of learning I was clearly to lazy to do. Finals have already begun last night officially at 7pm with students already moaning and complaining about how hard the exam was. Walking to the library, I can hear the conversations of people calling their moms and dads saying, “I failed the test” or “it went ok I think the mean is going to be low anyway”. It’s moments like this which can really depress you at Cornell, because you know eventually you are probably going to be on the other side calling your mom all teary-eyed and sniffling trying to withhold the disappointment from a bad final. I know the feeling and I have made the call, but I try to look at things at a glass half full sort of way: at least Cornell prepares me to accept and learn from failure, because after your first good cry after a bad final you mentally prepare for the worst in your head and more willing to work hard to avoid that situation as much as possible. Tonight is my first exam out of five, so here’s to getting over the freshman anxiety of finals!!!!
Last Day of Classes December 4, 2009
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Today marks the last official day of classes, and this probably is the most exciting day of the semester for me. Not because it’s the last day of classes, but because I am always interested to seeing how each professor decides to end their semester. There are a dozen different ways for a professor to end the semester: completing his last lesson and then everyone half-heartedly claps at the end of the semester or they may give life lessons at the end of class. This year was a little bit different as my finance teacher got creative when it comes to their last class.
First Prize: Weirdly enough the class I hated the most had the best ending of the semester because Rich Curtis did a little bit of everything in his last lecture: game show tips, trivia, youtube videos, life lessons, and even a magic trick. The last portion of our class was about personal finance and an essential part of personal finance is recommendations about what to do if you are on a game show.
Scenario 1:
If you are on the game show, let’s make a deal and you have the opportunity to switch the door you choose in the first round, always do the switch. The probability of the switch being right is 2/3 while the probability of being right with your original pick is only 1/3.
Scenario 2
On Wheel of Fortune, don’t leave it up to chance be sure to buy vowels before you give away your turn choosing the wrong consonant.
Scenario 3 If you are on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, call the professor for sports questions.
After gaining knowledge about how to be prepared for a game show, he then proceeded to have a slideshow of all 300 students in the lecture. After the picture slideshow, he proceeded to share his life lessons. The biggest one that struck me was the people who seem the hardest are probably the people who care about you the most. Maybe, just maybe all these months the professor has been a jerk it was for the greater good or maybe not.
You would think this would be it, but no no, it continues next he presented a musical tribute to finance first, a youtube featuring a Columbia Business School MBA student impersonating their dean who lost the Federal Chair job to Bernanke. Check out the link. Then we were provided with a musical of finance starring Rich Curtis singing about options and all other aspects of finance with his TA’s providing chorus.
Finally, he performed a card magic trick. First he had a stack of about 300 cards with one person’s name on one card. Next he picked a student to randomly shuffled the deck and out of that stack a student was picked to pick a card out of a random deck of cards that the student shuffled. He then proceeded to guess the card three times and all the guesses were wrong. Lame trick right!?!? Until he told the girl to read the ithaca journal classifieds for the week!
Personals
| JENNIFER,_you will select the4 of Spades_in class this week!! 12/04/2009 |
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He knew the person that would be selected and the card they would pick days before we even had the class!
Needless to say I was pretty impressed with the ending of the class, and
Just Don’t Care Anymore December 2, 2009
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This is around the point where everything academic related seems to be coming to a close. I have signed my offer letter with NBC Universal, talked to my advisor and as long as I pass all my classes with a D I am going to graduate with a degree and job in hand. It’s an empowering feeling, but my motivation to do work is coming at a standstill. This means times that would normally be used to complete work is used for higher priority goals: playing Madden 2010 or my favorite hobby as of late napping. A nap is a time robber, because you set your alarm for a quick half-hour nap next thing you wake up three or four hours later wondering where the day has gone and just shrugging it out and deciding to watch TV. I tried to pick up a new goal of completing the 2010 LA Marathon, but it’s become hard trying to find the motivation to be physically fit. I am a black man graduating from an Ivy League school with a great job, pretty much I feel like I have the pick of the litter when it comes to graduating. All I have to do is get this finals session over and the next semester then the World is Mine!!!!!