On the Hill

Ok, so spring break… where to start. I guess I will begin by talking a bit about the ride down to South Carolina. We left at about 11 p.m. the Thursday of my two big exams. I was going on an average of 3 hours of sleep a night that whole week so I was knocked out right away. I didn’t really wake up until about Virginia. The road trip was great though, all 18 hours of it. We had all been watching those commercials for the Sonic breakfast burrito on television for months and had gone out of our way to even look up the closest Sonic to Cornell (Virginia Beach.) So… we decided no matter where we were when we first saw on Sonic on the drive down we would stop. It was alright – the food was delicious but the 100,000 varieties of drinks or whatever didn’t quite live up to the hype. Like nasty sweet.

We arrived Friday afternoon at Hilton Head and took the ferry over to Daufuskie since the island is mostly traveled via golf carts, especially Haig Point, the club my buddy Jason has a place at. The weather was nice, his parents had stocked our fridge with plenty of food and drink and things couldn’t have seemed any more perfect. Until Jason “got into some trouble” that evening in Hilton Head. Long story short, it put a damper on the evening and sort of cast a cloud on the trip as a whole. We didn’t end up taking his Boston Whaler down to Savannah for St. Patty’s Day (even though it is the 4th largest celebration in the country.)

The majority of the week was spent just relaxing, which was a nice change from the hectic week I had at Cornell prior. We did a bit of golfing, a lot of driving range, went swimming in the club pool, chartered a fishing boat and didn’t even get a bite, went freshwater fishing, cruised in golf carts, went out in Hilton Head at night, and through it all we ate a ton of food. We did quite a bit of grilling, mostly Bubba burgers, which I highly recommend.

I think I should dedicate a few sentences to probably the most fun, yet stupid thing we did in Hilton Head. It all started after we stopped at South of the Border (if you’ve driven from NC to SC on 95 you know exactly what I’m talking about) and picked up a ridiculous amount of fireworks. We had a few roman candles left over and one of us came up with the idea to battle by firing roman candles at each other from about 100 feet apart. It was amazing. So, the next day we drove off Hilton Head (where fireworks are banned) and bought 30 roman candles each along with goggles from Lowes. The ensuing battle was legendary – 3 v. 3 accompanied by smoke grenades, flares, etc. Nick did get hit in the face which interestingly enough left him with something that resembles a cold sore below his lip.

All in all it was a good vacation. I wasn’t feeling up for the whole crazy spring break scene in Mexico or whatever and I think this was a nice break from Cornell. Hilton Head is a great place and I highly recommend it especially if you are an avid golfer.

I guess I should open this entry with an apology; I have been MIA for about two weeks now, partially for good reasons partially for some that are not. To start with, the week before spring break (the week we just wrapped up) I got hit with the worst week of my Cornell academic life. This has not been the hardest semester for me academically, but for some reason things piled up and all hit in one week. Let me explain. I had a midterm in my government class worth about a third of my grade on Monday and then a 6-8 page research paper due in my ethics class on Wednesday. After that, I had TWO midterms in my two hardest classes on Thursday. My trading class had the test during the day on Thursday, it ran about an hour and a half and was quite tricky. I think I wrote before about my midterm in my investments class – the prof suggested studying 50 hours to ensure a decent grade. The test was that Thursday night, ran three hours, and was the hardest test I have taken in my life. It was only six questions and I couldn’t arrive at an answer for three of them. So, yeah, I got killed.

Now on to the not so legitimate reason for not blogging. Spring Break ‘07. After my test on Thursday four of the guys I live with and another friend of ours hopped in the car and embarked on a drive down to Hilton Head, SC to meet up with the fifth guy we live with who has a house on Daufuski Island, right off Hilton Head. 18 hours later we rolled in, leaving a snow storm in Ithaca behind. I’ll compile a longer entry about the week in the next couple of days.

So it is a bit depressing to be back here in Ithaca and about to start classes tomorrow again. At least the weather has gotten a bit nicer here and let’s hope it stays that way.

I have never seen a phenomenon that I recently entitled “the grind” so clearly represented as it has for me this semester. Alright, so “the grind” is the one-to-two weeks prior to spring break when Cornell students get slammed with prelims, papers, and especially in my case this semester – midterms. Oh, just so you’re up on the vernacular, a “prelim” is short for a preliminary examination, which is nothing more than a glorified exam. Prelims typically are given 2-3 times a semester and worth a significant portion of students’ grades in classes.

I took a prelim in my ethics class yesterday, and it wasn’t too bad at all. So that was good. The bad news is, next Wednesday I have a 6-8 page paper due in my ethics class and a midterm in my US Congress class (which is worth, I think close to half our grade.) It should be noted I just started doing the reading for US Congress last night. Thursday is even worse. In my Securities and Trading class I have an in class midterm during the day and in my Investments class I have a three hour midterm the same evening. Yep, those are my two hardest classes too. Oh, also, the Prof for Investments informed us that to ensure a good grade, students should expect to study 50 hours.

Luckily, I am off to Spring Break in Hilton Head, SC the day after the grind ends. But for now, I’m stuck in it…

My favorite place to study – the A.D. White Memorial Library