On the Hill

“If Journey comes to Slope Day, so will I!” - Jenna’s Mom

Well, I will be at slope day either way, but if Journey came to Slope Day (which they are not, sadly) it would be a wonderful day.

On that note, here is a great monster ballad:

http://www.youtube.com/v/OyWFa7L4s-0

For all the long time readers of my blog (pause here for laughs) you may remember my post entitled, “football and marketing” (http://web.cornell.edu/studentblogs/ben/?m=200609)

I got the following comment on it today:

“Did this showcase game come to be and how were the results?” – Bob, Buffalo NY

Well, the showcase game didn’t happen – yet. The head coach was part of a team of teaching assistants and the professor which together graded our final presentations. Our final presentation was immaculate; it featured a touch screen which played witty videos of the lacrosse team players and our poster board was decorated quite well. As a result, the coach asked to keep our presentation since she liked the idea so much and we got an automatic A+ in the class for having the best presentation! While the game was not instituted this year, I think it is still a great idea and urge the team to do it in the future.

Ok, so this might be a reoccurring topic in my blog over the next month, but for good reason. Slope Day is the last day of classes during the spring semester and it is essentially one big party to celebrate the passing of another year at Cornell. Most professors cancel classes and if they don’t, students usually skip them. I am not advocating skipping classes but Slope Day is an important tradition and outlet for us students. The concept has been around since 1901 and for quite a long time it was focused on “partying” on Libe slope – the hill that leads down from central campus to west campus. However, in the past eight years or so the university has taken a proactive role in moderating the activities on the slope. They created the Slope Day Programming Board (comprised of faculty and students) to organize events for the day. This has led to an annual concert on Slope Day. I have seen:

• Kanye West, O.A.R. and Dilated Peoples (2004)
• Snoop Dog, The Game and The Starting Line (2005)
• Ben Folds, Talib Kweli and Acceptance (2006)

The concert is put on free of charge and literally every student comes out to see the show. Around this time of year, the rumors start flowing about who will be coming to Cornell for Slope Day. My insiders are telling me the rapper “TI” is scheduled and the previous rumors about Journey playing were false. We’ll see who it ends up being and you can be sure I’ll keep you updated…

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early for Joint Service Athletics Day – Spring 2007. The JSA Day is something we do every semester and it gives each service (Army, Navy and Air Force) a chance to compete against each other for pride and a bit of stress releasing exercise. We get together at Barton Hall and compete in a variety of sports: soccer, handball, basketball, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, tug-of-war and a relay run. There is usually some combination of these sports, with the exclusion of handball which was banned after someone suffered a fractured orbital socket at the hands of a fellow Marine Option.

This semester featured a twist on the old norm; we divided into classes instead of competing service on service. I think this was an effort to cut down on the sometimes dangerous competitiveness levels. The seniors were too big of a group so I actually participated on the sophomores’ team. I don’t know who set it up (I think the Air Force…) but we played all four matches against the seniors. We played them in basketball twice, soccer once and ultimate frisbee once. We definitively lost every match except frisbee, including a 42-5 stomping in basketball. Oh well.

I participated in the tug-of-war which was the only event that featured each service pitted against each other. Air Force and Army faced off first and after quite a long stretch, Army squeaked out a victory. Next, we faced Air Force and beat them in about 7 seconds. Army was no more of a challenge in the finals and we came away victorious.

Other than that, it was a pretty slow weekend. I hung out at Psi U a bit but was tired most of the weekend and took some time to catch up on some rest. No big plans or work scheduled for this week but I will check in a bit later in the week.

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

Two guys who graduated from Cornell and were in Psi U with me, Doug and Yanni, have started an interesting website that I think fits in nicely with the theme of blogging. It is called Loud Campus and is a website which allows students to post reviews (professors, restaurants, etc.) and discussions (issues on campus, politics, current events, etc.) It is basically a constantly running forum which is categotrized and also has quite a few nice features. So, for any perspective students or parents of perspective students out there looking to see what students really talk about, make sure to check it out. I should probably add that it is not affiliated with the school so anything you read on the site is purely unedited banter among students.

Alright, I know you are all probably sick of me always just recounting trips to New York City. Five of us from Psi U along with three pledges drove down to Princeton, NJ to watch another fraternity brother of ours, Dave, swim in the EISL Championship meet. Dave is a senior who I lived with for a semester and one of my good friends in the house. He has been steadily progressing each year while collecting many accolades and this year truly was his last hurrah. He had been training especially hard to attempt a shot at making the NCAA meet (top 25 swimmers in each event, country wide.)

John picked me up from class at 3:30 on Friday and we started driving. Unfortunately we arrived thirty minutes after Dave broke the league record and set a personal best in the 100 yd breast stroke, essentially securing himself a bid to the NCAA meet. So we were incredibly excited for him and spent some time congratulating him and his family. Later on we watched him swim in a 400 yd medley relay (I think?) which Cornell also won. The swim team was eating at the local Macaroni Grill so we joined them, if you count sitting at a separate table, not allowed to talk to them, “joining them.” The highlight of dinner came after I returned from the bathroom to find that it was my “birthday.” The birthday boy has to stand on his chair, swing his napkin around over his head like a helicopter while a waitress sings authentic Italian music which sounds like opera.

We hopped in the car afterwards and drove to the city from Princeton. Met up with quite a few Cornell, Psi U alums and went out and about in Manhattan with them. It was a really fun night and great to see everyone. My buddy John provided great entertainment with his Nelly Furtado renditions.

Drove back to Princeton on Saturday to catch the second half of the swim meet. Dave won the 200 yd breast stroke, which he was actually not the clear favorite to win. Although Cornell was undefeated in dual meets this season they only placed 5th at the EISL meet overall. The way it was explained to me is that Cornell is a talented team but not a deep team.

I don’t want to use this as a medium to talk bad about other schools, but I have to throw this out there – I do not think Princeton is a fun place. Maybe we were just there on an “off” night or maybe we didn’t know enough people to show us the places where people hang out. We figured we would hang out for the night at Princeton and possibly take Dave and Colin (a pledge on the swim team) out for a bit. We rented a hotel room at the swim team’s hotel and then went downtown to see what was up. Not only were people walking around with backpacks on at 11 pm, they also told us that “No one has fun at Princeton.” Just had to get that off my chest. So, we canceled the hotel room (don’t ask) and drove back to the city. By the time we rolled in at 1 am it was just too late to do anything so we went to sleep.

Sunday saw us drive down to Morris Plains, NJ for brunch with our buddy Dan’s family. Another recent alum, Rick, was in the area and stopped by as well. Eggs Benedict is delicious…

I don’t have any crazy stories to tell about this past weekend – it was pretty typical as far as Cornell goes.

On Thursday Psi U had a “highlighter party,” which consisted of everyone wearing brand new white tee shirts, carrying around highlighters, and writing on other people all under black lights (which emphasize the glowing effect.) It seemed like a pretty cool idea, I have seen variations in the past including a “paint party” where people actually throw sponges dipped in paint at each other. I don’t think a paint party would fly in our nicely renovated barroom. Anyways, I had to wake up early the next morning so I don’t even know how it ended up going.

Friday was a strawberries party with Ange’s sorority, which is always a ton of fun. There are a bunch of platters of nice chocolate dipped strawberries, etc. We hang out quite a bit with her sorority so it is always a big draw – one of the few parties that the older girls (juniors, seniors) will attend. Typically it takes place earlier in the semester but either way it was a fun time.

Saturday I just sort of chilled out. I went over to Psi U for a bit and played a little ping pong. Nothing crazy – I knew I was going to wake up early on Sunday and get some work done. On Sunday I met with my group for HADM 429 (Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management) and we worked on a big assignment we have due this week. This was the second Sunday in a row we have worked on it; we spent five hours on it and it is still far from done. Crazy right? I guess this is only the beginning, I hear that for the final project we can expect to spend 1-2 weeks straight working on the project, pulling multiple all nighters along the way. Yep, this is my Senior year…

I just watched An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about global warming. Pretty intense, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who had not yet seen it – liberal, conservative or somewhere in the middle and confused (like me.)

Here is a shot of our barroom