Monday night may be football night in most of the dorms on North campus, but here in Balch, it’s Gossip Girl night. In the final moments before 8:00, the unit four lounge begins to fill as girls take their places on the chairs and couches. Around 7:57 someone turns the TV on, muting it so we don’t have to listen to the end of Dr. Phil. As soon as the show starts everyone gets quiet, and we settle in for an hour of girly fun. Each commercial break is greeted by an outburst of chatter as we discuss the latest developments; of course anyone who talks during the show is immediately shushed by everyone else. We all have a lot of work, and with prelim season just beginning, stress levels are generally pretty high, but every monday for an hour we leave our work in our rooms (well, some of us bring it with us, but it never gets done) and we take a much needed break.

I was bored between classes the other day, so I decided to do some exploration of Willard Straight Hall. The building looks pretty big from the outside, and I had only ever visited Cornell Cinema, Oakenshields, and the Ivy Room, so the rest of the building was a mystery to me. I started by going downstairs, but all I really found there were locked doors and places I had already been. Upstairs, however, remained a mystery, so up I went.

The first fun new room I found (and it’s also my favorite) was the Fifth Floor Lounge. It’s half dance studio (complete with a barre, polished wood floor and mirrored wall) and half study/lounge, with comfy chairs, ottomans (ottomen?), desks and thick rugs. One of the walls is all windows looking out over Ho Plaza, the walls are lined with sconces, and chandeliers hang from the ceiling. I think that’s my new favorite study room.

There are also a couple rooms the next floor up, called lofts, that I really liked. My favorite feels a bit like an attic, with a slanted ceiling, old leather chairs, a long table and a chalkboard. The lights are over-sized bare bulbs hanging from the beams of the ceiling, giving the whole room a warm, lofty feel. The other two lofts don’t have quite as much personality, though they’re perfectly nice.

There were a couple mystery rooms with enticing names, like the “Guest Suite” and the “Shower Room” but their doors were locked, so I couldn’t go in. Eventually my exploration was cut short by a need to get to class, but now I know where I’ll be doing a lot of my studying this year.

I like to think I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to bugs. I’m not usually one of those girls who screams every time she sees a little spider, but I have to say, when they’re large, and there’s a lot of them, and they’re in my room…then I tend to object.

Apparently this is the season when spiders try to come inside for the winter, as my room mate and I discovered last night. Because Balch is a pretty old building, there’s no air conditioning, so it can get pretty hot in here. That’s not a huge problem, because we can just open our windows and turn a fan on, but it turns out our screens don’t work too well. And that’s how the spiders get in.

My room mate, Nancy, doesn’t like spiders. In fact, she freezes at the sight of them, so when we found several on the walls by the window (pretty close to her bed) she got upset. Most of them were small, but one was really big, about the size of a dime with big thick legs, and that was when I stopped being able to handle it. Fortunately, Nancy knew a couple guys who would be more than willing to come rescue a couple distressed damsels, so she called them to come over.

When they got here, even they were a little hesitant when they saw the big guy. At this point Nancy had retreated to the hall, where she stood with her back to the wall, silently watching our eight-legged room mate. I stayed where I was (I knew there weren’t any spiders there, and I was unwilling to take my chances in a new location), and the boys, more sqeamish than they wanted to admit, tried to work out a plan to take care of the spider.

In the end, it took a couple tries with various shoes and books before they finally killed it. They did a sweep of the room, took care of a few little spiders, and left. It was a while before Nancy stopped shrieking everytime something touched her, but we finally got to bed, and I don’t think we’ve opened the windows since.

As I walked back to my dorm today, carrying a hefty bag of textbooks in my arms and trying not to think about the fact that I would end up reading nearly every page of them over the next semester, I chose instead to focus on the beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing this past week. As a local Ithacan, I can attest to the fact that we get a total of about ten days a year like this, so it’s important to savor every one.
Days like this make it easy to forget all my freshman problems. Looking out over North Campus as I write this, watching the late afternoon sun stretch Risley’s shadow towards my perch under the arches of Balch, I can forget all the little frustrations that seem to have made up my day. I got up earlier than I needed to this morning, so after breakfast I crawled back into bed, planning to take a short nap before my 11:15 Arabic lecture. Predictably, I slept until about 11:30, which resulted in a flurry of cursing and trying to figure out whether I should bother going late or not at all, before I remembered that there was a later section that I could go to instead. At this point I decided to do some reading for Psych 101, while I had some time to kill, but of course this turned into checking my email, checking Facebook, chatting online, and making myself a thousand To Do lists, so by the time I made my second attempt to go to class, I was running late again, and still hadn’t gotten anything done.
I got lost in the construction zone in front of Rockefeller for about five minutes, so I was late to class, which meant everyone watched me come in, and I had to sit in the back because the 12:20 section is apparently over-filled. Oops.
My next set of issues arose when I ambitiously decided to do some laundry. After I sorted my dirty laundry pile into three loads, I piled two into a basket, grabbed my wallet and psych textbook (still determined to get some reading done), and set out for the laundry room. After a bit of wandering, I found the elevator down to the basement (probably the single most questionable piece of machinery I have ever used) and stumbled across the laundry room. After carrying all my laundry around for the last ten or so minutes, I was pretty ready to start a couple loads, buy a candy bar from the vending machine, and settle down to work. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to ’start a couple loads’. The detergent was easy to find, but it took a while to locate where I was supposed to swipe my ID card. I did find it eventually, but I regret to report that I have not managed to make it work yet. Somehow, the card reader kept telling me I have no funds available, although I know that isn’t true…but I guess that’s a challenge for another day. For now, I think I’ll post this, and then head to Louie’s Lunch Truck for a late lunch before I try to find a bus that will take me downtown to run a few errands. And I’ll try to keep enjoying this beautiful weather as long as it lasts, and let it put me in the right mindset to face tomorrow’s mundane challenges. I’ll think about the long walks I get to take in the sun everyday, not the blisters on my heels from my sandals; I’ll think about the free food I get to have tonight, not the emptiness of my wallet; all the new stuff I get to learn, instead of the hours of reading that each class requires; and the new people I’m meeting every day, not the friends I won’t see for the next few months. So far, I think I’m doing ok, despite the piles of reading and laundry waiting for me in my room.