Cornell and Beyond

the word on Colbert

Yesterday night I got to see Stephen Colbert, who came to Cornell during First Year Family Weekend.

I thought I’d share some of the highlights of his show with you:

• The T-shirt cannon
• The T-shirt cannon used in taser fashion against the Big Red Bear, who actually made a surprise appearance in the middle of the show. (See post below for picture of the Big Red Bear.) Apparently the Big Red Bear gets around campus quite a bit.
• His plans as future President. Including the “freedom” dome that America should have immigrants build over America to help stop more immigrants from entering the country.
• The token 10 minute schpeal on the terrible Ithaca weather. With Jon Stewart, Ithaca was a “frozen hellscape.” Colbert simply said that he was happy he made it before winter set in here, as everyone actually wintering in Ithaca would be found frozen in the gorges come spring, “clutching 4.0’s.”
• His jab against the online generation and the power of blogging. Hey, I wouldn’t be blogging about Colbert unless I had gotten my ticket from my blogging superiors. How ironic.
• His border-line harassment of the poor sweet sign language translator. Let’s just say he made her sign some very, very inappropriate things.
• The Johnson School (MBA!) student in the Halloween costume (that’s all I’ll say about it) in the Q&A session. I wish I had a picture of this.
• When he told us that he had added “the blue power ranger” onto the list of Cornell alumni on Wikipedia. I’ll be honest, I just checked. I think he was bluffing.

I think that sums up the highlights. Overall, a good show. I guess I should start watching the Colbert Report now.

Two courses diverged in a university, and I taught myself and wasn’t taught, and that has made all the difference

As a prospective student, you are probably far removed from course selection at Cornell. However, as a Bio major here, you will eventually confront, almost immediately, the quandary of “to auto-tutorial” or “not to auto-tutorial.” Cornell has auto-tutorial Intro Bio, auto-tutorial Physics, and auto-tutorial Biochem all open to Bio majors. Only having taken the last one, I can’t speak about auto-tutorial classes in general, but I can give my 2 cents on Biochemistry 330, an auto-tutorial I took last year and am currently TAing for. (Auto-tutorial just means you are primarily teaching yourself rather than from lectures.)

Since I am TAing for it currently, you might have guessed I enjoyed it and am most almost certainly biased in favor of it. Unabashedly I will admit that in fact I am quite partial to the class, but I will enumerate my reasons in a succinct and convincing argument.

• You do all of your Biochemistry in one semester instead of 2. Yes, this means auto-tutorial is probably more work in that one semester, but I don’t think it is in anyway overwhelming. And how much easier does this make it on you if you want to study abroad?! A lot! I can tell you that for sure because I took auto-tutorial in the first place for that explicit reason.
• You don’t need to cram as much. This is because there are quizzes that you must keep up every week on the units. You must pass the quizzes, but they are not the critical factor in your grade. Thus, you keep up with your studying week after week, making it much easier come prelim time.
• You actually learn the material, both because of the above and because you are teaching yourself. If you want to learn a concept, nobody is going to spoon-feed it to you. You need to get out there, ask questions, and be prepared to ask more. Active learning! Woo!
• You learn just as much from your peers as the professor.

Anyway, I think those are all great reasons to consider BioBM 330. Even if as a high school student you are more worried about college applications than course choices for your third year IN college, don’t fret. Just something to ponder.

Wow. And this game doesn’t even count?

I have finally experienced the phenomenon that is Lynah.

Lynah Rink is home to our men’s ice hockey team. Yes, we seem to have a pretty good team. But even more exciting is the fan base.

I have never in my life been more enthusiastic at a sporting event. Granted my sporting event exposure has been limited to a baseball game and high school football games, but this puts all of those to shame.

How can I describe the Lynah Faithful? Zealous? Enthusiastic? Crazy? Probably all of the above. The rink has numerous chants memorized, which is a problem since I’m in the first row. It makes it very difficult to learn the chants and motions when you can’t see other people doing it. (The students section is across from the Ithaca seating section, where things are a little more civilized.)

The chants ranged from the ever so creative “UGLY” to more complicated, profound heckling. It’s all in good sport though, particularly compared to some of the roughhousing that occurs on the ice. After one particularly nasty brawl, there were 4 players in the opponents’ penalty box at once. Geez!

On another note, I’ve got to admit, these players are skilled! The moves that sometimes get made can be described most aptly as elegant, which is all the more impressive if you consider the testosterone fueled nature of the sport. I think hockey may have just sky-rocketed to the top of my list of favorite sports. How much of it was our amazing hockey team versus the amazing and slightly ridiculous fans, I can’t be sure. I do know that if this was an exhibition game, I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s going to be like once the games start to actually count!

Here is a picture of the big red bear who came out with his big red bear buddy during half time. Oh big red bears, you guys are great. (Apparently you can join an actual Cornell club, where the members rotate as the mascot during campus events. Hmm, perhaps I need to start looking at more extracurriculars.) And below that is just a picture of the clock tower during a beautiful sunset. I’m no resident staff photographer, but I thought you might enjoy a glimpse of Cornell at its best.

my longest fall break ever, or, travel adventures at the airport

Hello blogosphere! I’ve missed you! I’ve been gone for a long whiles, and here’s why:

Fall Break is supposed to be Saturday through Wednesday, but this year I managed to elongate it by quite a bit. First, I left early, Friday morning to be exact. This is because I wanted to spend a little bit of time at home, and I had to leave on Sunday for my first interview (Eek, right? I’m actually going to refrain from going into any specifics on this front for a while, for anonymity purposes =) )

Anyway, I was supposed to fly back home Tuesday night, and then drive back to Ithaca. Unfortunately, due to bad weather at an unnamed airport, an unnamed airline cancelled my flight. (Double eek!) So I called their hotline to reschedule my flight for the next morning. After most of the people had left the terminal, someone miraculously asked me which flight I was going on the next day. When I said “515 AM” they quickly assured me that this was not the case, as the 515 AM flight has also been cancelled. (Triple eek!) Luckily, the attendant was kind enough to rebook me immediately for the next available flight out.

Anyway, as this point I decided to just sleep in the airport. A very kind security guard gave me airplane snacks and water, and the airline had left some pillows and blankets out from the plane for stranded passengers like myself.

I actually found, with the help of my trusty security guard friend, a comfy little bench snuggled away in the customer service section. The next morning, I was good to go if a bit tired. Back at home, I fell asleep at 6 PM that day and didn’t get up until 4 AM the next morning to drive back to the good ole 607.

So I arrived Thursday afternoon, made it to one class and felt very out of sorts. Friday felt like a Monday because it was the first time I was walking to campus in the morning in over a week. Anyway, I found out when I got back I have a Wines Prelim this week! (Quadruple eek!) Which is why I am off now, to study the subtle differences between red and white wine viniculture!

hockey rumble in the Cornell jungle, Part II

Ready for Part 2? Good, because I need a break from studying Evolution. (Lamarck, what were you thinking?!)

Saturday morning I was a team leader for Tradition’s Day of Service. We basically walked around Collegetown picking up trash off the sidewalks. It was a beautiful day out, and I lapped it up because I knew inside that for the rest of the day I would be sitting tight in the Ramin Room in Bartels.

Indeed that’s in fact what I did from 2PM – 9PM that day. I can’t say it was that stressful, as I napped for the first 2 hours of my shift. Then we watched a couple of episodes of The Office on a friends laptop, had some ice cream from the concession stand oh-so-conveniently set up in the Ramin Room corner, and made a quick run to CTB for dinner. There was quite the variety of things to do, as people had everything from video game systems to dogs to play with.

The one line check I participated in was a bit anticlimactic. We just went up to the guy and gave him our sheets (all 17 of them) and he checked them off. Then back to more sitting around. I was almost expecting a quiz on the hockey teams record, but I was not subjected to such a task.

They started seat selection early and it turned out our numbers, around 720, were not that bad at all. We got the first 3 rows of Section E, which is center ice. We’re also right by the bench which means nose plugs might be needed, but I’m happy because we’ll be able to high five the hockey players through the glass. (Or perhaps I’ll high five imaginary hockey players through the glass as they probably have better things to do during the game.)

In the end, we got out at 9. Besides smelling a little too much like the floor of the Ramin Room and being completely unproductive for a whole day, the process went quite smoothly. To be honest, it can be harder to get a computer in Olin Library than to get Cornell hockey tickets. (Which should only underscore how hard it is to get a computer in Olin sometimes. Lots of silent sidling and creepy hovering is required. Whereas Cornell hockey just requires a little luck, patience and willingness to spend the night curled up on turf. Ok, on second thought, maybe hockey tickets are harder to get.)

But as usual, I digress. To sum up: Hooray for Cornell Hockey!