I applied to be a tour guide freshman year. One of the questions that they asked was “What are your goals over the next four years and how will you accomplish them?” My witty, yet highly under-appreciated, answer was to not die. I will accomplish this by wearing a scarf to not catch hypothermia, studying so my mom doesn’t choose to murder me for my grades, and cutting my food so as to not choke. Needless to say, I had to find other sources of employment…

In actuality, I have two goals at Cornell: to have a sandwich named after me at either the Hot Truck or CTB, and to become “that cowbell guy”. My biggest problem with the sandwich is that I haven’t created anything so spectacular that everyone else wants to order it. So my name won’t forever be eternalized on the chalk board at CTB. Oh well…

As for being “that cowbell guy”, well hopefully, I’m on my way. For those that don’t know, the Cowbell Guy is a fabled tradition here at Cornell. He shows up to the hockey games, virtually every hockey game, with a cow bell.  A tradition started in 1972, it is played halfway through the 2nd period and again halfway through the 3rd. It has become a sort of lineage, with the cowbell passed down from die-hard fan to die-hard fan. My quest, to be come that guy.

When I came to college, my older cousin said “There is only one piece of advice I will give you: there are 3 S-es in college– sleep, social, and studying. Now pick two.”

Well this week, I could only pick one. I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t quite as much fun as I hoped.

Today is the Sabbath. The day of rest, the holiest of holy. So in theory, my 2 prelims, 2 papers, 2 interviews and 1 speech should all be done right? Wrong.

Thanksgiving is so close, I can almost taste the turkey. That assumes  I make it there.

The Hokey Pokey, is that really what it is all about?

For those of you that don’t know, Halloween is almost every College kid’s 4th favorite holiday. It is only preceded by Christmas (free stuff), Homecoming (especially if you’re a football school), and Slope Day (or whatever your equivalent is). Halloween provides us a poor excuse to dress up slutty, funny, cleverly, or whatever and hide yourself as you drink your face off. Tri-Delt Crush party being held at 5:45 this year did nothing to help that.

Halloween has been totally ruined for me though due to the fact that it is no longer socially acceptable to go trick-or-treating. I used to think that this was one of the coolest holidays EVER. You went door-to-door and demanded candy from strangers. And if they didn’t have any, you would TP their house later. How sweet is that??

Freshman year, I decided to break down barriers. I went trick-or-treating. Alone. This in itself was depressing. It was made worse by the fact that I went to my Professor’s house. And I hit rock-bottom when the people across the street from my Professor (I had emailed him to warn that I was coming…) told me that this “shenanigan” was not okay. I never wanted to grow up damnit!

After boycotting Halloween last year, I tried again this year. Thursday night saw me at a sailing party dressed as Scooby Doo with the roles of Shaggy and Freddie played by my friends. Friday brought a Masquerade ball at my house with dates (my date was pretty awesome. This was the first time I had asked a girl to a college event. I don’t want to admit that but, it will be a post for another time. Maybe.) And Saturday, Charlie Brown was spotted at a Sorority Crush Party and a College Town Apartment Extravaganza.

Needless to say, I am exhausted and have decided to boycott Halloween again, forever. It is far too much work, and there is not enough free candy. Also, I was kicked out of the College Town apartment “for life” because my humor is not as appreciated as I think it should be. So if you’re  reading this at Collegetown Plaza, I apologize…

I won’t lie, as a kid I seriously thought I could be the next Wayne Gretzky. And the next David Beckham. And in my spare time, I was going to replace Dennis Conner (a world famous sailor).

I will continue to tell the truth; I never really had much of a shot at any of these. I could maybe play D3 soccer. College Hockey would be a joke, and sailing…well I can’t quite afford a boat.

But I miss the competition so much. I know I wrote about IM Hockey a week ago, but this is a different line of thought. I’m not repeating myself, so relax and keep reading.

I got to do something incredible today. I played soccer under the lights at Schoellkopf field. One of my brothers is a varsity soccer player and was preparing for a big game on a “kinda-like-turf field” as he described it. Thus leads me to the point of my article. There is such a weird dichotomy between being an athlete and being a normal student. The athletes are everywhere: I live across from a decathlete, I lived next to a lightweight rower, I had breakfast with a heavyweight rower this morning, I have a crush on a soccer player, and so on…pardon my crudeness, but I would give up my left nut in order to be an athlete again. I lied, both nuts.

That is where the dichotomy lies. I say that I would sacrifice my manhood, but that means travel almost every weekend. That means missing date night this Friday like the brother who I played with today is. Sure it means free cleats and Gatorade, but also means 7 A.M. practices. Followed by 7 P.M. practices. Now try to have an active social life while enjoying the rigorous academic curriculum f Cornell. I would probably ask for my nuts back in three weeks. Until then, I’ll just bitch and moan about how badly I want to be a varsity athlete…

If any coach reads this, I’ll volunteer for one game, or race, or match by the way…

I feel like I start a lot of my posts with the lines “One of the greatest things about Cornell is…”

Well one of the greatest thing about Cornell is that there are so many programs that are widely recognized for being so wildly impressive. For example, we have a world renown Hotel School. Or, I am in the number one Industrial and Labor Relations program IN THE WORLD (ignore that it is one of three ILR programs in the world for a second, and revel in the fact that I am a member of the best of the best ILR students in the world…). And I haven’t even started talking about our Engineering programs…

Let me enlighten you about life on the hill: Hotelies, ILR-ies, students in CALS, architects, gov majors, design and “Policy and Management” students, actually pretty much everyone else on this campus takes heat for “how easy their school is” from the engineers.

Both of my roommates have been engineers. So are most of my friends. And all I ever hear is about how easy MY life is because I don’t have to sweat over, like, 18 different problem sets tonight. Or how they wish they only had 250 pages to read. So I decided, you know what, I’ll go to an engineering class and see how it really is…

I went to ENGRD 2020–The Mechanics of Solids, and I decided that I will never ever take shit from my friends again. I learned a few things:

1. The people in the front three rows must go to fists in order to get those seats. In a huge lecture hall, there wasn’t room to sneeze in those first three rows. There was even someone who had brought out a folding chair…
2. The further back you go, the more empty seats, and the less people pay attention. The guy next to me came solely to download music.
3. We just went over the prelim that they were going to have that night, but the notes I took for that class were so different then my notes for my labor history class. There were lots of pretty pictures of wheels and arrows and stuff. It was like art class instead of the short novella I have to write in Labor History every week…
4. The reason I refuse to take any shit from my friends is because of the other picture. That’s right, those are my three friends, all playing on their iPhones. They paid ZERO attention, they just played the whole time!

In one of my classes last semester, we learned about how the media tends to over-hype some events, but then let’s the events “disappear” essentially. For example: Bird flu. Remember how 1 out of 3 of us was supposed to die because of it? Too bad it never made a Human-to-Human jump. Or how Anthrax was supposed to get us all too? Yea, there were what, 5 0r 6 actual cases? Whoops. The media is a manipulating and conniving group that is out to ruin the world, but then totally drops the subject so that we forget it happened.

Something similar happened when I turned to the back page of the Daily Sun on Tuesday September 1, 2009. I saw John Forman of the Sun staff staring up at me with the worst news I ave heard all year. “Intramural Hockey Axed in Budget Cut”. This was the media killing us again. But this time, I refuse to let it die. As a new member of the media, I demand my voice is heard. From up on the hill, I will yell to students, new, young, prospective, and old:

WE WANT HOCKEY BACK

Ithaca is a hockey haven. In the winter, there is almost nothing else to do! This was the biggest intramural sport. Not only were the fraternities and sororities cut-throat in the Fall, but the sailing team, engineering grad students, and all sorts of other groups posted strong teams in the Spring. Never mind the crappy reffing, the dull rental skates, nor the goalies that couldn’t save a beachball. No matter what, people were smiling, laughing, and active.

Cornell, like the rest of the world, had to tighten the belt during the recession. That means salaries were frozen, retirements incentivized, and departments restructured. But for some reason, the University continues to build buildings that they do not have all of the funding for and take away from the overall student life experience. Forman quoted Interim Intramural Director, Jeremy Pickard, in his article as saying that we will probably not see IM hockey again until after we graduate. But Milstein Hall, the huge project that has shut down University Ave and has yet to secure the appropriate funding, is scheduled to be completed in Fall of 2011. Hockey “likely” wont be back before then, even though it costs probably a tenth of the massive debt that will be incurred on the building.

What further irks me is that there are classes in places like the Hotel School where there are 8 or 9 PAID TAs for an 80 person class, but we cannot have hockey. (Update: Auto-Tutorial Physics TAs are paid $30/hr to merely show up to a computer lab. First of all, I need that job, second of all, THAT HAS TO BE A JOKE). Cornell hasn’t cut the grass on half of the slope this year, and hockey, Cornell’s staple, falls into that category. I will volunteer my referee abilities (AND I am a certified ref. Unlike some of those guys…that’s right Murray. I’m calling you out…). I’ll drive the Zamboni for free. And sharpen skates. And walk the streets with a tin can. Whatever we need to do, just hockey, come back!

This past weekend was homecoming.

What I have learned over the past two and a half years is that unless you are a big football school or know people that are coming back for the weekend, Homecoming really isn’t all that big of a deal.

I will never bash our football team as I have a bunch of friends on the team and have only missed one game (why I have only missed one, I am not quite sure though…)  but in order to really really appreciate homecoming, there needs to be an epic game. Like the Notre Dame vs USC travesty this weekend. Or the Purdue smack-down in Ohio. Or the Red-River showdown. Yea, any of those could work, but alas, we are a hockey school…

The other caveat was knowing “distinguished alumni” that come back to visit. As a freshman, I only knew one girl that had lived in my town, which meant I got a free dinner one night. (Best part about alumni coming back: the free meals. I mean their company…). Last year, as a sophomore in a fraternity, I at least knew a couple of people. This year, there were so many people to choose from! Friday night, I went for late night pizza and ran into two of my favorite former sailing team members. Saturday morning while walking to the football game, I got to walk with a former brother. The tailgate I had planned to be at for only five minutes lasted for two hours because of all the people that  saw.

What our homecoming lacked in football, we certainly made up for with our alumni support. It was awesome to be able to see all of these people in person. I even got to reconnect with some current students that have been “too busy”. Like fellow blogger, and brother, Tim Liddell, who was supposed to write a great combination piece with me for the website. Too bad he choose to go back to New York before talking about it with me. Jerk.

October has hit Ithaca, which means a few things:

a) Ithaca is B-E-A-Utiful, the trees are all on fire with vibrant reds and yellows and oranges and soon there will be plenty of leaf piles to jump into

b)it is getting ex-girlfriend cold.

Being from Chicago, the weather never really bothers me. Only twice in my Cornell career has the thermometer here been lower then at home. (Chicago is actually too cold to snow most of the time. We have a week in January of single digit days, and then you add wind…) But since home is an 11-hour drive, I don’t get to return as often as I would like and thus, I store my winter clothes here in Ithaca.

Best feeling ever is unpacking your coats and finding $80 cash in the pockets. It’s the little perks of being a poor college kid…if you can find me, dinner is on me tonight.

I may have done something incredibly dumb last week. Or maybe one of the most incredible things I have ever done. The verdict is still out.

I bought a car.

Call it a status symbol. Call it a chick magnet. Call it a piece of crap that will likely break down in the middle of college-town (as my “best friend” constantly tells me). Call it whatever the hell you want, but I have a car.

1993. Nissan. Pathfinder. 101,000 miles. I still need to name her and I won’t tell you what I paid for it, but I will tell you that I know that people in Collegetown are paying 1.5x the value of my car for their parking spot.

I do have to promise myself to try to drive it as little as possible because gas and maintenance are going to pile up SO quick…This is the single largest purchase I have ever made in my life. That is so belittling and my bank account is weeping blood right now. Probably the single largest responsibility I have ever taken on too. But really, it feels so cool!