Hotelie-On-the-Go

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Well, well:  welcome back to the hills of Ithaca!  I’ve been looking forward to returning to my Cornell routine for some time now, and now that classes started a couple days ago, the fact that I’m a junior (and over halfway done with my college career…yikes!) has hit me like a punch in face.  The time goes by so quickly:  especially as an RA looking at all of the new freshmen moving in this past week, I feel like an ancient old geezer nostalgically looking back on my naive freshman escapades.  Bring on the dentures and seltzer water :/

Anyways, lots has happened since I sort of “signed off” for a while back in May.  Summer has come and gone, and I’d like to think that I came away from it with a few new nuggets of wisdom.

My Summer in a Nutshell: Over the summer, I worked for a real estate development company in Syracuse, New York, called Action Companies, Inc.  They mainly work to develop hotels and restaurants in the greater Syracuse area but are trying to branch out to other places nationally as well.  Definitely was a worthwhile experience as far as learning the ins and outs of a raw, unadulterated entrepreneurial business–and all the stress, sweat, and savvy that needs to be thrown head-first into it.  I did a lot of stuff relating to feasibility reports, budgeting, etc., which is kind of a fancy way of saying that Microsoft Excel and I became BFFs.

That being said, corporate life is much, much different from the rambunctious (and somewhat haphazard) college lifestyle that I know and love.  I had a tiny studio apartment near Syracuse University located in a house that looked like it had people throwing rocks at it for the past 100 years, and the only times I partied college-style was when I visited Cornell twice throughout the summer.  I missed the friends; I missed the mental and physical rigor of classes; and most of all, I missed the college debauchery that I’ve come to expect as a college student.

In other words, my overarching lesson from the summer was to live it up in college:  work and office life is just that–work.  Not that much fun.  But I think it’s funny how internships can lead you to truly appreciate the unique experiences that Cornell college life has to offer.

The Year Ahead: So I am verrrrrrrrry excited for this year.  First of all, I’m now an RA in the C/D quad for the Townhouses on north campus (which is comprised of first-year students) after being in CKB last year.  My townhouse is ginormous, and I feel like I don’t even have enough stuff to fill it out.  Good problem to have though, I guess

I will be writing for the Cornell Daily Sun sports section again, so look out for my articles!  My extracurriculars are really packin’ on heavy this year:  aside from The Sun and RA’ing (and my blog of course), I’ll also be the philanthropy chair for my fraternity (Llenroc woot woot!).

And finally (!!!), I was able to sign up for a research lab with Prof. Mikels in Human Ecology called The Emotion and Cognition Lab.  The lab studies decision-making and human cognitive function and how those faculties vary with age.  I’ve never been a Research Assistant before, and the lab studies go along nicely with my interests in marketing and psychology, so the lab work should be a nice sneak peek into what a life for me in grad school would be like.

Now that I’ve babbled and rambled for long enough, it’s time to do homework.  Icky, yes, but how I’ve missed it so.