In between massive projects and papers and prelims, I try to keep at least a loose grip on my sanity by setting aside time to absorb all of the grown-up delights Ithaca has to offer. When you’re sitting in front of a computer for hours on end fielding emails, trying to finish papers and getting Blackboard to work correctly so you can find some lecture notes that may be of use to you on tomorrow’s prelim… well, your view of reality gets a little bit distorted. Or you forget how to have actual conversations with other human beings. And sometimes you even forget that other human beings exist at all (except the ones who exist solely to give you crappy grades).

Now, there is a certain camp that believes that you are in college only to get an education and every moment not spent studying is essentially a waste of your precious time and resources and opportunities. I’m sure they’re getting better grades than me. But I probably hate my life a lot less and I don’t have a paragraph of ink from my biochem book imprinted on my forehead from when I fell asleep studying and got all sweaty from a nightmare I had about getting a bad grade. Just saying. (Sidenote: I am slowly but surely noticing that I use this space to compare my own achievements to those of my peers a lot. I guess I will let that speak for itself about the competitive climate at a place where everyone is really smart and driven and awesome. It happens at any good school, not just this one.)

Anyway! With finals coming up and all that stuff, I feel it is incredibly important to maintain some characteristics resembling those of a human being with thoughts and feelings and emotions and smiles (and not just a robot-ish thing whose only working functions are memorizing and downing gallons of caffeine in front of the beautiful blue glow of a Mac). Some ideas:

1. Cayuga Wine Trail. Mostly within in hour of Ithaca, more than a dozen wineries are situated along the Cayuga Wine Trail. Most of them will do tastings for $2.00-$3.00 per person (you get to taste 8-12 wines depending on the winery) and it’s a great opportunity to experience some of the best wines in the Finger Lakes region. Go on a wine tour– visit 3 or 4 wineries in a single day (with a sober driver, obvi). A group of senior girls from CIVR (tour guides) went on a wine tour last Saturday and had a FABULOUS time. In the last few years, wineries have really cracked down on student groups because a lot of college students would just go on wine tours to get drunk and ridiculous, but if you assure the wineries that you’re just going to appreciate the wine and not for a rowdy run-around-the-vineyards-and-pee-in-the-lakes sort of day, you should be good to go. (My favorite wineries are Hosmer and Thirsty Owl).

Beautiful tourguide girls (and Brian) at Thirsty Owl. (Fabulous photo credit: Mo Samanta)

2. Dancing. No, but seriously. Go out dancing. You can’t possibly make a fool of yourself because the skill level of dancers in Ithaca is awesomely terrible (and I guarantee you that if I’m anywhere nearby, I’ll make you look like Justin Timberlake). If you’re over 21, hit up Level B or Pixel in Collegetown for dancing any night of the week (they’re almost nightclubs! Almost!). If you’re not legal, stop by a good old fashioned frat party and go dance in the basement. Sorority/fraternity formals are always fun, too. Even more fun if you show up looking ridiculous:

3. Hang out with your friends. They’re really nice. Just go out for dinner or something.

4. Coffee in the Commons. Sometimes it just helps to get off-campus and go somewhere where you don’t see everyone around you studying and psyching you out. I love Juna’s for coffee… and if you’re feeling really adventurous, check out the Mate Factor and get a cup of Yerba Mate from the, um, colorful staff.

I wish we could just focus on our senior year and not worry about post-graduation just yet. And, uh, I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m the only senior hotelie that feels this way.

And that’s probably because most of the hotelies in the class of 2008 have job offers by now!

I’m in a bit of a unique situation, I guess. I am taking a slightly alternative route through the Hotel Administration program (i.e. I don’t want to work in operations, finance, real estate or F&B) and have figured out what I want to do, but it’s not going to be as easy for me to get to where I want to be as it might be for, say, someone who wants to go into Hilton’s management training program.

That’s not to say that they haven’t worked their asses off– because believe me, they have– but they’ve got recruiters coming to campus and interviews between classes and they are wholly engrossed in the whole on-campus recruitment process. For them, this is a scary-exciting time and their futures are starting to take shape as they fly all over the country for second-round interviews and stuff. As these job offers are coming in, they’re moving closer to the “exciting” and away from the “scary.”

Right now, for me, it’s all scary. I have a bunch of different routes I can take– grad school, taking a year off, looking for entry-level editorial jobs…. right now I’m sort of considering making myself an internet celebrity overnight by finding a hot guy on the subway and making a website about him. I know this kind of thing happens to everyone their senior year and my situation is certainly not novel or particularly unfortunate, but the whole environment in the Hotel School is a bit different in that the vast majority of students graduate with more than one job offer.

And the talk of job offers and acceptances is everywhere. It’s at school; it’s at my apartment when I come home. I usually reply to people’s questions about my plans for next year with some variation on, “well, I’m not selling my soul to The Man for a huge salary like you are, that’s for damn sure” but I’m going to be honest here:

When a friend of mine told me he has just signed his offer and was going to be working for Goldman-Sachs, I found myself having the same reaction as everyone else: “oooooh, woooow…” Like, genuinely in awe. Why? I don’t care about banks. I don’t envy him. I never want to work for one of them and be just another suit among thousands of Ivy League grads. Or do I?

The truth is, I’m kind of jealous. When I tell people I’m following my dreams and wanting to do a bunch of stuff they’ve never heard of, I have to go into a spiel explaining what I want to do and why I think it’s cool even though I’ll be eating Ramen Noodles for a few years. But when someone throws out that they got an offer from Lehman, Goldman, UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns– THEY never have to explain anything. People are just impressed. Wow. A bank. A Black Card. An expense account. A Blackberry. 16 hour days. AWESOME.

So yeah. I kind of am jealous of you right now. Maybe I won’t be jealous when I’m in love with what I do and am proud of the path I took to get there while your butt has molded to your chair and you’re pasty and going blind from never looking away from your Excel spreadsheet, but right now, I’d kill to be in your shoes.

Feel free to call me out next time I make fun of you for “selling your soul to The Man.” Also, congratulations to all my friends on your offers. I brag about you to my friends in Arts & Sciences.

This weekend, my Casinos class had a field trip to Atlantic City. I know, I know. Mandatory field trip to a bunch of casinos– you can just get all your hotelie jokes out of the way now.

So a couple of my friends and I drove up to Atlantic City on Thursday night and settled into our suite at the Borgata (which we got for an awesome rate, thank you Hotel School!)

Friday was kind of a big deal. We visited three different AC properties and talked to some bigwigs at each one– they all had presentations prepared for us and spoke about the Atlantic City market and, you know, explained what it’s like to run a casino. I still absolutely cannot fathom working at a property that has 4000 employees or more than, like, 150 rooms… but those 1000-room places operate like machines. Machines that make a ridiculous amount of money.

We spoke to the Borgata folks first and then headed over to the Trump Taj Mahal (which is sort of what I think of when I think of Atlantic City) and ended the day at Caesar’s. I tried to gamble a little bit on Saturday night, but I lost five dollars and did not enjoy it in the least. These days, all the machines print out little tickets instead of dispensing a bunch of coins when you win and it totally takes the fun out of it for me, you know? You’re supposed to be able to grab handfuls of dirty coins when you win something on a slot machine and feel like you’ve just won a fortune. Instead of a ton of coins, you get a little ticket that says you’ve just won $2.25. Yes. Not awesome.

Conclusions: I don’t want to work in a casino ever, I dig the Borgata (new! sleek! gorgeous!), and gambling is not kind to me. And now I have to go write a paper about it.