I’ve got some dirt! Well, kind of. Real dirt– not the ferocious anonymous message board kind.

Sidenote: there is a new website gaining popularity on campus that seems to have no shortage of bitchy gossip and rantings (turns out, the idea of Mean Girls meets Gossip Girl is far more kickass in theory than in practice) and I do not endorse it. As we all learned in junior high school, rumors are hilarious and fun until you find yourself on the other side of them… thanks for the shoutouts, though, anonymous disgruntled Big Red boys and girls! You make the rest of your peers proud to call ourselves Ivy Leaguers!

Whatever, I guess no publicity is bad publicity, right? Anyway…
So, on Friday, a bunch of Cornell bigwigs got together in NYC and announced that the Far Above Campaign has hit the $2 billion mark and the Great Fundraising Powers That Be are halfway to their goal of $4 billion. More on that in a hot second.

Tonight was the kickoff reception for the 2008 Senior Class Campaign, the University’s effort to encourage seniors to start thinking about donating a bit of money (as low as $5.00– I can chill with that; I spent more than that on my Statler salad today) and stay financially and socially involved with Cornell for the next 50-some years. Invited to the reception were a handful of “campus leaders” (I was flattered!) and we had a good hour or so to mingle with the Skortonator himself. He gave us a quickie speech during which he admitted that his son, a class of ‘08er at a West Coast school, still had no idea what he was going to be doing post-graduation. “It’s January! He still has no idea! Somehow I feel a lot better confessing this to you all,” he said. Somehow I felt it appropriate to keep my mouth shut about my lack of post-grad plans– I get enough looks of “get your life together immediately” from my Dad; I don’t know if I really need one from the president of our fine institution.

Anyway, hey seniors: give some money. Next week, buy your morning coffee from CTB instead of the ‘Bucks and you’ll probably accumulate $10.00 over the course of a few days anyway. That’s $10.00 for Cornell! Yay!

Oh, right. The news. So, due in part to the massive amount of money raised by the Far Above campaign, Skorton told us tonight that some big, “robust” changes were being made to Cornell’s financial aid program. Details are going to be released to the Sun in the next 48 hours. Getting in sync with the other Ivies, perhaps? Hmmm…

Well, I seem to have contracted something close to the ebola virus during rush, and whatever this thing is– which is probably just the flu, really– has been traveling through the Greek system since recruitment started. And so now I’m mostly bed-ridden during the first week of classes; lord knows venturing out into the deathly cold to make it to all the classes I need to show up to this week (all) is not helping.

So, classes. I’m going to graduate, people. I sat down with the hotel school registrar and confirmed that as long as I pass all 19 of the credits I’m taking this semester, I’m going to get outta here on time. Awesome.

And: the schedule. Here’s what we’re looking at.

• Derrida and the Philosophy of Hospitality. So far, 5 students and 2 professors and one other undergrad. And lots of talking.
• New Media and Society. This class is in the Ag school and I almost got lost getting there, but the trek was worth it. On the syllabus is Wikipedia, Youtube, blogging, online journalism, and pretty much all the crap I’m dorkily into. Cool professor, too.
• Desire. Is exactly what you think it is. The famous “porn 101″ class… which is less about porn and more about sexuality in literature and film.
• Writing for New Media. Yeah, I figured it was high time I actually took a class on how to write a blog.
• Meditation. For my PE credit. Yes, yes.
• Finance, round 2: I failed it the first time around, and got off to an awesome start when I fell asleep during the first lecture on Monday. I have enlisted the help of one of my KD sisters to sit next to me and keep me awake, so hopefully I can make it through this time.

Last night, I attempted to take a class called Modernist Fiction, a 600-level English class that seemed up my alley. Verdict? No, no, no. My first clue that I had ventured far, far from the warm embrace of Statler was that nobody spoke to each other or smiled before class started, but I remained optimistic… unfortunately, things only went downhill from there. It was a night class (strike one), there was only one other undergrad in there (strike two), and I stuck out like a bloody, mutilated beyond-sore thumb because I was blonde, wearing makeup, sorority letters, and glasses with rhinestones on them. I very literally felt like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, except 200 times less intelligent seeing as I couldn’t understand approximately 95% of the words that came out of these grad students’ mouths. Honestly, why do you have to say “Adam, you are correct within an order of magnitude” when you can just say, “dude, you’re wrong”? Is this a grad student thing or a brilliant-minds thing?

Anyway, my point here? The scene closely resembled one of those nightmares I had as a pre-frosh headed to Cornell: I’m in a class seated around a dark wooden table, ivy crawling up the windows, with a bunch of scholarly-looking students spouting off intelligent commentary and criticism and I feel like the dumbest person in the room by far.

I went home and dropped the class immediately, grateful for having been able to spend my last 7 semesters smiling in the less-stuffy environment of the hotel school. For real.

Other Updates! Job: none. Boyfriend: none. Rush: done. Weather: cold. That’s all that’s really important right now; wish me luck…