Not to get too cheeseball or anything (remember, the collective emotional state of the Class of 2008 is a little bit nutjobesque right now due to the abrupt change in lifestyles and surroundings), but you know that old saying about Cornell being the “easiest Ivy to get into and the hardest one to graduate from”? I don’t think that refers to academics (although, given the Close Call of the Century that was my academic record, maybe that second part holds true for the curriculum).

See, I think it refers to the community and the people here. It was SO easy to make friends when we got here. Remarkably, I have, more or less, had the same core group of best friends — especially best girlfriends — since the 2nd day of freshman orientation. And leaving Cornell, because of the experience and because of them, was one of the most heartwrenching things I’ve ever gone through (hey, shut up, I’m only 21). Like the end of an 80’s movie, I’m going to put together a “where are they now” epilogue. ME FIRST:

• I ended up landing a FANTASTIC job. After all that searching and interviewing, I was hired as the Assistant Editor at HotelChatter, the hotel news/reviews web magazine where I interned last summer. After deciding to pursue writing, I was looking around at a lot of print magazines and some PR firms; but ultimately, I love and respect both the editor and publisher at HotelChatter and I know my writing style fits in well there. There are tons of exciting things happening with them, and I could not have come on board at a more perfect time — it’s been a great experience so far. Plus, I mean, hotel reviews, a flexible schedule, 4-5 published articles a day and cool bosses? Who could ask for more? I’m working from home right now and I’m going to be moving to NYC on August 1st. I’m also working on a few freelance writing projects, small and large
• Brett is moving to Las Vegas; since the day I met her, she has talked endlessly about her dream of one day running a Vegas casino — and now she’s going into the leadership training program at the Wynn Las Vegas.
• Jordan is heading to NYC to work at Sirius Satellite Radio, a bit of a change from his original dream of being a meteorologist. But while at Cornell, he became the general manager of the local Ithaca radio station and, well, he found his calling.
• Ashley graduated Phi Beta Kappa and is heading to UC Berkeley to pursue her PhD in Performance Studies.
• Danielle has a million different options and has been traveling (like we all should have been doing) before she chooses one.
• Nick is heading to an NY TV station to be a weatherman!
• Tim is going to Boston to work in the management training program at his favorite hotel.
• Ian is off to DC to work for a hotel brokerage, which probably allows him to utilize his skills as the world’s best BSer.

I will tell anyone who is worried about Cornell’s size this much: these people, over the last 4 years, became my second family. My girlfriends and I fought like sisters, but together we weathered the various storms that took the form of boyfriends, apartment troubles, the Greek system and, well, growing up — and I can say with confidence that those girls will be bridesmaids at my wedding (however, I cannot say with confidence that I will ever bother to get married).

I’ve been avoiding making the final updates to my blog because, well, every time I sat down to write, I was reminded of a fact I wasn’t quite ready to face: I GRADUATED.

No, I KNOW, right? I am a Cornell graduate. That’s me in that photo on the right. At graduation. I have a diploma, which I made my parents take away so that I would neither destroy the most expensive piece of paper I will ever lay my grubby fingers on nor be forced to look at the tangible evidence that the best years of my life thus far have come to an end.

I will say this: I made it out of the Hotel School with not one single credit to spare. Ha! But I passed finance (with a D, but that is neither here nor there) and knowing I worked my ass off this semester really made the Commencement festivities all the more satisfying.

Now, Senior Week was a sloppy mess. I literally could not have spared a single moment to sit down and reflect on anything, and I think that’s the reason why there’s a big space between the last day of finals and Commencement weekend — the idea, I suppose, is to let all the seniors drink and party so they don’t have any time to realize that in a matter of days they will be thrust into the vast, mythical nebulous nothingness that is the Real World. Or maybe that’s actually the reason we were drinking all week. Meh, who knows. Point here: it was GREAT.

Then came Commencement weekend. Maya Angelou, in all her crazy awesomeness, was a fantastic speaker on Saturday during Convocation, but nothing she could have said and nothing I could have ever imagined could have prepared me for the experience of Sunday’s Commencement ceremony.

Words could never do justice to the things we all felt during Commencement. We all cried more than once that day, and nobody was able to articulate what they were feeling or whether the tears were happy tears or sad tears. We had this unfamiliar knot in our stomachs; a bittersweet potent cocktail of enormous pride, overwhelming happiness and debilitating terror.
That morning, in all our funny graduation regalia, three of my best friends and I walked toward Schoellkopf stadium from the Arts Quad with the rest of the Hotel School. Along the way, we passed the Board of Trustees and President Skorton, cheering and smiling, and almost all the Cornell Faculty members who had these huge proud-parent type grins on their faces, calling out to congratulate each one of us as we walked by. As we got closer to the stadium, the entire Statler Hotel staff was there to cheer us on. I can say, without much doubt, that the Procession is something I will remember forever and one of the best moments of my life.

And then we walked into the stadium and saw the crowd and it was all suddenly so real.

The following days were the toughest. Between hoeing out my apartment, shipping all my crap, and saying goodbye to the people who had, more or less, become my second family over the last four years, I was left bewildered and shellshocked by the end of the whole thing. And all I could think was holy crap: I am a Cornell graduate.

Dear Newly-Accepted Class of 2012,

Congratulations & welcome to the Cornell family! Four years ago today, I was in your shoes and received the most important news of my young adult life — and I made the right choice. I hope you do, too.

Oh, but I hope your day turns out to be less embarrassing than mine: I received the news in the morning, went to school super psyched about the whole thing, and at the end of the day, I walked into my crowded high school parking lot to find . . . my car had morphed into something new. It had become a hybrid of sorts: it was all at once a Volkswagen Jetta, a Cornell Spirit Mobile. . . and a mortifying display of my mother’s pride.

On the windshield: a giant posterboard with the words “YAYA CORNELL!” written in gigantic letters (visible from space). On the door handles and mirrors: red and white streamers. And the piece de resistance? Roughly 50 packs of Big Red cinnamon gum taped all over the car’s exterior. It was cute, but I sincerely hope none of your parents did this to any of you.

Anyway, congratulations — somebody from Cornell really does love you!

So first let’s discuss the weather around early/mid-December. It’s hellacious– and not in the way that February is hellacious. See, in February, every day is grey and it snows and it’s fairly predictable and there’s lots of powder (and even Uggs can manage at least some traction on powder). But this time of year, it could snow one day, be sunny and 55 degrees the next, and then rain happens, and then Ithaca turns it down to 15 degrees that evening so all the rain freezes on the ground. And then it snows the next day, so all the snow hides the layer of ice underneath and then you’re walking down Buffalo Street in Collegetown and… YOU FALL AND DIE.

But you know, it sort of makes us all comrades because everyone at Cornell shares the same distaste for the freezing cold months. Everyone sort of adjusts to the winters there to the point where nobody laughs when people slip and fall on the street (because, hello, people are going to fall when you’re all walking up and down icy hills– get some better gossip). But everyone still straps on their heels and nice jeans and goes out to the bars at night and there is STILL an insane crowd on College Ave at 1:15am every Thursday, Friday and Saturday after all the College Ave bars empty out and people want, well, pizza. Even when it’s 25 degrees out, Cornellians are staying strong. The weather deters nobody. Recently, I’ve seen a group of girls wearing tiny little short dresses outside of Rulloffs on a freezing night, some dude running around Collegetown wearing a pair of boxers and a bunch of dollar bills taped to his chest, and a group of brave guys in drag for apparently no reason.

And because of the one thing we all have in common, pre-meds help each other up when they fall, and the finance kid offers another his extra pair of gloves– because we all know a winter campus walk without gloves SUCKS because the cold is so cold that it burns like hell’s fire. Even the most competitive classroom rivals are comrades when braving the harsh central New York winds.

Touching, right? Here’s another heartwarming story to get you into the holiday spirit: I was walking down Buffalo Street– which is pretty steep– fairly late at night a couple of Saturdays ago. As one might expect, I slipped on some ice and fell face down right in front of this house, right? (Well, more like wiped out, kind of like Carrie Bradshaw wiped out in Dior and all of her stuff went everywhere– everything in my purse went EVERYWHERE.) So I’m lying on the sidewalk with my feet uphill and my face sort of much further downhill, cursing my decision to forgo sensible footwear in favor of the pointy black heels. I’m surveying the damage (bleeding palms, scuffed purse, slightly damaged dignity) and beginning to map out my next course of action… when this young gentleman comes running out of the house I’m in lying front of! Evidently, he saw me totally eat it and was coming to my rescue. He’s wearing a disheveled suit and purple tie and is kind of hot, but– I can’t even make this up– he’s munching on this fairly thick two-foot-long stick of salami that he has in his left hand (or maybe it was pepperoni or sausage or some other meat that comes in stick form). Without so much as setting down the meatstick in question, he helps me up, assists me in collecting the contents of my purse, offers me a band-aid (which I politely decline because a girl really shouldn’t accept first aid from a dude munching on a stick of unidentifiable meat at 2:30 in the morning), and sends me on my way.

That’s Cornell for you. Even when a young man is busy eating his sausage, he will take time out of his evening to help a stranger who falls on the sidewalk in front of his house. Honestly, I think we had a moment. In between the time he was fetching my scattered tampons from the middle of the road and helping me figure out why my cell phone wasn’t turning on, we locked eyes and it was magical. I’ll let you guys know when we set a date for the wedding. Also, I’ll let you know when I find out what his name is.
Ah, such love in the icy air in Collegetown!

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 never posted about homecoming– here’s what went down: I woke up at 10 am and tailgated with my sisters, wandered up to the hotelie tailgate full of amazing hotelie-made food and enjoyed menu selections such as turkey-cranberry-bleu cheese paninis, lovely mac and cheese and pretty decent chili (any woman who has ever lived in Texas is very picky about her chili). After running into approximately 5 professors (holla back, Reneta!), I decided it was high time to get on out of there before I embarrassed myself.And last night was the second-best fall holiday at Cornell: the Saturday before Halloween. I am really notsomuch into using Halloween as an excuse to dress like a lady of the night (most women at Cornell, as I discovered last night, do not feel the same way), but more as an excuse to dress up as… The Late, Great Miss A. Nicole Smith. Trashy, obvi, does not equal sexy and I was not expecting to get any marriage proposals last night or anything…

Some other costumes from last night: the “don’t tase me, bro” guy, a group of girls dressed as Britney in every stage of her career, certain characters from Harry Potter that have been in the news lately, and my friend Jordan (above, left) who landed himself on crutches from a soccer injury and let us smear a bunch of dark makeup all over his face to make him into Tiny Tim.

Despite being a tourguide, a blogger, a Daily Sun columnist and a Cornell spiritwear fashionista, I don’t adore any and all things Cornell. In fact, many traditions beloved by most Cornellians don’t fly with me. For instance, a capella? Hate it. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I’d prefer Heidi Montag’s new single over another acapella rendition of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

I was also given many a confused look freshman year when I refused to camp out overnight with my friends to buy hockey season passes. “Are you kidding?” they asked me. No–are YOU kidding? Have fun camping, and make sure you get awesome seats right up front for the Harvard game so that the dead fish can hit you in the back of the head when they fall short of the ice. I’ll meet you at the parties afterward.

And I don’t care what anyone says, people smell like hockey when they leave Lynah. Maybe it’s a bad memory from my Canadian childhood, but whatever that smell is that emenates from the ice rinks and zamboni gives me the heebies. In fact, I had to stop dating a dude freshman year because he always smelled like hockey on weekends (among other things). So no thank you, Cornell hockey.

Speaking of things that give me the heebies, let’s discuss the library. The various libraries around campus became most Cornellians’ favorite hangout spot during the hellacious days of pre-fall-break prelims, right? And me–never. I can’t do it. The only smell worse than hockey is library; it smells like stank old books and generic-brand coffee and I get the feeling everyone’s staring at me because I’m not wearing giant sweatpants with my hair all looking a mess. Also, I always feel like I’m way behind everyone else, you know? Last year right before I tanked a finance prelim, I was enjoying a (forbidden) can of Diet Coke in the library when someone came up to me and asked me a question involving a bunch of finance terms I’d never heard before. It totally psyched me out and I couldn’t concentrate. Uh, yeah. That’s why I failed. Right.

I’ll come back tonight or tomorrow with a post about my fabulous fall break in Manhattan and my surprisingly non-catastrophic shifts in the kitchen at Taverna Banfi last week. Stay on the edge of your seats, people.

On Thursday night, a friend of mine turned 21. Natch, we took her out to the bars in Collegetown to celebrate.

We were at a particular establishment that I try to stay away from because of the overpowering stench of vomit and Axe body spray, the too-loud music and the fact that the dance floor is usually more like a pool of nasty spilled beverages. In the span of 45 minutes, not only did I see my ex-boyfriend, half of the Sun staff, and a bunch of sorority sisters, but I also managed to totally awk it up with some grad student.

The basic jist of the story goes like this: some guy I’d never seen before was wearing a suit and I asked him why. It was a legitimate question. Why would he wear a suit to the bars– to this bar? His house was probably no less than a 5-minute walk from there. Could he not have gone home and changed?

He started talking really fast and I didn’t hear what he was saying, nor do I ever think he provided any answers to solve the suit mystery. I did catch that he was a business school grad student, went to undergrad somewhere in the Midwest, and he was 28.

28? Wow. But eh, he seemed interested and my friends had left me, so I kept talking to him and prayed he wouldn’t ask me anything that would give away my age. Obviously, he did ask– and I tried to lie and say I was a 27-year-old law student. It really didn’t fly and he looked totally pissed, said a bunch of stuff about how it’s uncool to lie about these things and blah blah.

The next morning, I walked into Casino Operations class at 10:10 am clutching my life-saving bottle of Gatorade…and guess who waltzes in and sits down right in front of me with his grad student friends? Oh yes. The suit man himself.

Almost 20,000 undergrads and grads on this campus and sometimes it feels way, way too small.

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the fully-decorated apartment. My three best girlfriends from freshman year live with me in a four-bedroom apartment in Collegetown. Most C-town apartments are more like the crap I lived in last year (read: should be condemned yet cost $650 per person anyway), but we managed to find this adorable industrial-chic apartment– and let’s use that term loosely because I only say “industrial” due to the presence of a ladder. Unfortunately, I couldn’t paint the walls vom-juice (Pepto) pink this time around because our new landlord wasn’t down for it.

So behold the ‘penthouse’ in all its glory– click any picture to see a bigger version. If it matters to you, the ladder in the picture goes up to a loft that any unwanted male houseguests are exiled to when we decide we don’t like them anymore (hey, girls change their minds sometimes)…and also for storage.

The saga continues. It’s looking like the only reason I’m going to be graduating on time (pending a passing grade in Finance, obvi) is because of my AP scores from high school, which are being credited towards my free elective requirements. Apparently, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing for the last three years and was going to be several units short of my degree when May 2008 rolled around– despite my attempting to take a red hot course load of 22 credits this semester to make up for it. Ummm, apparently you can’t take 9 classes at a time unless your GPA is like, stellar. Which mine is notsomuch. Who knew?

After some tears and a really long meeting with the Hotel School registrar and some academic advisors, we put our heads together and worked out a nice little plan to get me right on out of here on time. Yeah, it definitely took several rational people to offset my totally unreasonable, it’s-the-end-of-the-world-why-even-bother state of mind when I thought I’d for sure still be in Ithaca finishing up my degree next fall. It’s not that I don’t love it here, it’s just that… well, you know. Staying here an extra semester would not exactly qualify as something you’d call a “victory lap.”

Someone had the brilliant idea to look back at my AP scores, since I’d never bothered to submit them for credit… and lo and behold, the College Board (bane of my high school existence) are the fine folks that are to thank for me getting my diploma on schedule. Glorious.

Anyway, it’s times like these where I thank the goddesses up above for the small size of the Hotel School. Everyone’s watching out for me and taking hours out of their days to sit down with me– I have a team of, like, ten faculty members and administrators making sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing to get my degree on time from here on out. It’s cute; it’s like my own little cheerleading squad… and the cheerleaders have Ph.D’s.

So here’s the schedule we worked out for this semester:

• Strategic Management (this is the only required Hotel School course for seniors, and two lectures later, I still don’t really know what the class is about at all… but I will keep at it.)
• Restaurant Management (a required course I’ve been putting off for several semesters because it involves weekly 7-hour lab practicals in Taverna Banfi. Should be some good times. By the way, any alumni out there feel like giving the school an obscene amount of money so we can have Rhapsody back? Thanks.)
• Strategic Human Resources Management
• Creative Writing
  
• Introduction to Wines
• Casino Operations
  

This puts me at 18 credits, which is rigorous but is still most excellent. I’m happy with it. Plus, Casinos has a required field trip to Atlantic City and Wines involves lots of wine tasting. So I can get drunk and gamble. That’s nice. Yay senior year!