A day in the life of a second semester Cornell senior:

7:00 am: Wake up and do edits on finance research project.

10:00 am: Finance class. Lots of this is sounding familiar. Probably because I heard it last year…

11:30 am: Venture into Olin library for coffee. Startle friends who have never seen me in a library before. Startle self by successfully finding the coffee place.

12:20 pm: Derrida and the Philosophy of Hospitality. Or, a two-hour Arts and Sciences seminar with 4 A&S graduate students and two professors. Lots of sitting in silence for me; lots of insightful commentary for them.

2:55 pm: New Media Writing class. In here, I talk so much that I think everyone hates me. I am ok with this because I am geeking out.

4:15 pm: Preliminary interview with a paper that’s interviewing me for a web video thing about Valentine’s Day tomorrow. I sound awkward.
4:30 pm: Hold Hotel Ambassador info session for prospective new members.

5:00 pm: Meditation class. Nothing is better than sitting in silence for a long time in the middle of a crazy day. Except maybe getting physical education credit for literally sitting and doing nothing.

6:00 pm: Dinner and wine at the Regent Lounge in the Statler. There is a bar attached to my school.

7:30 pm: Desire class, in which we watch “Deep Throat.”

9:30 pm: Trudge through -6 degree temperature to return home and embark on a 6-hour marathon of writing my Daily Sun column, reworking my cover letter into something that will see the light of day, and writing a freelance piece about Valentine’s Day.

3:30 am: Bed.

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…

The blog is getting a little makeover and there are some formatting issues, so for all two of you who stop by this summer, pardon the mess. We’ll deal with it…sometime. Be back in mid-August! (PS, isn’t it cute?)

In the Sun today, a fairly serious piece was written about a video made by a Texas guy who applied to the class of 2008 and was rejected. Now, this is basically the greatest video ever, but before I get to that I’m a little weirded out by a couple things. I noticed a few discrepancies in the stuff this dude said, most notably the quote about Facebook:

Although he never visited the Cornell campus, he stated he “became attached to it” after perusing the Cornell website, attending an information session in Houston and meeting with a Cornell alumnus. “I even befriended random Cornell students on Facebook so I could look at their photo albums of Cornell,” admitted Saqib.

Ok. Not to be a bummer here, but I very clearly recall Facebook around the time I had been admitted into the Class of ’08. Most people had never heard of it, the thing was just getting off the ground, and the photo album features weren’t even close to being invented yet. Moreover, Facebook, back at that time, was still in its heyday– it was really only Ivy League schools and a select few others (Stanford, Rice, etc.) Most notably: how would our friend have gotten a Facebook account? The day Facebook opened up to high school students was a tragedy…. A RECENT tragedy.

Plus: did you really fall in love with the website? I mean really? Cornell.edu was redesigned over the last couple of years and if anyone remembers the old website, well, it was a little fug. Ok, a lot fug, as in the famed Bjork Oscar dress that was shaped like a swan kind of fug. Wait, stop, I’m having a moment: isn’t this so Elle Woods a la the Legally Blonde case where she figures out the witness is lying in court because everyone knows you can’t get a brand new perm wet? I should probably go to law school after all.

Anyway, so here’s the video.
Even though this kid seems to lie for absolutely no reason, his video is pretty fabulous. I mean, it’s ballsy and cool in a way that reminds me of the time I was 13 and had the urge to get my girlfriends together and burn letters from an ex-crush on his porch but decided to TP his house instead because there was less chance of catastrophic destruction that way. I mean, this kid could have burned the admissions office down, but he chose the more-sensible-yet-still-hardcore route (sending the video to all 7 admissions offices? YES) and I totally dig that. Plus, he’s from Texas and I really think that Usher song “Burn” is awesome. Oh, and the final sparkle of greatness comes at the very end of this video where he re-enacts one of the most uncomfortable scenes in movie history; the scene from Cast Away where fattie Tom Hanks goes nutso and dances around a fire. See?

All in all, it’s a huge shame this guy didn’t get into Cornell. If destiny had a heart, we would have lived on the same floor freshman year and would’ve become best friends.
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Edit: So, I friended him on Facebook and it turns out he’s a freshman (not a junior) and therefore he is not a liar… but THE DAILY SUN IS as they mistakenly reported that he applied to the Class of 2008. Their bad.

The Vagina Monologues start THIS WEEKEND! I’m doing one of the more controversial monologues, “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could”, and if you don’t come just for that, well, the entire cast is AMAZING and the monologues are hilarious, moving, and educational. I have 4 tickets left for the Saturday night show (2/24) and 8 tickets left for the 3/3 show. Your very own “Viva La Vulva” shirt can be purchased at the shows, but it’s likely that the performancess will sell out so I’d recommend buying your tickets in advance ($7/student, $10/public). Shoot me an email or stop by the Willard Straight Ticket Office. All proceeds go to the Advocacy Center downtown.

Ithaca, stop. Please stop. I totally respect that when the weather man makes a promise of 4 degree misery with windchill, you deliver; and thank you for that. Really. But I didn’t do anything to you, I don’t use aerosol hairspray and all my skincare products are organic. I recycle things and I don’t drive around a lot (especially now since the wine in my trunk FROZE and EXPLODED and then melted and FROZE AGAIN, leaving my Jetta the unmistakeable scent of Sunday morning until things warm up enough to clean without the possibility of a horrible frozen death). Today I witnessed people running between classes to get out of the cold. Running. The most disturbing thing? For 3 brief seconds, I was one of them. The usual cigarette crew that lurks outside of Statler was nowhere to be found, and that girl that wears leggings every day was wearing pants. That’s how cold it is.
Aren’t there ancient books that say those are the first 3 signs of the end of the world? Me running, the disappearance of the Statler smokers, and leggings girl in non-absurd clothing?

After the everyone-knew-if-it-didnt-end-this-way-Bravo-would-be-dunzo finale of Top Chef, my roommates and I remained parked for the premiere of Top Design. This was exciting; Project Runway? Fab. Top Chef? Pretty good. We expected Design, the interior design version of the “12 young talents compete for a chance to win $100,000 and some other product placement stuff and some promotion for Elle Decor magazine which I’ve never even heard of but whatever” show, to follow in the glorious footsteps of Bravo’s other two gems.

The show starts and then the opening sequence is over and now we’re suddenly outdoors and Todd Oldham is bouncing down some stairs. He is cute and wearing an argyle sweater (aww, argyle! so cute!) and meets the interior designers in front of a sprawling building that is roughly the size of a city. From what I gathered here, this “Pacific Design Center” seems to contain no sign of human life, but does have every single decorating item on the entire planet as well as many many escalators. Ok great…and then Todd Oldham opens his mouth and the 3 of us sit there staring at the TV in silence. We weren’t sure what to make of it; he sounded sort of like Dakota Fanning meets Courtney Love reading off of a very, very, VERY slow teleprompter. I expected a Tim Gunn here, people– the suavest dude there is. No deal.

Now, I am a woman who enjoys her Trading Spaces, but the show did not capture my interest at all. Not only were there too many things filling the screen at all times, but someone chose to decorate a room with a glass statue of a green pepper next to a bed on a SWING hanging over a SANDBOX. So cute and kitschy for a 3-year-old’s playroom… except that the mission was to design Alexis Arquette (yup, our transgendered friend)’s room. Good one.

And to my delight, the peppersandboxswing team won.

The host (who apparently is no longer Todd Oldham when the judging happens, suddenly we’ve made a new friend in a suit and he is sending people home) always has the catchy “you lose” tag line– Heidi’s “auf wiedersehen”, Padma’s “pack your knives and go.” But this—well, this just makes me feel awkward: “SEE YOU LATER, DECORATOR.”

Hearing this come out of the host’s mouth gave me that same feeling you get when someone is walking in front of you and they slip on the ice and fall flat on their face. You know, you’re not sure if they want you to be all serious and be concerned and ask if they’re ok, or if they want you to laugh with them and help make the whole scene less embarrassing.

So in conclusion, dear Bravo: Runway is good because everybody wears clothes. Top Chef is good because everybody eats food. Designer is disappointing because not everybody wants a bedroom with a swinging bed and a sandbox in the floor. Just a thought.

….yes.

Read this column.

And then go vote for Julia Levy, she’s awesome.

This week, I am essentially a full-time Information Specialist (ok, Senior Information Specialist if you want to get technical. Yes yes kind of a big deal) and will be spending my days raking in the dollars and my evenings doing very little since nobody is back on campus yet. Bouncing around the other 5 Life on the Hill blogs, I noticed everyone gets these really cool questions from prospective students. I’m kind of starting to think that my audience is like, my mom and dad. Questions? Anyone? Really?

Ask away cause I sort of want to be helpful and Cornell doesn’t pay me to write things like the kick ass account of my wisdom tooth extraction that you just read.

**for answers, see the “Mail Bag” page.