If this year was a TV show, the season finale probably would have been about as heartwrenching and inconclusive as the last Greys Anatomy. It’s no secret that this semester kind of sucked for me, but near the end, a bunch of crappy stuff happened that left me in dire need of a break before even attempting the whole happily-ever-after thing. Like a formulaic ABC dramedy, my junior year ended with a million questions as well as a few triumphs, many failures and a love interest moving across the country (seriously, welcome to the joke that is my life). For now, I’m happy to be shelving all that and beginning my summer.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be working an internship for Great Performances, which I expect will bring me all kinds of valuable lessons in PR, sales, event production and catering. My job requires significant office time down in the funky SoHo loft-style headquarters and then some attendance at a few of the events (cue Fergie’s “Glamorous”… I know). If you recall, this is the company I visited during my Catering & Event Planning class field trip to NYC in September and fell in love with; I guess it was a mutual thing. In addition to being all-around fabulous, GP is really into sustainability and the company even has a FARM. A farm, people.

I have Fridays and weekends off from GP to do my other job, editorial work for HotelChatter.com. If you have a chance, go check out the site—it’s basically made for me. Pop culture and bitchy comments mixed with hotel industry news and reviews… hallelujah. They’re run by SFO*Media, a San Francisco based company that publishes HotelChatter, Jaunted, and TripHacker. Cool, cool.

I just want to give a few cheesy shoutouts before I sign off. First of all, thank you to Lisa Cameron-Norfleet for creating and overseeing the student blogging project and for giving me the opportunity to be a part of it. You’ve been nothing but supportive throughout this whole experience; I’m sure I speak for all six of us when I say that it’s been fabulous. Tommy Bruce, thanks for believing in us and for helping to convince the rest of the administration that we don’t suck. My readers, whoever you may be, you guys are awesome and if reading this blog helped you gain a teeny tiny twinkle of insight into the real Cornell experience, I feel validated. Danielle, Ash and Brett, I don’t know where I would be right now if I didn’t have you girls this year. Thank you so, so much for everything and for never letting me forget what’s important. Jordan, you’ve always been there through butterflies and hurricanes and I can’t even begin to tell you how proud of you I am. Anne, you kept me sane through the circus and so much more. You are the funniest, most loyal person I know and I totally forgive you for drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid. I solemnly swear to show up at your wedding wearing bejeweled Crocs and acid-washed jean shorts and to share a bottle of Riesling whenever you need to obsess over anything. Erin, you are my best friend in the whole world and Texas is incredibly lucky to have you. I miss you every single day and I can’t wait until we’re so successful and fabulous that we can take spontaneous weekend trips to exotic places just to try the margaritas. Remember: dentist, too, shall pass. To my favorite hotelies in the back corner of the student lounge, your smiles and perpetually upbeat attitudes make the rough classes and long days seem like a constant party. Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my family. To my brother Michael, who calls me from Alaska to remind me that life is about more than boys, grades and clothes. Mom and Dad, you’ve been supportive of me every time I’ve changed my mind about what I was interested in and have read, commented on and saved every blog entry and newspaper column I’ve ever written. Thanks for supporting me no matter what and for being there for me whenever I need anything, especially these last few months.

I hope everyone has a great summer and please feel free to email me at jkb34@cornell.edu if you have questions or comments!

Ok, finals are underway. I took my Toilets exam this week and the bonus question was pretty sweet: “what did you learn in this class that you’ll use later on in your career or life?” Well, now I know not to put Draino in the toilet, for one thing. I also know not to freak out when I drop my Tiffanys down the sink because it’s likely retrievable. I now have a better idea of how gross septic systems are, how to recognize the signs of a meth lab in your hotel’s guest rooms, and what kind of foul things accumulate in improperly maintained hot tubs. Oh, and I know not to expect a whole building’s fire sprinkler system to go off if I light a match under one sprinkler. I don’t know why anyone would want to do that– maybe for effect at an Ithaca-themed party or something (get it? because it rains all the time? no? ok.) Anyway, I think my answer to that particular question was just fine and the final itself was not quite as beastly as I’d anticipated. However, I am now left with the daunting task of moving out of Ithaca and into New York City this week. It’s always fun to spend a week packing up all my crap, putting it in storage and then being rewarded for my hard labor with a 5-hour Shortline Bus ride into NYC next to an array of toothless angry folks who smell faintly of cough syrup and Chinese food.

But whatever; that’s nothing. Only a few things suck more than my impending Finance final and the short list includes: being thrown in the pokey (a la Paris Hilton) and/or being forced to wear jean shorts and Crocs for the rest of my life. Corporate-sponsored Crocs, at that.

But here are all my recent de-stressing assistants (and/or things I’m just particularly into this month):

• The yearbook. Ohhh, I mean the yearboko. (Ivygate)
• Panda Sneeze. This video never fails to make me smile. The mommy panda sort of reminds me of how I will probably act towards my future children. (Youtube)
• Also, Baby Sloth. He really doesn’t do anything except crawl around in a box, but I really dig that. (Youtube)
• A brilliant Croc-hating site, complete with a video of a dude blowing up Crocs with fireworks. Yes. (Ihatecrocs.com)
• Amy Winehouse. She is totally awesome and she seems like she’d be that really cool friend you can drink martinis and diss your ex boyfriends with. Her album is worth buying off iTunes and is perfect for coming home after a night out (DON’T STEAL MUSIC!)
• My favorite poem of all time (If by Rudyard Kipling)
• 20 Something, 20 Everything by Christine Hassler. I debated whether or not to mention this, but this book has been my best friend all semester so I’ll give it the props it deserves. I’d wholeheartedly recommend it for any college girl or recent grad. Yes, it’s a self-help book if you want to get technical on me, but I prefer to think of it as the type of self-help and direction a cookbook provides, notsomuch the Dr. Phil type. (20 Something, 20 Everything)
• Cute dresses when I’m in the mood (Nordstrom) and ugly dresses when I’m in another mood. (Uglydress.com)
• India.Arie’s cover of “Heart of the Matter.” (Myspace)
• Don’t Date Him, Girl: there is, believe it or not, a site where women post about their cheating exes and all that garbage. Basically, it’s scrub background check. Although judging by most of the grammar and spelling on this site, if your dude dated anyone who posted on here, I’d probably stay away no matter what. He digs stupid chicks. (Dontdatehimgirl)
• The trailer for the new Julie Taymor movie. (Across the Universe)
• The new Maria Taylor album–the chick from Azure Ray with the most relaxing voice ever–is perfect for unwinding. (Saddle Creek)
• The new Bright Eyes album, Cassadaga, is some of his best lyrical work yet. Favorite line: “they are pouring over sanskrit on the ivy league moons/ while shadows lengthen in the sun/ cast on a school of meditation built to soften the times/ and hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds.” Check out Saddle Creek where you can download that song, “Four Winds”, for free. (Saddle Creek)
• And, of course, good old Gawker never disappoints. My favorite part is definitely the weekly “Ad Hoc Altarcations” feature. (Read it and you’ll understand.)

Alright, enough. Now you know what I’m doing when I’m not studying. By the way, mom, happy mothers’ day. Your gift should be arriving, hand-delivered by a shirtless man with great abs, soon. I’ll spoil the surprise below, though.

It was the second night of Freshman Orientation. I was walking through Collegetown and the air was cool in a way that only late summer sunsets in Ithaca are– breezy and damp with an unmistakable scent in the wind that makes the whole campus feel alive. I possessed the classic overeager enthusiasm shared by most of my newly-arrived peers and was amazed at my ability and lack of hesitation to walk up to my new classmates, complete strangers, and introduce myself as Jenna the Hotelie from Texas.

I remember bouncing around that night and feeling two distinctly different knots in my stomach. There was the “oh my God, college!” excitement and next to it lay the horrible feeling of having moved completely across the country away from everything I’d ever known. Almost all of my close friends were at the University of Texas; gorgeous kids with big wide eyes who ditch the orange and white on weekends to play rock shows at smokey Austin clubs or travel the country with the Longhorn band.

I will never forget spending those last nights in Dallas with them at sweaty concerts in Deep Ellum or sitting in the bed of a pickup truck listening to the songs that we all knew the lyrics to. That was the hardest part for me; I cried every day the week before I left for Ithaca, convinced that these people were the only people I’d ever meet that would ever understand me. Why was I going away from them? What was I thinking? These feelings were only exacerbated by everyone telling me how my “strongest bonds are formed in college.” I couldn’t imagine that and refused to believe it– who could ever replace these people?

Well as it turns out…nobody. I was right. Nobody replaced them and I love those kids at home as much as I always have. I’ll admit, it was difficult and somewhat bizzare to adjust to waking up and going to bed every day and not seeing the faces I was accustomed to seeing in between. I mean, I saw my best friend Matt almost every day for 9 years (NINE YEARS) and suddenly he just… wasn’t there. Ok, yeah, that part was hard and weird. But after 3 years here, there are a significant number of Cornellians that I simply cannot live without. There is certainly enough room for your high school friends and your college friends in your heart if you’re willing to make room for them. My best girlfriend from high school, Erin, is still the person who I turn to first if I ever need anything. We lead completely different lives and as much as our college experiences have changed us, she is still the one person whose “yeah, I know what you mean” applies in ANY situation. She always knows what I mean. And these people at Cornell…they have become my family here in a foreign place.

I visit home once a year for about two weeks over winter break. Thanksgivings and half of winter break are always spent in Colorado and summers are worked away in New York City. But when I’m in Texas for those two weeks– and I swear this is true– it feels like nothing has changed. We are just older, more mature versions of our high school selves, only this time we’re giggling about mortifying experiences at frat parties and complaining about temperamental professors instead of discussing football games and telling jaw-dropping who-kissed-whom stories.

I wasn’t particularly mature enough or equipped to handle such a major change without a single familiar hand to hold during the transition from high school to college, but I did it. And I did it at a time where there were only 11 schools on Facebook, mind you. So if you’re heading far away from home, please don’t worry. Physically leaving the people you’ve grown up with is a painful process, especially since you’ve never seen the faces of the people you will grow to love and trust over these next few years. But you don’t want to regret being sad during your last summer as a high schooler; please enjoy these next couple months and remember that you always can go home again.

This has been a big year for change. It’s been a transition year of sorts, where the things that were important to me the first two years here suddenly were… not so much. Some things simply weren’t making me happy anymore, some things I had no control over losing. But alas, I did learn that my horoscopes were telling no lies (that’s right, I trust my horoscopes, don’t judge) and they were saying big things were in store for me.

So, what better time to set those big things in motion than now: guess who the new executive director of the 2008 Vagina Monologues is? Yeah, that’s right. The blonde chick from Texas who was scared to audition last year.

Speaking of Texas (and this is so ridiculously unrelated)… where I come from, air conditioning is not a luxury. It’s a necessity, as much of a necessity as eyeliner and diet coke, and people up here are nutso for thinking that the 4 or 5 hot months a year don’t warrant legitimate cooling systems in houses and dorms. My room here defies all laws of temperature and is a sauna for apparently no reason. For real, whenever the temperature hits 60, my cute pink room becomes a hot box like no other while everyone else’s rooms remain at a temperature appropriate for living in. Good thing the huge remote-controlled fan I have does an excellent job of blowing the hot air around the room. Let’s end this one with my favorite game, “Would You Rather”: would you rather sleep in a sauna or sleep with a bunch of super quiet hairdryers blasting on you? Um, I’d rather have air conditioning, thank you.

Oh, Slope Day.

There is nothing appropriate that I can say about yesterday’s Slope Day festivities except that it was a mess. A wonderful, memorable, incredibly fun mess that started around 9:00 am and lasted the entire day. I’m grateful that we were rewarded for this year’s insufferably cold and absurdly long winter by being granted absolutely perfect weather for Slope Day, and I’m also grateful that my friends and I made it through the whole thing with only a few minor mishaps. I took a pretty intense fall on a sidewalk somewhere on West Campus while my friends stood around and said, “ohhh! Bromberg totally just ate it! Ohhhh!” (They soon realized I was bleeding and my friend Jason the EMT did a fine job making sure I wasn’t dying).
I actually think my liver hurts. Does that even happen?

Anyway, here are the only 4 cornell.edu-appropriate pictures from the Slope.

Well guys, apparently Cornell is easy now. Who knew?

Now, I was parked in the corner of the Statler student lounge, as per usual, and my friend Scott picked up the paper, read this article, looked up and asked, “um WHO is getting good grades?” We all just kind of stared at him. Wasn’t us.

The article, complete with a photo of a student sitting in a lounge chair with the caption along the lines of “students find finals week less stressful because of increasing grade averages” says that there are 17 classes here at Cornell that have a median grade of an A+ and sort of implies that either we’re getting smarter or classes are getting too easy. Where are these classes and why haven’t I taken them yet? Upon further inspection, I found that the courses with a median grade of A+ include: Cornell Chorus. Teaching Apprenticeship. Engineering Independent Study. Essential Desktop Applications (Microsoft Office 101?). Military Leadership Lab. Plus, a nice wide variety of ROTC courses. Pattern? Good one. These courses are all in the 10-15 student range; teeny tiny little seminars. The one A+ average class in the Hotel School is an elective seminar which basically involves sitting your business-casual self in a chair and munching on cookies while a guest speaker talks about how rich and awesome he is.

Maybe instead of making a big huge generalization about the university-wide GPA and making the pre-meds cry, we should be more concerned about focusing on the GPA’s of individual programs. I mean, if I were in the engineering school, God forbid, my grades would have been so low that I would have been booted from this place years ago. Similarly, though, I’d be willing to bet that some engineering students wouldn’t be able to hack it in the Hotel School. Cornell’s programs are SO sharply different and the schools so separated that it’s hard to make a generalization about the University-wide GPA or rigor of the curriculum fairly, right? And just for fun, check out the Fall ’06 Median Grade Report on the senior-level AEM classes:

But hey, maybe everyone in AEM is just SUPER SMART. And here’s what the Hotel School’s core curriculum looks like:

I mean, whatever. I guess since the Sun says the grades are chillin up in the A range all over Cornell AND the Hotel School gets that rep for having laughably easy classes, hotelies are just stupid and lazy. Yeah, so I’m just going to sit in this big chair here because Cornell is a breeze and I’m just lazy. Screw those piece of cake finals– please pass the sangria.

Š

To give fair warning, this entry is pretty teen angsty and self-indulgent. But whatever.

It’s no secret that Ivy League schools are hard sometimes. You won’t find any of us blogging about how we aren’t being challenged academically and we won’t be sitting around complaining about a lack of things to do. But in a place like Cornell where it seems like everyone around you is always able to deliver, what do you do when you just can’t get a grip?

In a time where I am supposed to be figuring out who I am and what I want to be doing with my life, all I seem to be doing is testing myself to see how much pressure I can handle. Fall semester was a tough one– I had recently dismissed hotels, restaurants, marketing and finance as career possiblities, leaving me with what seemed like zero options and a very special anxiety over my lack of academic direction. This was only exacerbated by the countless celebration dinners and champagne toasts I attended as my older friends, one by one, signed their acceptances for bigtime investment banking jobs and management positions around the country. Ok, great. Piled on top of all that was a major heartbreak that left me shellshocked, exhausted, and unable to concentrate on much of anything. In a textbook Cosmo case of breakup bounceback, I predictably tried to counteract the whole mess by packing my schedule with literally a dozen new commitments. Did anyone else see a meltdown coming?

This semester, I was fiercely determined to “have it all.” At this point in my life, “having it all” means successfully striking a balance between good grades, solid friendships, an exciting and jam-packed social schedule, and (of course you knew I was going to go here) a fabulous relationship. Unfortunately, besides the fact that I have historically neglected at least one of these areas at all times, I also seem to have an inability to keep the other areas of my life together when one slips. A failure in one department can poison and sometimes even paralyze the others. I still believe it IS possible to “have it all,” but as my friends, grades, and old boyfriends will tell you, striking this balance has never been my strong point.

As I’ve come to find out, it’s still not. Here’s the thing, though. Sometimes you just get so busy here. It seems like everyone around you can handle it and that you’re the only one about to crack under the responsibility and pressure. You’re not. Even if you think you’re on top of things and in control, it creeps up on you when you’re busy with everything else. It starts as this nagging discomfort in the back of your mind when you’ve got your to-do list all crossed off but you still feel like you’re forgetting something. It steals chunks of your precious 4-6 hours of sleep as you lie in bed and mentally take inventory of all the things you have to do the next day. What begins as the small pile of dirty laundry at the bottom of your closet morphs overnight into a mess that hides the entire floor of your bedroom. Finally, “I don’t have time to deal with this right now” becomes “I can’t deal with this at all” and whether you’re facing a broken heart, a fight with your best friend, issues finding a job or the utter lack of desire to get out of bed, your day planner remains full and you’re still acutely aware that a couple days of neglect can kick your sixteen credits from A minus grades straight down into D territory… and then it’s goodbye graduate school and who knows what else and you’re left wondering how it was possible that you let things get so out of control.

So what the hell do you do?

To be honest, I’m not too sure right now. It’s not like I, or anyone else here, can afford to surrender to a breakdown or even give it little more than a few tears and a couple drinks no matter how tempting a weeks vacation (or a 3-day retreat to your pink bed) may be.

My reason for writing this entry is that I’m currently experiencing one of these little meltdowns and have so far dealt with it with all the poise and maturity of a toddler. Talking to my friends about it tonight, though, I know I’m not the only one who’s felt like this here. I do know that this is not a place where it is possible to throw in the towel and stay snuggled in bed for a couple of days to try to forget about your failures– you’ve got to sack up, dig your heels in and keep showing up to class, honoring your commitments and smiling at your friends. I think…
So I’m going to try that and I’ll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.

Remember the event I was talking about a couple of months ago, tentatively themed the “Cornell Campaign for Real Beauty”? Well, over the last several weeks, hundreds of photographers from around the Cornell community have submitted images capturing their individual ideas of beauty. I’m pleased to announce that the unveiling of our exhibit, “Beauty Actually Is All Around Us…” (like the Love Actually quote– get it?) will be tomorrow evening. The opening features a performance by the ladies of After Eight a capella and a discussion focused on body image and self-esteem among young women today.

Tuesday, April 24th
Beck Center Atrium, Statler Hall
7:00 pm
*light refreshments will be served.

This event is free and open to the public– please come show your support!

As most of you know, Life on the Hill was a pilot program this year and the six of us were guinea piggies. We could have been smushed and discontinued for the 07-08 school year for many reasons, including but not limited to my incessant whining about everything, Ben‘s constant references to drinking, and Alex being that guy who cussed at a hockey game and had his tickets taken away. But alas, this motley crew of writers has prevailed and the project has been picked up for a second year. A couple of us have elected to stay on board and blog through the next two semesters, and unfortunately for all of you, Oh No She Didn’t will be around for another year. My Sun column will be continuing through next year as well and I promise to continue embarrassing myself on a frequent-enough basis that I am not going to be strapped for material. Big things are coming up senior year and I hope my readers, those other than the two people that birthed me, will stick with me.

Coming up next: TI comes for Slope Day (I only know him as the dude who sings the “if you got a man, try to lose him if you can” part in Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” and therefore he is NOTHING to me without Justin. Nothing.) At the end of may, I’ll move to New York City to embark on a lovely summer in a magnificent Union Square apartment. I’ll be working two jobs (interning at Great Performances and HotelChatter.com) and traipsing around the city being fabulous.

I’m looking forward to this BIGTIME. Ithaca is seriously cramping my style right now and the Hotel School is currently reminding me of 24′s CTU Headquarters right before Los Angeles got nuked that one time, with everyone all creepily stressed out and acting like the world is about to end. 100-something of the hospitality industry’s CEO’s and bigwigs will be descending upon the Hotel School for Hotel Ezra Cornell this weekend. A lot of my peers (on the HEC board) have been planning for it all year and as the opening events begin Thursday night, these kids are in dire need of some scented candles and a bubble bath. I’ll talk about it a bit more in a few days; I have a feeling I’m going to be guilted into being a cocktail waitress or line cook for some of these events my friends are running. Oh yes that’s right, hospitality industry: get ready to have your gin and tonics spilled all over you.

Last night, I snuggled up in bed circa 3 am after a successful Friday night at the bars with my usual hotelie crew. Since I had nothing on the agenda until my 1:00 tour today, I planned to sleep until at least 11.

But no. Instead, I write to you from a couch in my living room. I have been taking refuge here since 9 am. You see, there seems to be a small animal of sorts in my room at this time. It may be a bird, it may be a rodent that makes high-pitched chirpy noises, but in any case, it’s alive and it’s in my room and it’s not me. I have not caught a glimpse of the creature yet, but considering the noises and the various openings he may have entered through, I have been able to gather that he’s definitely dancing around among my polo shirts and cases of diet coke. I’m not sure what to do since the only female housemate equipped to handle this situation has gone home to her farm upstate (literally) for Easter and you really never know the whereabouts of my male housemate. That one time we found a mouse running around in the washing machine, we were lucky enough to have enough male houseguests that weekend to effectively dispatch a team to the scene. This time not so much.

Oy.