First, I am alive. Sorry for the lack of updates, but I literally need every single credit to graduate on time, and when you’re dealing with finals and/or papers for seven (!!!) classes while trying to navigate the senior-class event & celebration schedule, well … little luxuries like sleep, showering and blogging must be sacrificed in the name of passing Finance class. In hindsight, I should have taken half the courseload and would have been better off taking an extra semester here — because, much to the dismay of my parents, I refused to give up any of my on-campus activities. But all that is another story for another day, and extra semesters ain’t free. Anyway, I’ll be back in full-force soon.

Ah, Hotelie Senior Prom. As the Hotel School has long been teased for its high school-like structure — small size, intimate classes, lockers in the hallways and a healthy gossip circuit — the seniors [independently of the school!] have thrown themselves a Hotelie Senior Prom to appropriately celebrate their reputation as well as their own awesomeness. I could fill an entire book with the events that transpired at Hotelie Prom last week, so I’ll sum it up by saying that taking all the senior Hotelies — who, individually, are traditionally the life of any party — and throwing them together in one room with formal wear, music and refreshments results in … the world exploding. Below, a shot of the girls (and the animal print makes an appearance once again):

And last night, another prom! The Class of 2008 started a new tradition, a Cornell-wide Senior Class prom held in the incredible Duffield Hall atrium space. Open bar + charity + pretty outfits = amazing, of course, but there was more to the experience than that.

I was on the Prom Court (giggle!) and the dozen (or so) of us on Court went up on a balcony overlooking the whole prom for the King/Queen crowning ceremony. As soon as we got up there, though, the entire place busted out in the Alma Mater together and from where we stood, we held hands and looked down to see the whole graduating class singing our school song together. It was just so … moving.

I recognized so many faces in the crowd and realized just how much this place has given me, how profoundly Cornell has changed me and how truly unforgettable every moment of the last four years has been. It was a sad moment, but, truly, a fitting end to my four years here. I guess it’s ironic that this moment occurred while I was teetering on my high heels, wearing a dress and standing on a balcony inside the atrium of an Engineering building on a Saturday night, but it was a memorable moment nonetheless. I understand how potentially lame and Tour-Guidey this may all sound, but feeling such a connection with my Cornell graduating class was one of the most heartwarming moments of my college experience. . . even though I didn’t win Prom Queen.

So, here’s the deal: I have been actively searching for a job since October. And when I say searching, I mean checking MediaBistro every single day, sending my resume to everyone and anyone that I might even consider working for, and networking like crazy. I haven’t really dropped the ball or stopped looking at any point, and I’ve put a lot of my focus and energy into making sure my clips, resumes and cover letters are the best they could have been.

But now it’s April and I literally have zero offers. At this point, I am officially the only one of my hotelie friends who has no idea where she will be living or what she will be doing six weeks from now. As my classmates sign leases and start checking out IKEA furniture for their new urban apartments, I’ve found myself staring out onto what is nothing more than just a big, black space that lies beyond May 25th. As one might imagine, it is probably — likely — one of the scariest things I’ve ever been faced with (hey, come on, I’m only 21). And yo, incoming freshmen: the prospect of moving far from home to come to college is nothing; just wait ’til you’re a Cornell senior!

It’s been no secret that the job market is especially tough for this year’s grads, the state of the economy is terrifying and media — a fairly unpredictable industry to begin with — is changing rapidly. People are getting slashed from newsrooms all over the country and, this summer, staffers at my favorite magazine (Jane) walked into work one day to find that they no longer had jobs — the publication had just folded. It happens.

I have been lucky enough to find something I’m passionate about (and trust me, I know that apathy is probably far worse than uncertainty or unemployment) and even more fortunate to have parents that support their children who have both decided to ditch their respective educational tracks to be Alaskan Mountain Guides (my brother) or writers (me). I consider myself fairly savvy when it comes to new media (and therefore employable), but — let’s get real, there’s a whole city full of equally-savvy, comparably-educated media types who can interview for, get hired into and start working at the job I’d want in the time it takes for me to even get down to New York and interview for the open position (let alone the time that would pass between my landing the job, finishing up my degree and moving out there).

I never thought it was going to be a piece of cake to use my Hotel School degree to pursue something outside the scope of a traditional hospitality or financial job, but JC — I would have never imagined it would be this difficult or emotional. I think I did a really, really crappy job of managing my expectations throughout this process (let’s just say sista got a little full of herself) . . . but, then again, when you’re at the most prestigious hospitality school in the world, you watch employers banging down your classmates’ doors, and so some part of you expects them to do the same to you. Also, more often than not, I found myself having to defend my decision to major in Hotel Administration in all my media and publishing interviews — and I wasn’t prepared for that, either.

Anyway, since I need to graduate, I have to pour my energy into my massive courseload and just stop searching now. I still have a couple of balls in the air, but, at this point, I can’t reach out to anyone new because, hey — if I do get a job and then have to stick around Ithaca for an extra semester just to finish my degree anyway, that job won’t do me too much good, will it? =) Today was the deadline that I’d set for myself; I promised myself that if I didn’t have a job offer by now, I would turn my full attention back to my schoolwork.

Right now, the plan is to move back to Dallas and look for jobs from Bromberg HQ. Word on the street is that the computers, printers and broadband connections are much faster there than they are in my yucky college apartment, anyway. If anything happens between now and then, you, my dear fabulous readers, will be the first to know.

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!

I think the city of Miami and I just aren’t meant to be.

After last year’s grand adventure that went down with notable vacation-ruining contributions by Royal Caribbean, US Airways and the city of Miami, I was certain that my travel karma was golden this year. I figured things would be perfect since we were going straight to Miami and back again; no cruises, no connections, not a whole lot of room for complications, getting stranded or general unpleasantries.

And yet.
12 of us (10 hotelies plus my two non-hotelie roomies) planned a trip down to Miami and booked 2 rooms at the Sea Coast Suites. Being savvy hospitality students (in fact, the savviest of savvy hospitality students — the student GM of the Statler Hotel — was with us), one would think that a $300ish bucks for 6 nights would be enough for a little red flag action in our pretty little heads, but no. Really, we figured we could deal with a slummy hotel and spend all of our leftover cash at bars and nice restaurants. And trust me, we did — and we had an AMAZING time on South Beach and even our flights with JetBlue were excellent…. but the hotel? Questionable. Very questionable.

The hotel was, like — a mixed use development, if you will — half condos that people rent year-round and half hotel rooms. We were Spring Breakers, so we weren’t really asking for all that much — a couple beds and some towels and we would have been all set. When we checked in to our HUGE rooms with full kitchens and 2 bedrooms and a balcony with an ocean view, we were happy campers. We even had a refrigerator to store our adult refreshments and big bottles of water! Awesome!

On Thursday morning, our happy camper sunburned, boozey sleep was interrupted at 9 am by something faint and annoying that sounded like an alarm clock down the hall. We opened the door to our room and, turns out: a fire alarm! Good one! We were plenty pissed to have to walk down 15 flights of stairs, but then when smoke was billowing into the stairwell around floor eight we picked up the pace a bit. We stood outside with the fire hoses and all that mess, some of us in ratty, gross clothing that was not really fit for public display, and we watched as a big ol’ chunk of the building (on the opposite side of the fire, no less) fell off and landed inches away from some other people. Oh, ok then.

Apparently, the police and firemen who were dealing with the fire also decided to do a little checky-check on other things around the hotel — and found out that hi, this was actually not licensed to be a hotel at all! Never had been! So hey, guess who had to legally peace out of the hotel the next morning? Yes, all the hotel guests. They moved us to a more expensive hotel down in South Beach and refused to pay for ANYTHING — we actually ended up paying more for that last night and weren’t compensated for, you know, having to pack up all our stuff and lose a whole day at the beach while we were busy a) fighting with them b) being told we were very aggressive when we were fighting for some sort of, like, explanation and c) watching a front desk agent cry (I told them I was a hotel reviewer, which, you know, is sort of true; they did not enjoy that).

I mean, okay. The story of the discussions that transpired between a group of 10 hotelies and a couple of assistant managers (who refused to speak to us until one finished her meeting, which we later found out was a scrumptious solo feast of chicken and rice in her office) is actually sort of hilarious. Another story for another time, kids.

But aside from the fire and the building falling down and being evicted because oops they were running a hotel illegally, Miami was AMAZING. Here we all are, being happy:

The Vagina Monologues were a RIDICULOUS success. Our Friday show sold out entirely and we had to awkwardly turn people away from the door; our Saturday show in Statler (a venue that seats 715ish people) was pretty much filled to capacity– which is MAJOR, considering we were competing with the Harvard hockey game and some sort of basketball game that seemed to be fairly important.

The exact amount of money we raised hasn’t come in yet, but I can tell you that everything worked out perfectly production-wise: I have received nothing but glowing reviews from audience members– the actresses were absolutely incredible. I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with such mazing, amazing women.

Last year, I was an actress in the 2007 VM production and felt all kinds of awkward when I had to moan (uh, sexually) on stage . . . but that was NOTHING compared to this year. In front of 700 people when I was making my directors’ speech and saying thank you’s after a standing ovation, I cried. I CRIED. Who cries? Who even does that? It was the combination of how amazingly well the show went, the standing ovation, my friends’ faces in the audience, the enormous weight lifted off my shoulders, and seeing my mom (who came all the way from Texas for the occasion) in the crowd. I was a hot mess– but not as much of a hot mess as my flower-allergic roommate is going to be when she gets home and spends some time hanging out with the 7 bouqets of flowers in the apartment.

Here, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Here are some photos.

Performing “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could” (Yes, that’s Life on the Hill’s very own Nikki 2nd from the left!)

My Mom and I with a stuffed vaggie after the show.

I have been super stressed these past few weeks because the Vagina Monologues are rapidly approaching. Like, very rapidly. As in… they’re in 3 days.

The acting in rehearsals has been blowing me away; the cast is absolutely incredible and as director, I really don’t know what to do with myself because these women are so talented. But that doesn’t change the fact that a bajillion things need to be done, from the “Give Your Lips a Voice” t-shirts to the lighting and sound. As executive director/organizer, part of my job is to produce the chocolate vagina lollipops we sell at the shows (yes, you read that correctly). The idea here was to outsource this to a loyal band of KD sisters this evening, but the life-ruining “wintry mix” (i.e. the sky puked snow and rain for 10 hours without relent) sort of foiled my plans to leave the house after 6 p.m.

And thus, a herculean effort was underway. My mission: make 200ish vagina-shaped lollipops out of melty chocolate and some shady vagina-shaped molds. With the help of my beautiful, fabulous, supportive roommates, we were able to churn out a good chunk of them before I had to retreat to my room to write my Daily Sun column for the week. We were nowhere close to finished with the Vag-Pops, but I had to move on so we all gave up for the night.

12:30 am rolled around, and I surfaced from the cavernous depths of my pink boudoir seeking caffeine from the kitchen. And there’s my roommate, Danielle, standing all alone by the sink, cleaning out one of the chocolate molds. I thought she’d gone to bed, but instead she had finished every single vagina lollipop for me because she wanted me to have one less thing to worry about, even though she had class in the morning.

I was totally floored. She isn’t involved in the Vagina Monologues at all (in fact, her sitting through it last year was an enormous gesture of goodwill because she isn’t into this sort of thing), but she just wanted to be a supportive friend. I guess it’s true what they say: you don’t come to Cornell to meet your husband– you come to meet your bridesmaids. Love you, D.

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…