ithacation

The Personal Development Semester

February 20th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Academics

By the end of last semester, I had taken care of all of my major’s and college’s requirements, which left me with a senior spring that is relatively wide-open compared to past semesters. No more pesky courses in fields that have little to do with International Agriculture & Rural Development (I’m looking at you, physics…). I could take at least a few of the approximately two billion courses that I still really wanted to take before graduation, devote some more time to my extracurricular involvements, and have the chance to enjoy my last semester on the hill.

Probably the most recognizable course on the list is Introduction to Wines in the School of Hotel Administration. Taught both semesters of the year (with an auditorium capacity of somewhere around 700 people), the course will have been on the roster of about 50% of the senior class by the time commencement arrives in late May. Although the course is in the hotel school, students from every possible discipline are enrolled in it. It is, for example, the first class I’ve had in common with several engineering friends.

“If you pour it, they will come”

Why is it so popular? The tasting component. Or, as our professor explained in the first lecture, “If you pour it, they will come”. Each of us was given a kit with three wine glasses at the beginning of the semester, and with each weekly lecture, we explore a different wine-making region of the world, learning about everything from laws that limit alcohol content to the topography of a given region’s vineyards. As we go through the lecture, we taste wines from that region, and, in the case of last week’s class on the wines of New York, Washington, and Oregon, we can have the winemakers themselves talk to us about their work.

Much less recognizable but just as valuable is Understanding Wine and Beer in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. While it seems like both courses would seemingly cover the same material, the two courses are quite different in the content that they cover. As opposed to the course in the Hotel school that prepares students for the navigation of wine lists and the construction of food pairings, the CALS course is taught by microbiologists, flavor chemists, and other scientists from Cornell’s agricultural research station in Geneva, NY. We take a much more scientific approach to the cultivation and preparation of wine and beer (and the raw materials required for each). That said, we still taste a variety of beers and wines in each class.

What this has resulted in is a schedule that has me sampling wines and beers every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, while getting a good dose of agriculture, geography, and food/beverage knowledge, all of which I love. I couldn’t ask for a better couple of courses to round out my undergraduate career on the hill.

Tags:Academics·Alcohol·Beer·Courses·Spring 2010·Wine

Best Field Trip Ever?

February 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Academics, Photography, Winter Break 2009-2010

Somehow, after nearly 29 hours of travel from door to door, I was jet-lag free. It’s possible that we were so far away (10.5 time zones) that the effects of jet-lag somehow got cancelled out, but either way, I was feeling surprisingly normal. Two weeks traveling through southern India had flown by, but during the first half of January, my peers and I had the opportunity to experience a subcontinent that was entirely new and foreign to all but a few of us. We crammed ourselves into auto-rickshaws, we were mobbed by the media and schoolchildren alike, and we had conversations with women’s self-help groups, among so many other activities.

Officially, we were starting our semester early, as IARD 6020 (Agriculture in Developing Nations II) is a spring semester course. But our classroom was India, and we were not only learning from our professors, but learning with them. Accompanying us were about fifteen Indian students pursuing a Masters in Professional Studies (MPS) in a dual degree program between Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in India and Cornell in the US. They had been in our IARD 4020 classes during the fall semester, but we became closest when we Americans (who are infamously horrible at bargaining, and tend not to do so well when Hindi/Tamil needs to be spoken) joined up with our Indian peers during both our academic and extracurricular activities in India. They acted as a detailed lens through which to observe the country; without a doubt, the trip would not have been nearly as rich without them.

This latest trip marked my last serious academic excursion as a Cornell undergrad; since my sophomore year, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to China with The Cornell Daily Sun, to Chile with SIT Study Abroad (and later on to Argentina and Uruguay), and finally, to South India on what will go down in my books as the best field trip ever.

Rather than recounting the two week excursion in excruciating detail on this blog, I’ll point you towards the course’s official blog, which was updated during and after the trip by students and faculty in each of the three sub-groups: value addition, agricultural systems, and rural infrastructure (mine). There you’ll be able to read not only some of my reflections, but those of my Indian and American peers, as well. Due to security concerns, the course blog was password-protected until we returned to the US, and those same concerns prevented me from writing about the experience publicly on this blog during the trip.

As we get settled into the single-digit cold of Ithaca for the “spring” semester, we students in IARD 6020 are already at work on our group projects that will build off of aspects of development that we witnessed first-hand while in India. Each project group has at least one American student and at least one Indian student. Such a composition definitely makes groups meetings more difficult to arrange, but adds much-needed depth to the final product. As my teammates and I start to explore ways to improve flows of information in agricultural extension systems, we travelers all keep running into each other on campus, excited and relieved to share a moment with someone who can fully grasp the nearly indescribable trip we all had the opportunity to experience.

Tags:IARD 6020·Travel

Court 4C on the Court at MSG and on TV.

December 22nd, 2009 · No Comments · Cornell Big Red, Winter Break 2009-2010

To give you an idea of my hallmates freshman year on the only all-male hallway in the Court-Kay-Bauer Community, I, standing 6 feet tall, was very likely below the median height for my hall of thirty guys. How could this be? Well, there are definitely plenty of tall people at Cornell, but my floor’s statistics were slightly (read: very) skewed by the fact that we had six basketball players, three rowers, two football players, and other athletes calling Court 4C home.

My hallmates and I would go to basketball games freshman year and chant “COOUUUURT FOOUUUUR CEEEEEEEE” after our fellow residents made shots. We soon realized this got way too redundant because so many of these guys were a) starters and b) really good at basketball. From then on, the cheer was done less often than every half-minute.

In the years since life in the “Court Resort”, I’ve followed my basketball-playing hallmates’ successes as they captured the Ivy League title and reached the NCAA tournament in the past two years. This past Sunday and Monday, the team made an appearance in the Madison Square Garden Holiday Tournament for the first time in about thirty years. Not only did they make an appearance, but they won the championship in impressive fashion: first with a buzzer-beating three-point shot in overtime against Davidson (that ended up on ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the Week!) and then by some very aggressive play against St. John’s, a perennial presence in the MSG Holiday Tournament. While I wish I could’ve been court-side at the Garden to watch the Red fight to victory two days in a row, I was able to watch the games from home on the MSG network. I think the whole world of Cornell sports fans was elated (to say the least) when the championship trophy was in the Red’s hands. It was Cornell’s first defeat of a Big East team in forty years. I can’t wait to see where the ’06-’07 residents of Court 4C (pictured above after a game in early 2007) take the team next. Let’s Go Red!

Tags:Basketball·Madison Square Garden

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas. Cornell, However, Begs to Differ.

December 19th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Weather, Winter Break 2009-2010

Cornell is home to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northeast Regional Climate Center, also known as the meteorological institution that perennially crushes my dreams of having a white Christmas in southwestern Connecticut. At around this time of year, the Cornell Chronicle, without fail, releases a seasonally appropriate press release highlighting the Climate Center’s predictions as to which places in the Northeast are most and least likely to have at least one inch of snow on the ground come December 25th. Contenders for the snowiest Christmases are, not surprisingly, remote parts of New Hampshire and New York that most people have never heard of. This year’s winner, with a 95% chance of a white Christmas, is Pinkham Notch, NH. Anyone heard of it?…Anyone?

Bridgeport, CT, closest to my home of those towns and cities highlighted on the list, has a 25% chance of a white Christmas. New York City, only an hour away, has a depressingly low statistic of 12%. Ithaca, of course, ranks a bit higher coming in with a 58% chance. While nobody needs to tell me that coastal Connecticut won’t be a winter wonderland come the 25th of December, seeing the numerical proof from your alma mater just makes the truth that much harder to swallow. But we can still dream of a white Christmas, can’t we?

Tags:Christmas·Snow·Weather·Winter Break

What are the Ethics of Getting Hungry While Studying the Ethics of Hunger?

December 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Academics, Awesome People, Fall 2009

One down, two to go.

On Thursday night I took my final exam for Food Policy for Developing Nations, a class that is on my list of all-time favorites at Cornell. Not only was the course material and structure great (case studies of real food policy issues abroad, presented briefly by teams of students and then debated by all ~30 students in the class), but Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen did an impressive job facilitating discussion, encouraging us to examine basic, underlying issues (i.e. “Are poor, starving people rational”?) that can shape policies and decision-making across the board. The class’s diversity also made the discussions that much more interesting: there were graduate and undergraduate students hailing from India, Algeria, Italy, Denmark, western Africa, and also those who grew up on farms in the northeast; their perspectives definitely made our daily discussions richer.

The structure of the class in which we all sat in a giant circle and discussed amongst ourselves meant that, by the end of the semester, we were all a relatively close group. Right before our exams were distributed, a student asked our Danish classmate to ask our professor (in Danish) if he would be willing to join us at a Collegetown bar at the end of the exam. The translated response? “Not a definite no”.

Tags:Final Exams·Per Pinstrup-Andersen·Professors

Red Hot Hockey II: Slightly Hotter than its Predecessor.

December 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments · Awesome People, Cornell Big Red, Cornell Daily Sun, Fall 2009, Photography

Having been given enough time to digest Thursday’s feast, approximately 12,000 Cornellians young and old converged on Madison Square Garden on Saturday night to watch Cornell and Boston University go head-to-head in a men’s hockey game, the second of such contests in two years.

The 2007 matchup resulted in a 6-3 loss at the hands of the Terriers, with BU scoring early and dominating the game, leaving Big Red fans with little to cheer for. I attended the game with my family, and we (along with everyone else at MSG, probably) were astounded by the atmosphere in ‘the world’s most famous arena’. It was the first time MSG had been sold out for a college hockey game, and most of the 18,200 fans were decked in red and white; BU and Cornell happen to have the same school colors, so it was nearly impossible to tell where the Cornell section ended and the BU section started until the first goal of the game was scored. Chills ran down the collective spine of Cornell fans when, during the performance of the national anthem, the ~11,000 Big Red supporters all yelled “RED!” at the proper moment, breaking the arena’s silence and causing the trumpeter to miss a note or two. Despite the final score, it was one of my favorite Cornell sporting events.

Fast forward to this past spring, when Cornell and BU jointly announced that Red Hot Hockey would be happening again. This time, I knew I would be able to photograph the event for the Daily Sun, but after Boston University won the NCAA men’s ice hockey championship, I was unsure of Cornell’s chances of victory in this rematch. Fortunately for Cornell, BU has lost many of its best players to graduation since last year, and the Big Red has been looking pretty good so far this season.

Arriving by train from Connecticut at New York’s Grand Central Terminal, I could see Cornell apparel everywhere I turned; when else is that possible? Entering the subway station, I came across not one, but two fellow editors from the Daily Sun; to be honest, this didn’t phase me. After having run into fellow Cornellians in three different countries over the past few years, a run-in at Grand Central paled in comparison. Surfacing at Penn Station / MSG, the streets were flowing with red. This was going to be another epic night.

After using MSG’s employee / media entrance (the first and probably last time I’ll ever get to do that…), I got my photographer credentials and made my way to the media hospitality suite. Brief tangent: Media hospitality suites are great; a nice pre-game buffet that is, without fail, entirely Italian food, a place to set up any mobile workstation that you’ve brought along, and the slight sense of relief that comes with not having to subject yourself to a $9 hot dog for nourishment.

As a photographer, shooting at MSG was definitely bound to be a highlight of my sports photography career at the Sun; the boards in each corner of the rink have holes for photographers to stick their lenses through (it’s incredibly difficult to get decent photos when shooting through scratched-up boards…and MSG’s are bad) and the lighting is far beyond that of any rink I’ve shot at before. The only gripe I had was the incredibly awkward positions of the photo holes; they were too high to shoot through while seated but too low to shoot through while standing. Each photographer ends up contorting him- or herself in the least painful way possible in order to get a clean shot; it undoubtedly took some getting used to.

All in all, my experience at the game was great; I had the chance to shoot on the ice during the pre-game ceremonies (as I was thinking to myself, “Let’s try not to fall in front of 18,200 people, okay?”), Cornell scored early and maintained a lead for most of the game, the crowd was just as energetic as it had been in 2007, and the game was much less one-sided than it had been at Red Hot Hockey version 1.0. During pauses in the game, MSG’s jumbotron displayed videos and slideshows from each school; at one point I looked up and saw a giant picture of my Food Policy for Developing Nations professor (aka “The Most Important Dane in the World“) in a Cornell slideshow; it’s a small / big red world. Despite all of the excitement of the game, it ended in a 3-3 tie after BU scored in the last minute of the third period and neither team could score in overtime. As quickly as everyone had come together at Madison Square Garden, red and white jerseys and hoodies dispersed into the New York City night, bound for post-game receptions with students, alumni, and friends. I headed home with my family on the train, eager to rest up before returning to Ithaca in the morning.

Hopefully Red Hot Hockey III will come to fruition someday; it’s on its way to becoming a regular tradition – one that I’d have no problem adding to my calendar year after year.

Thanksgiving, The North American Way.

November 26th, 2009 · No Comments · Academics, Fall 2008: Chile, Fall 2009, Food

My last Thanksgiving dinner featuring turkey was in 2007, during my sophomore year. Looking back, it seems like eons ago, but in the grand scheme of things it really hasn’t been too long.

Last year, during my fall semester in Chile, I couldn’t take the day to just lounge around the house and later consume copious amounts of autumnal gastronomic ecstasy. Turkeys were nearly impossible to come by in Chile, and that fact quickly fizzled our plans of coming together as a group of American students and fixing our own dinner. So after a day of sitting at my desk in my host family’s apartment, transcribing and translating interviews about Chilean salmon production from my field research from the weeks before, I took to the metro and joined up with the rest of the group at Las Vacas Gordas, an inexpensive yet tasty steakhouse in central Santiago’s classic Barrio Brasil. Fortunately we at least got to fill our stomachs to Thanksgiving-appropriate levels, but the post-dinner tryptophan attack was nowhere to be found; we (read: the majority of us who had not yet finished our huge research projects) returned to our respective apartments and houses across the eastern part of the city to continue the evening with Microsoft Word and our pages upon pages of notes.

Given that trip down memory lane, being home for Thanksgiving this year is especially sweet; I have the chance to see family and friends, to eat the foods the holiday was meant to be based upon (at least in modern American society), and best of all, I don’t have to spend all day transcribing interviews. That said, I’ve been trying to figure out my future and get a head start on some end-of-semester assignments that are inevitably going to be waiting for me upon my return to Ithaca. But I’ll be able to sleep on all of it; tryptophan will be here to help.

Tags:Chile·Thanksgiving

Sun Sickness.

November 19th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Cornell Daily Sun, Fall 2009

It was getting to be so obnoxious that I would have to leave the room in the middle of class to hack up a lung. This lingering cough of mine wasn’t showing any signs of disappearing, so I stopped by Gannett Health Services on Friday after my last class got out. Not only was the building surprisingly crowded, but the first two people to enter my waiting room after I had arrived turned out to be two fellow editors from the Daily Sun. The image of the three of us sitting, mask-over-face, squinting into the late afternoon sunlight in the waiting room, was partly entertaining but mostly just a reminder that it was November, a month in which final assignments start piling up and sleep deprivation is on the rise. We Sun editors had been warned about this earlier in the semester, when swine flu filled more headlines than it does now. The last thing we need is for a significant chunk of the editorial board to get some flu-like illness at the same time (although we could probably put out the paper from our respective beds using nothing but Google Docs, Gmail/GChat, and Google Wave).

The situation was worse than I anticipated when I arrived for our weekly editorial board meeting on Sunday and found the room surprisingly empty; even our fearless leader was bedridden. Those of us who were there were either a) hacking up a lung (count me in), or b) desperately trying not to get sick by whatever means possible (turtleneck over mouth, etc.). I boldly claimed at the meeting that I was “only congested”, yet, about six hours later, just after I got home from my evening at the office, I came down with a fever. Monday was spent in bed, and I unfortunately missed out on what ended up being an epic photo shoot for this Friday’s winter sports supplement in the paper. By Tuesday I was fever-free and rejoined my hacking and sniffling peers on campus. Now we have a little less than a week ’til Thanksgiving break (my first in two years), which promises everything from an intense hockey game to a high school reunion this year; should be a nice respite as it always is.

Tags:Gannett·H1N1·Health·Swine Flu·The Cornell Daily Sun

A Step Towards Immortality.

November 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Fall 2009

Today, wearing only one layer of clothing (ONE LAYER! ON NOVEMBER 9TH! IN ITHACA!), I made my way to Gannett Health Services, Cornell’s center for everything health-related, for a travel clinic appointment in anticipation of my trip to India in January with IARD 6020. Having traveled to various parts of tropical Latin America before, I’m no stranger to getting a shot here or taking some pills there to ward off malaria or something of the sort.

But what I was met with today was an extensive list of the health risks that face me upon arrival in India. For example, the mosquitoes that transmit malaria only are around from dusk to dawn, BUT their counterparts that carry other diseases for which there are no pre-exposure pills or shots happen to be flying around from dawn ’til dusk, ensuring that the visitor is constantly surrounded by tiny airborne menaces. Of course, everything in the world of travel medicine errs on the side of extreme caution and assuming I take the correct precautions, I should return to Cornell in one piece (as IARD 6020 students have for years) for the spring semester. That said, this list of health risks was matched by an equally impressive list of shots and pills that I should be taking: 4 shots and 2 sets of pills!

My arm might be a bit sore now after getting three of those shots today, but hey, I got the seasonal flu vaccine and the H1N1 vaccine without having to wait in an epically long line, PLUS the added bonus of inching towards immortality.

Tags:Gannett·Health·IARD 6020·India·Swine Flu·Winter Break

Taking the Long Way Home

November 2nd, 2009 · 8 Comments · Fall 2009, Photography

Last week as I headed back to collegetown from class on North campus, I decided to take a bit (read: 1.5 hours worth) of a detour. Instead of taking the direct route down East Avenue to the engineering quad, I wove my way around Beebe Lake and through some hidden parts of central campus (even central campus has its secrets, I’ve recently discovered). Armed with my camera, my goal was to document the autumnal scenery along my route, since this is sadly my last fall at Cornell. The pictures that follow document the trek. All photos are linked to their individual flickr pages.

Tags:

another beautiful day at cornell