More than just Guide Dogs

Posted on 12/07/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

Last Friday, I went to the Guide Dog meet and greet. It turns out that on top of training dogs to essentially be the eyes of the blind, guide dogs can also get trained for those with other disabilities as well. Two that stood out to me in particular were that they can be trained to help people who are deaf/mute and those who are autistic. Specific dogs are chosen early on to serve in these positions and they are trained solely for these people. Autistic children, I learned, tend to have a behavior called “bolting,” in which they essentially just run away under any form of stress. Dogs that are trained for autistic children are usually fitted with a sort of strap around their bodies and this strap has a handle that the child is supposed to hold. If the dog feels any tension on this handle, the dog is trained to lie down and act as an anchor so that the child doesn’t run away. If that’s not both clever on both the trainer’s and dog’s parts, then I don’t know what is. It turns out that autistic children who have guide dogs have almost entirely stopped the behavior of bolting as a result of this effective technique.

The guide dog program is such a heartwarming, loving organization with caring trainers and beautiful dogs. They are the epitome of everything society should strive to be. (Hint: if anyone is looking to be a guide dog trainer, they apparently have a few locations in the area!)

In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures of some very furry friends I made:

Give Yourself a Break: Put Down Your Backpack

Posted on 11/20/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

I’ve been at Cornell for about 3 months now and I’ve quickly learned how intense classes can get and how everything just seems to pile up in a matter of days. It becomes very difficult to stay on top of work and as a result, our stress accumulates to the point where we we can no longer handle it. It seems like the workload will never end and no matter how much you get done, you still feel behind. Last Thursday, I went to THRIVE @ Cornell to see how professionals suggest we handle it.

We’ve all heard about the typical “do your homework a little bit at a time” and “don’t wait until the night before to finish your assignments” spiel. This time, it was different. We got a much deeper, more interactive approach about how we should deal with stress. It was so much more realistic–the speakers understood that sometimes we just get behind, that sometimes we have to pull all nighters. My favorite demonstration was the opening for the event: she told us to pick up whatever was closest to us (I picked up the plate I stacked with cheese and crackers) and hold it above our heads and for how long we thought we would be able to hold it up. Even though the weight of the object doesn’t change, the burden it carries does. This was her analogy to stress.

She went on to tell us that there exists a scale of stress levels and at a certain point, stress leads to maximum productivity. But that threshold is small and falling into the unproductive, unhealthy stress zone is very easy. Sometimes we have to know when enough is enough and take off the metaphorical stress-backpacks we carry. The best way to deal with stress is to know when it’s starting to go over the threshold and take action to stop it from throwing us over the edge.

Too Many Emotions to Actually Come up with a Coherent Title: The Story of me Watching Hamlet

Posted on 11/13/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

I am a huge Benedict Cumberbatch fan. HUGE. I have watched every episode of Sherlock probably twice by now (which is pretty intense because each episode is 90 minutes long) and have taken so many Buzzfeed quizzes just because they mention his name. But even more than that, I’m a big Shakespeare fan. I love the intense emotional connection he pours into his plays and the constant suspense. In a way, he writes with a sense of realism. Even though the plots of his plays are rather hard to relate, the feelings invoked in each character are eerily real. Shakespeare (or whoever his cowriters were) wrote plays that have the unique characteristic of being able to transcend time to still be relevant to an audience centuries later.

Benedict Cumberbatch addresses this perfectly. As biased as I am towards him, I will try to put that aside for the purposes of this post. He really reaches the inner complexity of a character as famous as Hamlet. But even aside from that, the production itself was mesmerizing: particularly the lights. Without giving away too many spoilers, there was one scene that I will never be able to forget–a character sets off to a questionable suicide and right before she goes, the lights turn completely white and she appears to pull herself into a different world. It gave me the chills.

Actually, prior to this play I hadn’t read Hamlet at all, so I just googled a summary before I went to the event. But after watching this production, I spend the weekend reading the original work. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything I would have changed. The director was very smart in his choices and he really made the most of an already incredible play. I tried to take some pictures with my phone, but I couldn’t do it justice. So I copied some pictures off the internet for you (these pictures are actually exactly the same quality we watched at Cinemapolis):

Legends of the City

Posted on 11/02/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

My first trip to Cinemopolis was last Monday and it came with more perks than just a free pass to see an incredible documentary. Before the film, Mayor Svante Myrick gave came to talk to us. He explained his deep admiration for the featured individuals and he decided to create a day here in Ithaca to honor one of the progressive activists of early 20th century New York history. I actually witnessed the declaration of a new holiday. From here on in Ithaca, October 26th is Afrika Bambaataa Day! I took a couple of pictures of Mayor Svante and Afrika Bambaataa to the best of my ability (please excuse the picture quality… I had to zoom in a bit and try very hard not to be creepy)

Afrika Bambaataa at the discussion panel speaking about his work and about the film

The premise of the film was to convey the change from brutal, territorial gang life in the city to peaceful unification through the outlet of music. The movie explored the underlying expectations created by racism and social class in the 20th century as well as the process in overcoming these social expectations and create a more loving, friendly community.

Mayor Svante addressing the public and declaring the new holiday!

My favorite part of the evening was after the film though. We had the opportunity to meet the film’s director (Shan Nicholson), Mr. Bambaataa, as well as other individuals who made significant contributions to the field. They held a discussion section in which they spoke to struggles in the past as how they appear to parallel to the present. I took a picture of the discussion panel as well (again, ignore my inaptitude in photography).

On the far left of the photograph is Shan Nicholson and on the far right is Afrika Bambaataa.

A Creative Endeavor

Posted on 10/23/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

My absolute favorite Rose event thus far was definitely last week’s mask making at the Johnson. Admittedly, the event was very different than I had initially perceived. I thought the event was going to be a quick masquerade style mask making festival with feathers and plastic string masks. To my surprise, the event was so much cooler: we took a quick tour of different historical masks used for tribal rituals and festivals. From there, we walked into a very artsy room, we got our own smocks, we chose our own paints, and we got a blank imprint to design.

Those 90 minutes were the most relaxing 90 minutes I’ve had since I’ve been here: no school, no work, no prelims; it was just me and my thoughts. I spent about half the time trying to figure out what colors to use and how I wanted the mask to look. The whole process was very stress-free and it allowed me to just sit down and think about my life (one of those deep introspective conversations).

Here are the masks we made:

Mine is the red one; my friend made the black (much more creative, artsy) one.

A Surprising Fate

Posted on 10/15/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

Last Thursday was probably one of the heaviest days I’ve had at Cornell. I watched the documentary on Amy Winehouse, and it was actually quite different from my expectations. I had never really known too much about her prior to watching the movie–basically, I knew she was an incredible singer and that she had some drug problems.

What I found so interesting about this documentary, and what probably made it that much more impacting, was that the none of the movie included high-definition Hollywood reenactments. It was almost entirely low-quality clips and pictures from cell phone cameras played in sequence. This gave the movie so much more of a realistic quality. So despite the fact that she is known for being an incredibly famous musician, she is just another person at the core.

Another important point I’d like to make is that the movie focused so much more on her passion for music than he drug problem. I was expecting to sit in a 90 minute film about the slow degradation of a once brilliant star as a result of an increasing addiction to drugs. However, the movie focused so much more on her social relationships and her love for singing. The end of the movie, essentially her death, came as quite a surprise because there was so little discussion of the cause for it. This may have the effect of paralleling to her family’s perception of her rather than the twisted media portrayal–they saw her as a loved one with an incredible talent and drive, slowly being pulled away by negative relationships.

The Troubling Reality we Tend to Ignore

Posted on 10/02/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

I’d like to start with some statistics. From the most recent campus climate survey:

50% of Cornell survey respondents reported that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment since enrolling at Cornell. Fifty percent.

Of students who have been/are in relationships, 8% have experienced intimate partner violence. Eight percent.

7% of students reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact since enrolling at Cornell. Seven percent.

Yesterday I went to my first student assembly meeting with some fellow scholars. In all honestly, I hadn’t really thought much about the prevalence of such issues on campus. We’re in college and we all went through Orientation Week–we watched Tapestry and Speak About It. We all know what consent is and that sexual harassment is a serious issue…Right? Perhaps not. Having said this, I urge you to take a moment and really think about those numbers. How is this acceptable?

After an initial speech by President Garrett and a Q&A session, the floor opened up for students, faculty, and staff to bring up issues they have noticed around campus. In conjunction with the initial statistics of this blog, I found out that apparently almost half of this year’s freshman do not even recall going through any sort of sexual assault awareness programs during orientation week. Nearly half of them forgot or did not attend. I understand that everyone is very busy, but is this not a serious enough issue on which to take action?

Another point brought up was that some students do not feel safe on campus walking home alone late at night. I’ve been thinking about this. Sometimes I don’t feel safe when I come late from studying or a friend’s dorm. Why is that? I know we are told to stay in large groups and be smart about what time we walk around campus, but why should it be our faults for staying in the library to study for prelims or to spend a late night at a friend’s dorm, blasting music and talking about the little things, to take our minds off prelims? Isn’t the heart of the problem that people aren’t explicitly told that it is not okay to follow someone home? Why is it that people are told never to pick up a drink after they’ve left it on the table and not that it is unacceptable to drug someone’s drink?

I know these issues are very heavy, but they need to be brought more into the light. The biggest problem, I feel, is that there is a very strong stigma attached to these topics. We are a community and we have to not only tear down these stigmas, but also come up with ways to improve the sexual assault education on campus and provide a stronger network for prevention, discussion, and support. Thoughts?

Too Hot to Handle: Pepper Party 2015

Posted on 09/21/2015 by Nalli Muthiah

Prior to attending Saturday’s Pepper Party at the Plantations (the alliteration was intentional), I have to admit, my pepper vocabulary was limited to say the least. Spicy peppers, sweet peppers, and maybe the occasional jalapeno peppers on my pizza. But I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I learned everything about peppers within the hour I spent walking around the field. I can tell you, though, I got to try some great food, meet some great people, and find out some great things I didn’t know before.

Early on, I went to a booth where they spoke solely to the chemistry of the pepper. (I have to tell you, chemistry is my absolute favorite subject, so the fact that there were people here talking just about chemistry made me happier than you can imagine.) Capsaicin, pictured below, is the predominantly active molecule in peppers; the more capsaicin, the spicier the pepper. It turns out that it’s actually kind of hard to measure the amount of capsaicin in a pepper, so how they ranked peppers before the technology was developed was essentially a taste test. They’d soak peppers in water and ask people to drink the water until they tasted the heat. Nice.

*Also, if you look really closely at the picture of capsaicin, you can see another model behind it. They were also giving out marshmallows and coffee stirrers so that we could make our own capsaicin models. As tempted as I was to accept the offer, I figured I should probably put my O-Chem model kit to use.

I also played a game. If I could correctly name 11 different peppers, I’d get a special surprise. Naturally, I was all for this. Among my favorite peppers were Mini Chocolate Bell peppers, Monkey Face peppers, and Medusa peppers (which are apparently named for the plant, not the shape of the pepper). Unfortunately I had already taken a bite of my prize by the time I decided to take a picture, but the thought is what counts.

From chocolate pepper truffles to pepper mustard to pepper gummies to fresh peppers, this pepper party was definitely hot. I had a lot of fun and I’d strongly recommend a trip to the plantations to anyone who’s thinking about it.

~Nalli Muthiah

Rose Scholars Blog Fall 2015

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