Last week, I attended the last coffee chat of the year. It was hosted by Blalock as he reflected on the past six years as house professor at Rose. Every 6 years, a new house professor is brought in and, unfortunately, Blalock’s time has come to an end. It was so inspiring to hear everything he was able to accomplish during his time here at Rose. He listed off so many accomplishments but the two that stuck out to me the most of were creating the scholar’s program and eliminating car accessibility on west campus by putting up the two lifting gates on each side. I had never even paid much attention to the fact that there were very little cars on west campus. However, he shared that pizza delivery cars used to be speeding on west campus every night. Though I do wish I could have fresh pizza delivered to the building instead of having to walk to baker flagpole to pick it up, I am even more grateful that we are able to walk around safely at any hour of the night.

One of my favorite parts of living in Rose is the fact that the staff is so caring for the residents and everyone else in the Rose community. Throughout the talk, you can really tell that Blalock dedicated so much time and effort into making this a better place for everyone to live and spend their time at. I’ve talked to him a couple times in the dining hall and he always makes sure to ask how we are doing and make sure that everything is running smoothly. Though I have only known him for a year, I am confident of how much of an impact he has made on this community and I’m sure his influence will live on for the years to come.

Ithaca as I know it has always been a wee bit off the map as far as cities go. However, this week I learned that Ithaca was once a place where trade with New York was abundant. Professor Blalock taught us a bit of the history of Ithaca’s geographical history this past Monday. He began the talk by asking me and two other attendees about our knowledge of city planning. I honestly did not know much and guessed it was basically involved a group of government city planners in a room mapping out a course for the city. And I was right, city planning involves just that. It involves a lot more too, of course. The purpose of city planning is to ensure that as the city grows, certain measures are put in place for the accommodation of more people. These measures include rules for drainage, sewage, what types of buildings should be built where, and more. And apparently, Texas cities do not have proper building zoning laws. The flooding in Houston after the hurricane could not have been as bad as it was. We also talked about flooding in Ithaca as well. Did you know that downtown Ithaca was built at the bottom of a hill? As a result, it experienced intense flooding, until an artificial river was created to redirect the water to Cayuga Lake. And it’s on this lake that old farmers would take their produce along the lake to Lake Hudson near New York City to sell their wares. That river has now been replaced with a highway, which we are all familiar with since we do not have to take a boat to the city. I love learning to the city of Ithaca and what it was like hundreds of years ago!

At last week’s Rose Cafe we had GRF Shiv come speak about his research and work on growing mini organs outside of the body. I had heard of this advancement in science a while back and found it fascinating, but what blew my mind was how fast it had grown and progressed into a huge and legitimized field with so much work being done in it. Shiv’s work focuses on lymph nodes, the nodes in our body that keep us clean and healthy from foreign dangers to our cells. He makes mini lymph nodes that fabricate a quantity of antibodies in 4 days that would take previous methods using mice about one year to produce. This, along with the cost-effective nature of these new methods makes this a very promising medical advancement that will likely lead to many cures in diseases and cancers in the coming future. Shiv also talked about the implications this has on personalized medicine and eventual tissue replacements once the technology progresses to that point, this would mean our individual medical experiences would be tailored to our bodies and genes, rather than in the generic way that we are treated now.

This growth in technology in this new industry left me very stunned, I could not believe that scientists and researchers had been able to accomplish such amazing things in such a short span of time. It’s quite fascinating thinking of mini tonsil-like organisms in a petri dish pumping out the very same things that my body pumps out but in less time and after being made by a human from scratch. It was very inspiring to hear Shiv’s motivations and ambitions in being a pioneer in this field, driven by joining the fight against cancer.

On April 26th, I was able to attend the mini-seminar series that pertained to bystander intervention. We watched multiple scenarios which are could be ideal for a bystander. The first was a potential sexual assault, which was interesting to see because there was a man who was trying to take a girl who was way too inebriated upstairs. A group of her friends saw this and came to divide both of the people to stop something from potentially escalating. The second scenario was a girl of a different race than her friends being denied access into a party by one of the brother’s whose fraternity was throwing the party. The friends decided to leave the party instead of going in. Third, was a hazing situation in which a roommate sacrificed his sleep to console his shaken up roommate who came in late. Fourth, was a person struggling with an academic program, because they were not doing well and started questioning their ability to do their program. Another person overheard their strife and decided to talk to them, and was gave them advice to ask for help. Another was that a person, came to a party and drank way too much, they ended up blacking out. Their friends were wondering what to because they didn’t want to ruin the party, but eventually they called 911 because their could have been dire consequences.

All these scenarios were very realistic. What I learned was don’t stand around and expect to something to happen, when you have the opportunity to, because you never know what can happen.

Last week, I attended Rose Cafe, where GRF Sara began to share with us her PhD studies in Romance and Fantasy. She described Romance, not as a term that people use to describe their intimate relationships with each other, but more of a relationship with hardships. Specifically, those that were in the medieval times. When she inevitably brought up fantasy, all I could begin thinking about were the various books or movies that I would read or watch that allowed my imagination to go wild. Especially, when I read a book I felt like I could really visualize the situations that were happening and always had questions. Usually, these questions were about why characters could not do something a different way or why they were treated a certain way. Like I mentioned earlier, fantasy just allows one to let their mind roam free and untamed. It reminds me of nostalgia.

Enjoying something that does that for you creates a feeling that is called nostalgia. Nostalgia brings us now busy college students a longing for the simplistic times. To be completely honest I feel that there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, as long as this longing does not consume us but instead motivates us to continue to work hard because simpler times will be ahead.

This week’s table talk discussed the TED talk, which was titled “Quitting Social Media”. In the video, the speaker explained the three excuses people say in his response to quit social media. First, people said that social media was fundamental technology, in which he explained that technically it includes fundamental technology but can not be defined as that. He said that social media was a form of entertainment and only addictive, because of attention engineers who promote products that cater to the individuals interests. I actually agree with this statement, because social media is extremely addictive because it creates a sense of euphoria, in which people can distract themselves from their current circumstances.  Secondly, was that people said it was vital to success in the 21st century, because social media helps building a brand and if you don’t have it people won’t know who you are. He explained that people that develop, “real skills and have a repertoire of deep work” will be searched for by employers. I felt this was kind of condescending. I understand that the speaker is a professor and that takes a lot of work to get to where he is. However, a lot of people use social media to entertain people with their personalities or other forms of videos such as pranks, or a discussion on topics. Thirdly, people said that social media is harmless and fun, that they may miss out. He explained that distracting ourself with social media, fragments our thinking and concentration which can cause a permanent decline. College students seem the most affected by social media, because it can cause physiological and psychological problems. Such as isolation, anxiety, and depression because of the portrayal of perfection on social media. This was enlightening because, it explains why it is hard to difficult things when we have stimuli that allows us to distract ourselves.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to watch the highly acclaimed film, Before Night Falls. This film, based on an autobiography, brought to light the life and trials of Reinaldo Arenas, a brilliant Cuban novelist. The crux of the film revolved around how Arenas explored his sexuality amidst the harsh political climate that surrounded him. What I admired most about this film was how genuine and direct it was. The movie did an excellent job at making you feel uncomfortable and presented the atrocities of the Castro regime in the damning way. The film is very passionate and provides a great insight into the mind of Arenas in such a turbulent time.

Moreover, this film gave me some flashbacks to Junot Diaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both pieces of work share similar aspects in the form of characters exploring their sexuality, and how oppressive governments limit the rights of individuals. In the case of Oscar Wilde, this happens in the form of him trying to find his true love and how Rafael Trujillo’s government was nothing short of tyrannical.

In all, I believe that this movie was a wonderful film that truly lives up to the critical acclaim and is one that I highly recommend.

A couple days ago I attended a table talk with GRF Seema and fellow Rose scholars and we discussed the history of bike sharing systems worldwide. We dove into how these systems influenced the lives of people in a variety of different countries across hundreds of years. In Europe, in the mid-1800’s there were many fatal accidents involving automobiles and as the number of children dying because of these incidents increased, the concern regarding these vehicles grew stronger. Soon, policymakers began to consider alternative means of transportation that would not pose such a high threat to pedestrians and other members of society. Many iterations of bike sharing systems were created and implemented starting in Europe but like any other technology, the first implementations failed. However, in 1991 Denmark (now one of the leaders in amount of people using bicycles for commuting) launched the “next generation” bike sharing system in Farso.

Many countries have since implemented similar bike sharing programs, however, there is still a long way to go to improve the numbers. During the talk, I couldn’t help but think that a system like this would never work in my hometown of Miami, FL. Commuting basically anywhere in Miami requires a car because of the poor public transit systems. Also, there is a high chance that wherever you will be commuting to requires taking an extremely busy highway. Implementing bicycles into the city would only work for leisure around the beach/dock areas, if that.

I enjoyed this talk because it made me realize how helpful these systems could be in cities that are designed in conjunction with them and how city planners should keep initiatives like this in mind when thinking of ways to create ways cities that work for everyone.