I love humor. I genuinely enjoy making people laugh and I want to get better at it. Sometimes my jokes fail, other times they cause a lot of laughter. Attending this lecture was fantastic as I got to learn more about how to make my jokes more relatable for everyone. Situational humor is much better for forging bonds with everyone and breaking the ice in a tense situation. While situational humor is fantastic in having everyone relate to the joke, I am not great at situational humor, I am much better at puns. With the guidance from this lecture, I will work to perfect my situational humor skills while also working more on my puns.
Author Archives: rem359
Getting to Know Our House Fellows
It was really interesting to get to know more about Professor Ken Roberts and Vice President Ryan Lombardi. It was great to hear them talk about their journeys from being in college to where they are now and how they feel about activism at Cornell. They support and encourage students to have an active voice, to speak up about issues that matter to them. It was also great to hear how much Vice President Lombardi cares about the student population. I was pleasantly surprised by how open he is to meeting with students, telling all of us that if we wanted to connect with him, all we had to do was send him an email and he will get back to us. I really appreciate how much he cares about us as it can sometimes feel like higher up administrators anywhere have no time to connect to the student populations.
Perfecting My Scarf
Since the last crocheting workshop, I worked tirelessly on my scarf. I crocheted a little before bed, during meetings, and while I was waiting for my professors to start class. But as I progressed, I realized that I made a mistake in all of my stitches. And being the perfectionist that I am, I could not let that stand. So I spent the first part of this workshop pulling apart my scarf as my friend who was new to the workshop was beginning her scarf. I unraveled, she began her scarf. It was fun going back to the beginning and helping my friend learn the stitches that I had learned last time (though I made sure not to make the same mistakes again). It was also helpful to hear how everyone else was doing with their scarves. Some other participants also had to start over several times to get it right. But even though we had to start over, it is so much fun to crochet and it is a very calming activity. I hope that I will have a new scarf soon to wear around campus!
Crocheting or Knitting?
My mom taught my sister how to crochet when we were younger. Being the younger sister, I also wanted to learn, but lacked the fine motor skills to do a good job of it. My mom let me start off with chaining, but I never got past that stage. There were a few times that I tried picking up crocheting again, but I never succeeded in getting very far, especially since all of my stitches were very uneven, making my creations flare in and out as I tried to adjust for my lack of control over my stitches. Over this past Thanksgiving, I picked up knitting. I successfully completed two projects with even stitches, impressing my mom who was not a big knitter. When this workshop was offered, I jumped at the chance to try crocheting again. Since I was able to have even knitting stiches, I was hoping my success would transfer over to crocheting. And it did, sort of. My stitches are a lot more even this time around, but they are still uneven to a certain extent. But it takes practice, and practice I will.
Check!
I loved chess when I was in third grade. I used to play during recess all the time. After third grade though, I stopped playing chess on a regular basis and eventually stopped playing altogether. This past year, I have started to pick up chess again and play for fun without worrying too much about strategy. This virtual chess meet was perfect for me! It was a lot of fun playing with a lot of people that I have never played before. Everyone was really good, especially under the pressure of a timer. Playing with a timer was a new experience and I almost always ran out of time because I took too long to make decisions. I will work on thinking through my next steps faster so that next time I play with a timer, I will not run out of time!
Calligraphy Pens are Pretty, but Require Skill
Participating in the second part of the calligraphy workshop was a lot of fun. My suitemates and I all sat together and tried to write. My one friend and I had participated in the other workshop and were comparing how our new pen which we heard was good for calligraphy compared to the different pen style that we got last time, which had gotten several comments about being difficult to write with. Having gotten used to that pen which required a specific angle to work with the chiseled pen tip to make the calligraphy look pretty, the new pen, a brush pen, was much more difficult for me to work with. I had not yet developed the skills to regulate how much pressure I put on the pen depending on whether I was doing a down stroke. While all my strokes looked similar, it was a fun experience seeing how everyone else worked with the brush pen. I cannot wait until I have time over the summer to continue to work on my calligraphy!
Guess What I Drew!
Pictionary was a lot of fun. Sitting in the common room of the suite with my suitemates and drawing with the rest of the Rose Scholars participants brought a great sense of community. While we did not verbally talk a lot among us, we created a great sense of community by giving each other thumbs up or hints or tips. Everyone’s drawings were fantastic and it was fascinating to see how everyone interpreted a drawing differently. It really brought home how you view art is based on your experiences. It also took a lot of creativity on the drawers part to make their drawing as easy as possible to know what it is. And that was hard! Sometimes the options for what to draw are not easy, like Usain Bolt, but everyone did a fantastic job drawing every word they got. This relaxing event was great to participate in after having a long week.
Did you know that….?
Saturday afternoon trivia was such a fun activity among a very stressful week. It was relaxing to play with friends and learn an assortment of random facts. It brought back a lot of fun memories of high school when I played trivia competitively on a team and watched Jeopardy! every night with my family. It was a lot of fun trying to remember everything that I knew and trying to guess on the facts that I never heard of. The group was a lot of fun and I learned so much about Cornell. My new knowledge about Cornell and Ithaca has made me appreciate the ice cream sundae even more as we go to school near the birthplace of the ice cream sundae! I hope that we can have more trivia events in the future!
Beautiful Writing is Not Easy
Writing neatly and legibly has never been my forte, and my handwriting gets exponentially worse each year. My letters are usually crooked and squashed into each other. My words barely have spaces in between them, so reading my writing is like trying to decipher a poorly preserved ancient document in English. But this calligraphy workshop amazed me that even I could produce a handwritten piece of art that was shockingly legible and pretty. It was amazing to relearn the alphabet and to learn it in a very specific manner. Calligraphy is very particular about the strokes, which I believe if I paid more attention to the order at which I scribble down the lines and dots comprising my letters, it would look better. But even though my letters look better, it took a lot of effort to write many of the letters well. In fact, I am still trying to write an ‘A’ that is not lopsided. I cannot wait until the next calligraphy workshop to continue to learn and practice this beautiful form of art!
The Beauty of Sound
The DIY Old Time Radio event was fascinating. I loved learning about how important sound was to these shows, often being defining features of this prominent form of entertainment from the 30s through the 60s. Often, I feel like I do not appreciate the thought that goes into movie or TV show sound effects because I rarely acknowledge the presence of music or other sounds in these forms of entertainment. I am too focused on the visual aspect, and I miss a lot this way. I miss how the music becomes tense or becomes sad. I miss out on these fantastic cues, but when I listened to the radio show clips played for us like the Dragnet opening, I only had the sound to pay attention to, which enhanced the listening experience. The emphasis on sound and how visuals detract from the entertainment experience reminds me of music and music videos. I notice that when I listen to music, I pay a lot more attention to the song without the video to distract me. I learned a lot from this event and I hope to be able to pursue learning more about old radio shows in the future.