In case I haven’t said it enough, this fall was really, really busy. Between AAIV, Cornell Productions, pep band, rock climbing, and, oh yeah, actual classes, I didn't have a whole lot of time to sit around staring at the walls. With all the eventfulness came a fair amount of excitement, which leads us into this semester’s list of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell.
1. Madison Square Garden: My first time at Madison Square Garden, I not only got to see Cornell’s men’s hockey team play, but I also got to play with the pep band at the game. It was quite an adventure.
2. Unsupervised baking: As the semester wound down, some friends and I managed to get together and do some baking. So far we've made lemon bars and mini apple pies, and I made (not very cheesy) cheese crackers all by myself. The main thing about cooking in college is that you want recipes with as few ingredients as possible. Everything also has to be done by hand with basic tools. Pastry cutter? Don’t have one. I don’t even have salt, but flour has taste by itself, right?
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| Mini apple pies |
3. Mariinsky Orchestra: This was part of the Cornell Concert Series at Bailey Hall, and I was working backstage for Cornell Productions during the concert. They played Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5, and they were very good. Besides putting away the hundreds of chairs and stands, we also helped to load their truck. It takes a lot of wardrobes to clothe an entire orchestra.
4. Small group: Here’s how the story goes. At the end of summer one of my friends emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in being a core member for her small group. To be a core member I “just had to show up.” I said okay, because showing up isn't too hard once you commit your time to it. Sometime in the middle of the semester, my friend asks me if I’d like to prep for small group with her. I said, yeah, sure, because it would be good to see how preparation for small group goes. As we’re going through the passage, she asks me if I’d like to lead that week. Well, then. So much for just showing up. [I did end up saying yes and leading. And it was a good experience.]
5. First ChemE presentation: At the end of Mass and Energy Balances, we didn't have a written final, but we had to make a group presentation about our efforts to reduce the flow rate of carbon into the atmosphere. I was working with my Intro to ChemE group from last year and my current roommate. Apparently it isn't enough for chemical engineers to take all the same classes. We also do homework together, have meals together, and live together. It’s great.
Quite frankly, I can’t narrow down an entire semester to a few events and call them the most exciting things that happened to me in the past four months. I went hiking and saw waterfalls, helped to plan several AAIV events, got to use the very nice sound board the Bear’s Den has while working for Cornell Productions, spent hours yelling at Cornell sports teams, spent more hours hanging upside down at the bouldering wall, stayed up past midnight way too many times arguing with Mathematica or writing essays the morning they were due, trekked a couple hundred miles across campus, complained about anything and everything, and generally had a phenomenal time. And I get to do it all over again next semester.
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