The Best and the Brightest

As an Ivy League Institution, Cornell attracts some of the greatest young minds. Case in point:

1) The other day, I was going to eat breakfast in the dining hall in my dorm. I live on the fifth floor, so I have quite a few stairs to descend to get to the dining room, which I access by crossing over to the other side of the building on the second floor. On my way down, I caught myself passing the second floor landing and figured I just wasn't fully awake yet. One day later, I was returning from dinner and going up the stairs when I walked past the fifth floor and started up the flight to the (locked) roof. Stairs are hard.

2) When the weather could still be considered nice out, I was periodically going for bike rides. The other week, I biked out to the Arboretum and back just for the fun of it. As I was wrestling my bike back into the bike room, I shifted a gear. It’s not good for the bike to shift gears without pedaling, but I didn't want to wrangle my bike outside to pedal for fifteen or twenty feet, then have to get it back inside, so naturally I tried pedaling in the eight feet I had in the bike room. I’m sure it looked absolutely ridiculous, but I did eventually get my gear to shift to where it was supposed to be.

3) A couple weeks ago in lab, I showed off my impeccable lab skillz. Part of the procedure was to preweigh a round bottom flask, so I massed it and recorded the result in my lab notebook. After evaporating a solvent in the flask, leaving a white powdery product, I reweighed the flask and product. The total mass was less than the initial mass of the flask. I made negative mass! Not really. When I first weighed the flask, it was slightly wet. I thought that a little water wouldn't matter. Then I found out that the maximum amount of product I could make was 0.032 grams. That little water? Mattered. But it doesn't end there. I then ran my product and a standard solution on a chromatography plate. The general idea is to use a liquid to carry the two samples distances up the plate. My product moved. The standard did not.

Things Engineers Don’t Say

Rise and shine; 8 am classes are the best!
I get too much sleep.
It was really hard to choose my classes this semester because I had so many choices.
I should take more classes next semester.
Fugacity is my favorite physical chemistry topic.
I love everything about statistical mechanics.

Let’s name all our variables η.  That’s not confusing at all.

We should go faster in class. I understand everything.
Could you write messier? I can read your handwriting.
Taking notes on my computer is really easy. Especially the equations.
Poetry analysis? My favorite.
My essay is too long. I wish it could be single instead of double spaced.
I don’t know why I scheduled a lunch break. Having seven lectures in a row is great.
All labs should be windowless basement rooms lit by flickering light bulbs.
My lab technique is flawless.
I am so ready for the prelim tonight.
The textbook readings were super interesting this week.
I bought all five of my textbooks new and spent less than a hundred dollars.
I read three hundred pages of ancient Greek texts last night in an hour, no problem.
All my problem sets this week were easy and short.
Office hours? I never need office hours to get my problem sets done.
I don’t spend enough time working on my problem sets.
No class on Fridays or Mondays. Four day weekend!
My professor cancelled class. Again.
I have nothing to do tonight. Let’s go to a party.