So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, part 4 of 3

It’s the last day of November. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s my annual post.

After four long, crazy, adventure-filled, fun, and busy years at Cornell, I graduated at the end of May. That’s four years of dining hall breakfasts, morning classes in Olin, afternoon recitations in Olin, before-dinner bouldering, evenings at Lynah, nights back in Olin, midnight snacks, and late nights with only a roommate and a P-chem book for company. I couldn’t have done it – not so well or with so much enjoyment – without a lot of people.

So thank you to the following people, listed in alphabetical order by height:

The Cornell Big Red Pep Band, and in particular the clarinet section. There’s no other group I’d rather watch sprint football, lacrosse, field hockey, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, wrestling, tennis, or hockey with.

AAIV (Asian American InterVarsity) and SCF (Summer Christian Fellowship), for Wednesday night barbeque, Thursday and Friday night large group, and prayers and lessons every day. Even if no event, whether big of small, ever started on time, which drove might have driven me slightly crazy. Also thanks to my GUPpie for advice and encouragement over meals for three years and email after that.

Bethel Grove Bible Church, my home-away-from-home church, for hymns, sermons, bagels and apple juice, and the people I met and got to know during my time there.

Cornell Outdoor Education, for four great PE classes and many hours at Lindseth and Noyes. Keep calm and climb on.

The Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, including the office and building staff who kept Olin running smoothly, the grad students who shared our space and TA’d us, and the professors who taught us everything we never wanted to know.

The ChemE class of 2016. After more hours in Olin than we could count, three-hour-long prelim marathons, beating Aspen into submission, and surviving Unit Ops lab and senior design, I just have one thing to say: We did it.

The 4D Ricktatorship. Rick, for keeping us all in line and sharing wine. Coral, for late night kitchen table homework sessions/snacks and mutual understanding over lab woes. Sasha, for being the sane one in the apartment. Daryl, for 7-11 ice cream, robots, and being our housecat. And T Dawg, for Wegmans runs, planning AAIV events, and being my roommate. (And Michonne, for completing the roommate triangle and for mutual enjoyment of The Walking Dead, beer, random rambling, Sherlock, “Hardware Store,” and unnecessarily long hikes.)

And finally, all the other friends and family who had meals, embarked on adventures, and suffered through classes with me, listened to me rant, paid my tuition, and generally put up with me.

To everyone: Thank you very much for all the fish.

Class of 2016

The previous post about brings us to graduation, minus a few things I might go back and write about later if I feel like it. First things first: I graduated. It was not without much ceremony, pomp, and circumstances beyond our control, because what would be a graduation from Cornell without getting sunburned at Convocation and being caught in the middle of a thunderstorm at Commencement? Yeah, that happened.

My family arrived on Friday evening, after getting a first-ever flat tire within an hour of leaving the house. Maybe that should have been a clue it was going to be an interesting weekend. Saturday morning, we joined thousands of other families and students at Schoellkopf Field to hear performances by the band and chorus, a bunch of random people’s speeches, and James Franco, after which everyone left. My family stayed until the bitter, salty¹ end. Yes, it was hot, but the last guy, whoever he was, deserved to be heard too.

Convocation at Schoellkopf

I spent the last of my BRB’s at Trillium for special graduation weekend lunches, then we went to Watkins Glen. The gorge trail was insanely busy, with people doing such things as pushing strollers, letting hoards of children run/stop as they pleased, and leisurely strolling down the path two by two. I generally don’t mind how people choose to walk/hike at state parks unless it’s dangerous, but you probably shouldn’t, out of general courtesy, center your stroller in the middle of the trail or block the entire path when it’s that busy.

Falls at Watkins Glen.
The people density is crazy high for a hike.

Anyway, the hike was still nice, especially at the end where the crowds thinned out a lot. We ended the day with burgers at the Glenwood Pines. Nothing fancy, but they make solid burgers. I generally refuse to eat fast food burgers, so if I’ll eat it, it has to have some minimum quality. With that resounding endorsement², I returned to my apartment for my last night(!) there.

The next morning was humid and overcast, but Cornell made the decision to go ahead with outdoor Commencement, so all six thousand or so of us lined up on the arts quad to make the trek over to the stadium. The weather held . . . for about half an hour, when the engineering school was getting seated. We sat in the pouring rain while the remaining students entered, sat through speeches while thunder rumbled in the distance, and got more soaked. Finally, after several cycles of kind of clearing but not really, the ceremony was cut short, all six thousand degrees were conferred at once, and we were dismissed to our department ceremonies. Ours was, naturally, in Olin. Where else?

We were split up by design group, because Olin doesn’t have a lecture hall large enough for all ninety-six of us plus families. The design professors were tasked with saying something nice about every student, we were presented with a fake diploma, and with that, we were done.

We hung around for snacks and pictures, but after four years, 130+ credits, and countless hours in Olin, we had our Chemical Engineering degrees. It felt . . . good. And strange, with a side of weird thrown in. But mostly good.

¹From all the sweat. It was ninety degrees with full sun.
²I really do like their burgers. And they have a fun hidden object placemat.

Some People Are Worth Freezing For

In this special Valentine’s Day edition of things to do when it’s zero degrees out, my roommate and I put on four layers of clothing, hats, gloves, and boots, and go for a walk. We were hanging around Cornell for February break and my friend got the idea to take a walk. She invited another of our friends, who declined the invitation (I have no idea why. I only lost feeling in my face as soon as I stepped out of my apartment.), so the two of us set out for the arboretum by ourselves.

Part of the reason for our trip was so that we could go sledding. The arboretum is one of the places the Cornell police department encourages people to sled, and there’s a decent sledding hill, which feels more than decent when you’re biking it, at the end of the entrance road. We joined the few others sledding at the top and prepared to send ourselves hurtling down on a piece of plastic. The snow was pretty dry and packed down so it was a fast ride. I managed to not injure myself, which is always a good thing. After a few runs we continued on our journey.

View from the Newman Overlook

We looped around to the overlook, took some pictures, then began the long trek back to West Campus. By this time, my feet finally started to warm up, which I appreciated, and I could still feel my fingers, so the coldest part of me was my face. I’d still say I was feeling better than the time I was going back to North Campus after pep band and my toes got so cold it took a good fifteen minutes to warm them up. Or the other time I was walking back to West Campus after hockey and the air temperature was below zero with windchill bringing it down near to negative forty. Hockey is worth it.

We arrived back at the top of the slope just in time to see the sunset around three pm five. After ending our journey walking romantically into the sunset, we parted ways to go thaw out. The next day, we participated in more appropriate February activities with our other friends (dinner and Sherlock - the BBC series). And six weeks later when Ithaca was mostly unfrozen, we hiked the Cayuga Trail (again).

Sunset over West Campus

Rafting and Wine Tasting (Not at the Same Time)

In between Slope Day and graduation, I had a couple finals, a presentation, and Senior Days. Some schools have commencement the day after the last final, but Cornell leaves half a week between the last scheduled final and graduation. During those days, there are events ranging from whitewater rafting and laser tag to wine tasting and fancy lunches. From the title of this post, you may have been able to surmise that I went rafting and to the wine tasting.

I usually kayak flatwater a few times during the summer when I’m home, but I had never been whitewater boating of any kind. To find appropriate river conditions, we were bussed a couple hours away from Ithaca. Having recently completed the last round of finals and presentations of our undergrad careers, many of us spent the trip over sleeping, watching the cornfields roll past the windows, or staring blankly into space.

When we arrived at the boating company, we were outfitted with oars, helmets, rubber boots, water-resistant jackets, and life vests, loaded back onto the bus, and driven to the launching point. Before touching the water, we were given the safety spiel and paddle commands. We helped to haul our raft into the river, practiced paddling in calm water, then floated off on our way down the river. There were about half a dozen rapids on our journey, a portage in the middle to get past a dam, and a portage at the end to get back to the bus.

The rapids were class III and IV, which meant that we saw some large-ish waves, eddies, and a couple decent drops. I never felt like I was going to fall out of the raft – we had our feet wedged in – and I didn’t even get too wet. It was definitely different paddling to maneuver through rocks or get into position for a drop rather than primarily as a means of propelling the boat like on flatwater. Overall, we had a really nice sunny day, and I had a lot of fun trying something new. The wine tasting a couple days later was a different kind of fun.

The tasting was held in the Statler, and featured appetizer-like food and wines from six countries, a red wine and a white wine from each country. Especially at the beginning, the room was extremely crowded and there weren’t enough places for people to get out of the way of the food/wine lines, but I think it was the first time holding the event or the first time in Statler, so I’ll cut the event organizers some slack. Plus the buffalo chicken dip was delicious. Buffalo chicken dip can totally be a meal by itself, right? I’ve picked my meal for next week, but there’s the week after that. . . .

Besides the dip, I also had a couple really good wines, a couple average wines, and a couple not so great wines. My least favorite wine of the day was a Malbec from Argentina, which was also the only red wine I tried. I keep trying red wines in the hope that I’ll find the magic red wine that doesn’t taste like tar or metal or make my tongue feel like tannins. Hasn’t happened yet. The average wines included the white wines from the United States (I actually don’t remember the varietal, but it was probably a Chardonnay. It tasted very white wine-ish.) and France. My favorite wines of the afternoon were a Pinot Grigio from Italy and an Australian Moscato. I don’t have tasting notes but I believe the Pinot Grigio was a well-balanced wine that wasn’t too sweet or acidic and had enough fruit-ness and body to not taste like grape water. The Moscato was sweet. And good.

And now I want wine. But I wouldn’t drink a bottle fast enough to finish it before the wine oxidized, so I might have to settle for hard cider. A friend recommended cinnamon hard cider. Time for a special trip to the grocery store.