161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #141 and [#57]

141. Ring the giant bell in the Plantations

57. Have a [it’s] midnight [in China] picnic in the Cornell Plantations*

As a stereotypically cheap college student with no car, my main mode of transportation is my own feet. That plus the summer college students and ten billion** construction projects going on around campus making things not as quiet as I would like them means that I've been out to the Plantations a few times already this summer. Usually I just go out to the Botanical Garden, where I remember that I don’t actually like the smell of flowers, but a couple weeks ago I went through the Wildflower Garden and to the start of the Arboretum (1st picture from my last post). The trees to people ratio was much higher and I didn’t hear any 1) screaming drunk people, 2) screeching tires, or 3) heavy machinery. It was just me, the flies, and my penguins.

I've been out further before, once with my hiking class and once when a friend and I decided to go have an adventure on the Plantations. When I went with my friend, we hunted down the giant bell, rang it, and enjoyed the view. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me. Enjoy this picture of the Botanical Garden instead.

There was another day this summer when I biked out to the Botanical Garden on my lunch break, where I proceeded to have my lunch at the Cornell Plantations. I’m not sure I’m ever going to have a “it’s midnight in Ithaca” picnic on the Plantations, but it was definitely midnight in China when I was eating, so that’s my stand-in for now. I prefer to be sleeping at midnight in Ithaca, though apparently my problem sets last semester didn't feel the same way.

*Words in parenthesis added by me.
**This is only a rough estimate. The real value may be several billion projects off.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #93 and #120

93. Walk to the Commons and back
120. Rent a Big Red Bike from Uris Library

Two events connected only by the general heading of physical activity and the 161 Things bookended my third semester at Cornell: finally going to the Cornell Plantations and waffles.

The Plantations are a bunch of gardens, trees, hills, trails, rocks, and other miscellaneous nature that Cornell owns. They cover more than four thousand acres (about two hundred acres are considered the Plantations Proper) and I had managed to spend an entire year at Cornell without setting foot on them. That all changed on Labor Day.

To start off the year, AAIV was encouraging all the small group leaders to plan an activity to do with their small group on Labor Day, since there weren't any classes. My small group decided to bike to the Plantations. This endeavor was made possible by Big Red Bikes (and by viewers like you. Thank you. PBS, anyone?). Big Red Bikes is a program that lets students check out bikes from several sites around campus, including Uris Library.

So, to make sure our plan could work, we borrowed a couple bikes from the library and rode around for awhile. Then it started raining. We met the rest of the group and decided that it looked clear enough to go to the Plantations anyway, so we did. It was nice. We went to what I believe is the botanical garden, saw some herbs and flowers, fended off some flies, then rode back to the dining hall for dinner.

Three months later, when everything, including the Plantations, was buried in snow, we encountered finals week. Cornell likes to drag out finals week, which I can appreciate because in theory, it gives you time between finals to study. In reality, you either end up with three finals in twenty-eight hours (not twenty-four, because then you’d be allowed to reschedule a final) or a final every other day so that you get to spend one day cramming for each final. Fall semester, I ended up with a final on the first Thursday (p-chem) and Friday (linear algebra) and a presentation (mass and energy) on the Thursday after that.

It didn't sound too bad until I realized that the written report for the presentation was due Monday and I had an essay for history of science due Wednesday, both before the p-chem final. Classes ended on Friday. I went to large group for AAIV for the first time in more than a month on Friday night. Saturday I went to an AAIV event in the morning and men’s basketball and men’s hockey in the afternoon/night for pep band. Sunday, we got to work on the project and spent eight hours on it. Eight. There was a dinner break involved. Monday, we finished up the project in another two hours. By that time, I had less than two days to write my 1500 word essay.

I ended up spending another ten hours on the essay between Monday night, all of Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. At that point, I could finally start studying for p-chem. I showed up utterly unprepared for the final on Thursday morning. After the final, I had to start studying for linear algebra. That final, on Friday morning, went better. And so after that week, the only thing I had left was a ten minute presentation on Thursday night, six days away.

That is the backstory of how the sophomore ChemEs ended up hanging around Ithaca for almost a week waiting to give our mass and energy presentations. Since all the work was already done, all we had to do was make a short PowerPoint and practice, all of which took about six hours. Six hours, six days. Eight hours, one day. I sense a slight imbalance in the Force.

And since we had nothing else to do, a couple friends and I went to get waffles on the Ithaca Commons. I know it was just waffles, but you could choose your own toppings and they turned out really good. It’s only about a mile to the Commons from Cornell, so we walked both ways. It’s entirely downhill going from Cornell to the Commons, so conversely, it’s entirely uphill going back to Cornell from the Commons. The waffles were worth it.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #94

#94. Go to an acapella concert

Until a couple Fridays ago, I’d seen CU Winds and the CU Symphony Orchestra, visiting jazz groups and orchestras, but I had not been to an acapella concert. (I also haven’t been ice skating at Lynah, but that’s another matter.) What was particularly special about this acapella concert was that it was my first concert as a Cornell student that I was in the audience for. Up until that point, all the groups I’d seen had been from backstage while working for Cornell Productions.

It was definitely a different perspective, and the second time in the span of a week that I was looking at things from another point of view. The first was at the homecoming game, which was the first football game I've ever been to where I didn't have to play in the halftime show. (And more generally, one of the few sports games that I didn't go to with the band.) It was a little weird being there to watch the game and not to play Davy when the team scored or to start chants of “Let’s go red.”

Similarly, sitting in the audience instead of backstage felt kind of strange.  It was an interesting night overall, because I was actually working after the concert to take down the curtains and speakers in preparation for CU Winds later that weekend.  Anyway, vocals don’t travel as well as instrumentals backstage, so I guess this was a good concert to hear from the front of the stage.

As for the concert itself, it was a joint concert between twelve different acapella groups, so there was a decent variety of songs.  One of the groups did “Bad Romance,” and personally, I like the Zheng Lab’s parody “Bad Project” better, but it was done well at the concert.  Near the end, the Hangovers sang “You Got a ‘C’” to “Under the Sea,” which was pretty funny . . . especially in prelim season (which this semester, is every week for me).  [I was having trouble keeping track of which groups performed, let alone what they sang, so normally I wouldn't remember the group and the song, but they were one of the last to perform and I was already backstage waiting for my shift to start.  In contrast, even after not having used it for possibly a year, the other day I managed to come up with the molar mass of calcium. . . . It’s 40.08 grams per mole.]

Overall, the concert was great.  I enjoyed myself, and I didn't even get back to my dorm too late after work.  And while we’re on the topic, here’s one last acapella song: “We Didn't Go To Harvard” by Cayuga’s Waiters.  They were at the concert, but didn’t perform this song.  It never gets old.  (The lyrics at 1:30 fall under the "sad but true" category.)

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, roundup

There are some thing on the list of 161 Things that don’t warrant entire posts to themselves, but I wanted to mention them anyway, so here they are.

#10. Test out Olin Library’s musically calibrated steps by throwing stones across them.
I’m not sure I can call them musical in the same sense that a piccolo clarinet or trumpet is musical, but the steps do make nice hollow noises when you kick rocks onto them.

#23. Attend the Apple Festival on the Commons.
Apple Fest is sometime during the fall, and if you can be bothered to make your way down to the Commons, there are performances and vendors selling handmade crafts, jewelry, and yes, apple cider, apple donuts, apple fishcakes . . . okay, not really. I went down with some of the people in my hall, and it was a nice break from the usual drudgery fun and games at Cornell.

#28. Meet Happy Dave from Oakenshields.
Eat at Oakenshields a few times, and more likely than not, you’ll have Dave at the front swiping you in.

#84. Go bowling at Helen Newman Lanes.
Completed this one with some of the pep band/marching band clarinets during a night when bowling was free. Besides having a bowling alley on campus, we also have the climbing wall/bouldering wall, a cinema, canoeing, and trees the Plantations. What else is there to do on Friday nights? (Confession: I hadn't actually bowled before that night. I freely admit I was terrible.)

#109. Do your Freshman Reading Project sometime before you graduate.
Due to a history of having to write essays about terrible books, I actually got this over with during the summer before freshman year without too much whining.

#130. Complain about your freshman writing seminar to no one in particular.
Done, and overdone. Let’s just say that if there was an item titled “Complain about your freshman writing seminar to everyone in particular,” I would have done that one too.

#138. Watch people play Dance Dance Revolution in Appel.
Appel and RPCC (and Noyes, on West campus) like to host nightly programs where they have games, crafts, and/or food for students to enjoy. I usually don’t stop by unless I’m waiting for someone or if they have rebus puzzles, but I have seen people playing DDR at Appel, and some of them are pretty good.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #92

#92 – Hike in one of Ithaca’s beautiful parks

Now that it’s April, that means that spring has arrived, and brought with it sunshine, and warm temperatures, and rainbows and butterflies, right? Wrong. It snowed twice in three days at the beginning of April, so I thought I would remind myself what things look like when it’s warm.

The summer before my senior year of high school, my family and I took a road trip through New York and Canada to visit colleges and see the sights. Along the way, we visited RPI, Cornell, and RIT, and got the chance to camp and hike in some of the state parks around Ithaca.

We hiked through Buttermilk Falls, Watkins Glen, and Letchworth (closer to Rochester), and even though I wouldn't have called Buttermilk a waterfall (by the middle of summer, you could get more water from your shower), they were still some nice hikes. Buttermilk Falls in particular is really near to Cornell (and the only park that fulfills #92 on the list of 161 Things since the other two aren't actually in Ithaca).

Since I don’t have a good picture of the waterfall (i.e., one with water), this is what the gorge at Buttermilk looks like further up:

If you've ever heard that New York is gorges, this is what it means. The Finger Lakes region of New York is full of gorges like this. 

Watkins Glen is another state park that features trails right along the gorge. Also a nice hike, and the trail passes over and under various waterfalls. Lastly, further north, Letchworth is known as the Grand Canyon of the East (apparently?) and features three waterfalls. Although the middle falls had the most water and visitors when we were there, this picture of the lower falls is still one of my favorites from the trip (most of the rest of my pictures were of lampposts . . . don’t ask).

O spring, where art thou?

(Update: After snowing twice in the first three days of April, the last two days here have been absolutely fantastic shorts weather . . . as in, over forty degrees.)

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #115

#115. See how long you can avoid accepting a quartercard on Ho Plaza

I don’t know what it’s like at other colleges, but at Cornell, quartercarding, or handing out quarter sheets of paper to promote a cause or club, is a common occurrence, especially in the warmer months.  However, even more prevalent are the swarms of people trying to avoid getting a quartercard while innocently walking to class.

I think it’s been a few months since I got a quartercard on the plaza, but I did recently have one shoved into my face handed to me on the Thurston Avenue bridge.  Normally, I don’t mind getting them, but I do know some methods to lessen the chances of having to take yet another quartercard advertising a concert by a group nobody’s ever heard of in some hole in the ground café on campus, mostly likely at a weird time like Wednesday afternoon.

Method 1: Stare intently at the ground with your hands shoved in your pockets.  Especially effective if you’re wearing a hat, your hood is pulled way forward, or both.  (My brother says it makes me look like a duck.  No comment.)  This ensures that there’s no way to make eye contact and you may be ignored in favor of less suspecting targets.

Method 2: Follow a large group.  Quartercarders will target the people at the front of the group and/or those who express the most interest.  By walking directly behind a group, it appears that you are part of the group and so have at least heard about the cause or event, even if you haven’t had a quartercard shoved in your hand.

Method 3: Sprint.  Simple mathematics here.  At greater velocities, delta t for a given delta x is smaller.  Therefore, quartercarders have less time to spot you, approach you, tell you what their event is, and hand you the quartercard.  In addition, a greater velocity means that you have a greater momentum, and a larger impulse must be applied to stop you in order for the quartercarder to have enough time to do everything in the preceding sentence.  Hopefully, this impulse will be above the impulse threshold (a function of enthusiasm, desire to promote the event, and desperation) of the quartercarder and you will be left alone.

Method 4: Go ninja.  Method of choice for times when there are no large groups to follow, but there are still a fair number of people walking around.  Sometimes works on the Thurston Avenue bridge.  In this method, you wait until the quartercarder is either occupied with other people or facing the opposite direction.  As soon as this happens, walk behind their back as silently as possible.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do

So that everyone’s on the same page, the 161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do is a list of activities and tasks that Cornell sends to its students to complete before they graduate.  The number of items, 161, comes from the number of steps to the top of McGraw Tower (the clock tower).  The list is occasionally updated, but from what I can tell most of the items stay the same from year to year.

At this point in time, I have no plans to seriously try and complete all 161 things on the list.  Some may be completed in a modified version, such as #1, Make the library into your bedroom and have sex in the stacks.  Not going to happen, so I may find some other activity to substitute for this one (and others).

Even though I’m not planning to do all 161 things, I’ll probably end up blogging about a good number of them, because many of them are what you could call “uniquely Cornellian,” like the clock tower.  One good thing about being the in the middle of nowhere is that we have space.  Lots of it.  Because admit it, having a clock tower in the middle of Boston would be weird, for one thing, and for another, it wouldn't really look like a tower next to the John Hancock Tower.

Since I've been at Cornell longer than I've been blogging, I’ll probably go back and give at least a brief overview of the things I've already completed.  It’ll be like a slice of life at Cornell, but with a slightly different take than my usual news from the engineering quad/band room.

161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do, #13 and #14

#13. Climb the rock wall in Bartels Hall

#14. Listen to a full clock tower chimes concert and guess the songs played

Before the class of 2016 showed up in the Middle of Nowhere, New York, Cornell sent us a list of 161 things to do before we graduate (hopefully) in four years.  I've completed a few of them just by being on campus and going about my daily life, but I recently struck off a couple items that I had to go a little more out of my way to do.

Tuesday morning, I was up earlier than normal and decided that it would be worth my while to go to the morning chimes concert at 7:45.  So I packed my backpack for the day, headed out, and climbed to the top of the clock tower.  While you can’t go to Cornell without hearing the chimes, I couldn't actually say that I’d sat through an entire concert.  Well, now I can.

Every morning, the chimes start the day off by playing the Jennie McGraw rag, which is basically a collection of over 200 notes played as fast as possible.  On the day I was there, they also played “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “Shenandoah,” and “In Christ Alone,” which I recognized, and Gigue from First Cello Suite (Bach) and Air and variations for carillon (Handel), which I didn't.

The chimesmasters like to decorate for holidays, so they had a Happy Valentine’s Day banner and a whole bunch of hearts taped to the walls and chimes, plus they turned the clock face into a heart (only visible at night when it’s lighted up).  Sometimes they also play music to fit the occasion, and my personal favorite example of that was when Hurricane Sandy gifted us with lots of rain and wind and the chimes played “Under the Sea.”  Ithaca College decided to cancel evening classes; Cornell didn't.  I went to Intro to ChemE office hours.

That was #14 taken care of.  I completed #13 on Monday, when I went to my first basic rocking climbing class.  Granted, I didn't climb to the top of the climbing wall, but I did go climbing, so it counts.  For the first class, after all the paperwork was taken care of, the instructors just let us try some climbing.  We were below the bouldering line, so we weren't roped up, but you can still do a lot without going high.

Because this is probably my new favorite PE class, it warrants an entire post to itself, but I also wanted to mention it in terms of the 161 Things.