What I've Learned at Cornell

If you were hoping for a deep and philosophical discussion of my Cornell education thus far, keep hoping. One may eventually appear on this blog, but not today. Today I present my (almost serious) compilation of things that Cornell has taught me, both inside and outside the classroom. 

1. How to read Braille (at least the first five letters of the alphabet). I actually learned this from my iClicker. I think it’s pretty cool that they put Braille on the remote, and after a few weeks, I've learned to recognize the letters A through E in Braille.

2. Don’t eat the mixed seafood. Usually when I go to the dining hall, I’ll just get in line at the main food station and eat whatever they’re serving. I've had various unknown grains (I still don’t know what quinoa is), the mystery root vegetable (after some research I think it’s either parsnip or turnip), and the turkey gravy that looks an awful lot like leftover turkey from the night before. So when I say don’t eat the mixed seafood, that’s saying something. I tried it once, and that was enough. It consists of some weird soupy gravy with vegetables and other strange objects floating around that I presume is supposed to be seafood of some kind.

3. If you keep things long enough, sometimes they become useful again. Turns out that since I joined pep band, my lyre and flip folder (from my freshman year of high school) are being put to work again.

4. Peanut butter goes with anything. It’s not just for sandwiches. Tastes particularly good with apples and bananas (and probably other fruit, but I wouldn’t really know; the dining hall only has apples, bananas, oranges, and occasionally pears or plums) and anything chocolate. Also, Cornell makes their own peanut butter, and it’s especially amazing.

5. Lastly, always have an extra pair of socks. The only thing more miserable than dragging yourself a mile across campus to get to class in rain, snow, sleet, or any mixture of the three is dragging yourself a mile across campus in rain, snow, or sleet, and then sitting through class with wet socks.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Good

As a Cornell student, I am currently in the middle of the first round of spring semester prelims. Most recently, I took my differential equations prelim in Call Auditorium in Kennedy Hall. It was a lousy room for a prelim, and it got me thinking about my past exam room assignments.

The Bad

Goldwin Smith Hall – Chem 2150 – This was an auditorium in the basement of Goldwin Smith Hall, the English building.  There are several features that set this room apart from all the other windowless auditoriums I've taken exams in.  For one thing, we could hear the clock tower clearly every single time it chimed.  (At least if you didn't bring a watch, you’d be reminded of the time every fifteen minutes.)  For another, throughout the entire prelim, the ventilation system was making hissing and banging sounds that were vaguely reminiscent of a wrestling match going on in the ceiling.  Or something like that.

The Ugly

Call Auditorium, Kennedy Hall – Math 2930 – As soon as I saw that they were scheduling nine discussion sections in the same room for the first differential equations prelim, I was not excited.  We were assigned to Call Auditorium, which besides having more than five hundred seats for over two hundred students sitting every other seat, also has the same number of dysfunctional desks.  First off, the desks are the size of a sheet of paper, which makes it slightly ridiculously difficult to write, but I could deal with that, if the desks actually worked.  But they don’t.  If you don’t rest something heavy on one end of the desk, the very act of trying to write makes the desk fall over, causing you to have to dive for your things or sending everything crashing to the ground.  To add insult to injury, they also don’t have left-handed desks (at least not in any of the usual places).

The Good

Olin Hall – Engri 1120 – Honestly, this is the only room that I can say that I like taking prelims in.  It’s the only true classroom I've taken a test in and the site of both of my Intro to ChemE prelims and the final.  And it has actual tables. (How else were you supposed to have room for your binder of handouts, notebook, textbook, ruler, colored pencils, pencil, and exam?)  Smaller room, tables, that’s a win in my book.

Plus a couple bonus stories:

I showed up early to my first calculus prelim at Cornell, but the auditorium was already pretty full.  In fact, people were having trouble finding seats.  Everyone, including the TAs, was looking rather confused, but the TAs started passing out exams anyway.  Upon receiving their exam book, some people near the front must have asked what it was for, which is when things started to make more sense.  As it turns out, whoever was in charge of scheduling put two exams in the same room at the same time.  One was multivariable calculus.  The other was an ILR class.

Later that semester, for the same math class, we were scheduled to take the final in Barton Hall.  Usually, for prelims, large classes are split up, but it seems that everyone has to take the final in the same place.  One of the few rooms large enough to hold the five hundred or so students in multivariable was Barton Hall.  The reason Barton has that much space is not because it contains an extraordinarily large auditorium, but rather, an indoor track.  That’s right; it’s one of our athletic buildings.  Most of the floor space was covered with tables, but it was a surprisingly tame experience.  Even with five hundred other students, it was pretty quiet (all that space also swallows up sound) and the TAs were in charge of their own sections, so no one had to deal with more than around fifty students.  Main problem of the afternoon: finding my seat.

Meet Hezekiah

When I first showed up at Cornell, I had, among other things, a box of food, my hat collection, a rocket ship cup, and one of my most faithful companions.

I’ll admit, when we first became acquainted in middle school, I wasn't sure we’d last this long together, but we have.  He’s weathered all sorts of storms, been all sorts of places, seen some of the country with me.  We've been through a lot together.

Since I came to Cornell, he’s been hanging out under my desk most of the time.  Here he is:

His name’s Hezekiah.  I thought it was time to formally introduce him, though he is mentioned on my About Me page.

I got him in middle school, but I finally named him before coming to college, and having played him for the better part of five or six years, I have to say this is a very nice student instrument.  Not that I’m an expert or anything, but he’s survived middle school, a marching band season, and almost half a year of pep band.  That includes rain, snow, freezing temperatures, and being dropped.

I haven’t had to make any major repairs, although I did get the keys realigned . . . once . . . three years ago.  So it’s a pretty low maintenance instrument if you don’t do dumb things with it.  Like throw it into a snow bank, or practice your javelin throwing with it.  Things like that.

For people thinking, “Don’t plastic clarinets usually sound pretty lousy?”, I have this to say: my sophomore year of high school, I made the district band with this clarinet (a Buffet B12).  Last chair, but I attribute that more to my mediocre playing than to the instrument.  So while he may not be a professional instrument, he can stand up to the competition.  Like I said, we've been through a lot.  I think he’s a keeper.

Going Vertical

Thirty feet sounds a lot higher when you’re standing at the bottom of a vertical wall.  It sounds even higher when you've tried to climb that vertical wall.  Granted, I wasn't trying to climb all the way up, but still, it’s a long way to the top.  It may take more work than I’m generally inclined to want to put into gym class, but I have never been more excited for PE.

I’m not saying that I didn't enjoy swimming last semester, because I did, but I couldn't say that I actually looked forward to jumping into the freezing water.  If we had been competitive swimmers, we probably would have complained about how hot it was, but we weren't, and it was cold enough that if we weren't doing a lot of swimming or moving, I would end class starting to lose feeling in my fingers.  I’m not kidding.

The closest I've ever been to really being excited about gym was my sophomore year of high school when I did my mandatory semester of project adventure.  We did the ropes course and went hiking and cross country skiing.  If an activity involves dirt under my fingernails, mud under my shoes, and good old blood, sweat, and tears, I’m there.  Okay, maybe subtract the blood and tears part.

Anyway, I showed up at my first basic rock climbing (or b-rock, as the instructors seem to call it) class last Monday.  We signed the release waiving our right to sue Cornell for injury due to lightning, drowning, falling rocks, etc. and then walked over to the wall.  Like I said, looks a lot bigger when you’re standing at the bottom of it.  It spans the entire width of Bartels Hall, a building that contains a basketball court/arena, practice space for the soccer team, and the wrestling gym with room to spare.  According to Cornell Outdoor Education’s website, it’s the largest “indoor natural rock climbing wall in North America.”  Well, then.  Makes me glad I came to Cornell.

Cornell’s climbing wall has both natural rock holds and some sort of composite concrete holds (like the colorful ones on a lot of indoor rock walls – a lot easier to use than the natural holds).  If you stay below ten feet, you’re allowed to climb unroped, which is referred to as bouldering.  That’s how we began our adventures climbing.

It was incredibly fun, and as an added bonus, I got to use some arm muscles that I didn't even know existed.  Like those ones along your elbows.  Someone tell me what those are for in normal life.

When you sign up for basic rock climbing, you also get a climbing pass and shoe rental for the semester, so I have one thing to say to the Lindseth climbing wall: I will be back.

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.