How You Know It's Finals Week, or, Living at the Library

The Library. For most, it's a college student's home away from home, especially at academically driven Cornell.  It blows my mind, but from the first day of each new semester, people are already filling up the tables. Why? Nothing has been assigned yet! I guess it's part of the culture. Not for me though. I absolutely refused to go to the library for my first two years at school. I went once Freshman year because I had to use a book for a paper. I think I spent a total of 45 minutes there, and we had gone with a couple of guys on the baseball team, who, in order to enjoy their time studying more, picked up a 30-rack along the way.  Every ten minutes or so, the sound of a tab being popped open cut the silence. It brought me comfort during my short introduction to the library.

Sophomore year I headed back in only once, again to grab a few more books, and then promptly left.  It wasn't until Junior year that I realized I was missing out on some prime people watching (notice I didn't say prime studying time. I have a very poor work ethic).

At first, I decided it was best to start out with baby steps.  I would head to the library between classes and sit by the window to do the daily crossword. I had to ease myself in. Every so often, I would actually do a little homework, but I was never expected to stay long or to really accomplish anything at all.  My friends know me as the girl who pretends to do work. Pretending to do things is a skill I've really honed over the years.  Finally, during study and finals week last fall, I spent more than one hour at a time at the library and I actually did work. It really boggled everyone's minds.  On the upper levels of Olin Library, the only library on campus I've really been to, there are graduate study rooms that undergrads are banned from until study week. The fact that I wasn't allowed in got me excited, so I chose one of these rooms. It has been my go to spot since then.  During study week, however, the rooms start to fill up, and this room only has three electrical outlets for some reason. This brings me to sign number one that it's Finals Week at Cornell:

1. The fight for outlets.  You have to get there early to get a good spot. Or you have to get there late, when everyone else has given up and gone to the bars to drown their sorrows. If all outlets in a room are taken, you can see the panic in everyone's eyes, followed by a constant compulsive checking of people's actions and movements. Are they getting up? Are they leaving? Will that outlet finally be free? And the second that one becomes available, people race to get their power cord plugged in first. May the fastest and most anxious man win.

2. Meals at the library. You know it's bad when you are at the library for long enough that multiple meal times pass.  One meal is demoralizing enough.  I spent so much time at the library this past week (shocker, I know) that I made dinner one day at my house and immediately put it in a container and went to the library to eat it.  Bringing and eating home-cooked meals at the library may take it a little too far...

3. The Regulars. If you go to the same room every day at the library, you start to notice that the same people always show up, too.  In my room, the same three guys were there every time I was. When you get to a point that you are becoming friendly with the random people studying at the same time as you, it might be time to take a break.  When you know exactly where to find someone throughout the 7 floors at Olin at all times, tell them they should go home.

4. The Regulars who take it to the next level.  One of the guys who was always in the same room as me wasn't feeling too well the other day. He had about a dozen empty water bottles around him and his desk, as well as a bottle of pills and maybe some other medication. Ok, fine, you have a cold and you are trying to take care of yourself, I get it. But when you pull out a THERMOMETER and take your temperature in the middle of the room, it's time to hit the road, buddy. GO HOME. Don't sit here and infect the rest of us with your disease. Some things are meant to be done in private.

It may look like a pen in this picture, but I swear to you that it's a thermometer. Look at how he's holding it. And look at all the bottles and nasal spray and ibuprofen. Get the hell outta here dude, you are freaking me out.

Then of course there are the trash cans piled high with empty coffee cups, the papers strewn across every square inch of every desk, and the kids who come in wearing sweatpants and shirts with holes in them. I know you want to be comfortable while studying for hours at a time, but at least wear shirts that are completely in tact. This isn't your house, it's the library.

Now, when I hit the library, I usually plan to be there for a while. But if I go for too long I am guaranteed to hit a wall and start to go a little crazy.  On days after a night of drinking, I usually can't function, and the delirium sets in, completely destroying my ability to form coherent sentences. I also find ways to avoid doing work. Watch a little of this, read some funny articles, go to the bathroom fourteen times, etc. I also decide that I want to spend time thinking about out doing some more reckless things (anything not to do work). What would happen if I brought and drank a Four Loko in the library? What would happen if I turned this key that I found attached to the fire alarm and sprinkler system? Would it be possible to throw this chair through that window? Would anyone care if I just upturned this table with all of our belongings on it? At that point, there is really no reason for me to be in the library. I'm clearly not being productive, and that's something I can do at home or at the bars, so let's do karaoke instead of writing this paper. Cool?

Activities for the Inactive

(This also ran in the Cornell Daily Sun! Look at me! Here's the link.)

I am the vice president of a secret society. I am the beat boxer and co-founder of an a capella group. I am an intramural soccer champion.

           

All of these statements are true…kind of.

Somehow, in the past 3 and half years I have been at Cornell, I completely missed the extracurricular boat.  Freshman year I was pretty shy and scared of everything and everyone at Cornell, partially because I didn’t want to be at college at all. Lame, I know.  But I went to Club Fest and signed up for a few things. I even went to a boxing club meeting by myself.  It all fizzled out eventually, and I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe I made one too many Rocky jokes, who knows?  I was too scared to try out for the women’s club soccer team because I had heard they were basically flow-over from varsity and way too good for me. I wanted to try out for women’s rugby but I was too scared of getting killed. I didn’t understand the intramurals website until sophomore year.  I can’t sing well (which doesn’t mean I don’t sing, so I apologize to my housemates who have to listen to me in the shower), I don’t do improv, and I loathe quarter-carding, thus making me virtually unable to join a club. 

Despite my lack of skills, I have always wanted to be a part of certain groups on campus.  Quill and Dagger was number one. But alas, I didn’t start writing for the Sun until right now (publish this piece!) so I had no shot at becoming editor-in-chief.  I am not the captain of a varsity sport and I am not the executive director of the biggest club on campus.  But I really like secrets! And I know where your headquarters is! Isn’t that enough for you, Quill and Dagger?  I will accept a late tapping. 

In the meantime, while I wait for my belated invitation to Q&D, I am in my own secret society.  My friend decided that she was fed up with waiting for her invite and took matters into her own hands. I was the first tapped member of this group and have taken the prestigious role of VP. In order to protect our members, I will refrain from revealing the name of our secret society, but I will say both the name and symbol are pretty badass.  Our philosophy is purely social/based on bad decision-making, so if you feel you qualify, let me know and we will consider you for membership.

A capella is another interest of mine. I love singing and dancing around, I just happen to suck at both. I also pretend to beat box. I have always resented the fact that I didn’t have a stage mom who forced me into this stuff.  This same friend and I decided that enough was enough and that we were going to start our own, infinitely cooler, a capella group. We are known as the Castaways; you may have heard of us since we throw killer after parties.  Have we had an actual concert? No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate a job well done. Hey, you might ask, when’s the next Castaways concert? Don’t worry about it, the after party’s at my place.

Now we come to athletics.  I have played soccer forever but have only improved ever so slightly since the age of five. I dabbled in every sport available to me when I was younger, but only soccer stuck. Why my parents didn’t force me to play hockey or become a tennis ace I will never know. I could have been great, but they were too concerned with letting me making my own choices that they screwed everything up. Way to drop the ball on that one, guys.  I have led my intramural co-rec soccer team the past couple years to the playoffs, but we fall short every time. All I want from my tenure at Cornell, besides my diploma, is an intramurals champion t-shirt. Is that so much to ask? I thought this was the year, but my team did not make it to the finals unfortunately.  So instead of taking it in stride and waiting for indoor soccer to roll around, I attached myself to our friends’ men’s soccer team and named myself head of the Superfans.  There were two of us, but we came to every game. With signs. The team actually won and let me snag a t-shirt. I am even featured in the team picture on the intramurals website, so check it out (if you can figure out the site...) 

So even though I am not really active on campus, I have found ways to feel involved at Cornell.  Seniors, if you are like me, call me up and we’ll start our own fake fraternity (though we may or may not have already done that…). Freshmen, if you want to be tapped for a secret society, I hope you are already gunning for that e-board position.  If not, it’s never to late to try something new, or to pretend to.

Bizarre Halloweekend

Halloween in college is pretty awesome.  Instead of trick-or-treating, kids get dressed up, usually inappropriately, and get drunk. It's usually a hilarious time. But we have to remember that it is still Halloween, and that weird stuff happens around this time of year.

This weekend was no exception. It was bizarre, to say the least.

Thursday night was pretty normal.  My friend and I dressed up as members of Team Pup N' Suds from the Disney Channel Original Movie "Brink!" which is a pretty sweet costume and childhood reference. I ended up running into a friend who never ever goes out, so that was weird, but other than that nothing too out of the ordinary.

"We skate for fun. We're Soul Skaters!"

The next night I was ready to reveal my super secret amazing show-stopping costume: the Four Loko can. Yeah, yeah, I know, plenty of people were Four Loko this Halloween, but I honestly think that mine was the best. I was a full can of Lemonade flavored Four Loko.  I painted the whole thing myself and it was very realistic. People on the street stopped to talk to me and sometimes to take pictures with me! One guy even professed his love. Very successful costume.

Clearly the best one in this group...

Basically Friday and Saturday were loko. Friday the bars were sucky so we brought everyone back to our place to play beruit and hang out. Everyone was getting along fine and for some reason Antoine and I decided to fake wrestle each other.  While we were joking around, our friend CS randomly started pouring beer all over us (mainly me). I hadn't even noticed he was at our house as he hadn't said a word. He was just sitting on the couch, pouring what felt like at least three beers on my head and all over my body.  Luckily I had taken off my Four Loko costume and safely hung it up before it could be ruined. Now, I have had beer pour on me before a bunch of times, all by Antoine, but it was always a joke and I could tell when it was coming. This was just out of the blue and CS looked really serious when he did it. Later, I was sitting on the same couch as him but talking to someone else when suddenly CS's leg is on my back pushing me off the couch and onto the ground. Again, I was not even talking to him. He continued to try kicking me to the ground until we actually started wrestling. Physically fighting, and both of us were serious. I was pissed off and he was drunk, but he looked really mad. We were trying to kill each other while everyone just kind of watched and didn't say anything. Then I sat in the corner wearing his hat for like 20 minutes before we said bye and he left. Weird. And then the next day he came over to watch American Psycho and we all joked about what had happened. Despite my beer covered clothes in the laundry, the half bottle of shampoo I used to get the beer out of my hair, and the huge bruise on my leg, we had a lovely time watching Christian Bale being his normal, insane self. 

Later that night one roommate threw a bowl of cereal at another, then that roommate threw drinking glasses in the corner of the room because I was kicking everything off of our coffee table and he didn't want me to kick the glass (his solution was to throw it on the floor elsewhere, where it obviously shattered). We get destructive late at night apparently (see Hurricane Jeff).

Saturday night things got pretty loko. We hit three parties and at the last one spent at least fifteen minutes watching Antoine make out with someone. Literally ten of us were just standing around in the corner of the party freaking out and screaming and just being total creeps. So that was fun. Then I got into a verbal fight with one of my closest friends, so that wasn't as fun, but definitely fits into the weird fight-themed weekend. Every so often we get into a fight in which we are both upset about basically the same exact thing. We are so similar that we even get upset at each other over the same issues and essentially aren't even fighting, but reaffirming that we are so close and pretty much the same person. So after a little while of arguing in the middle of the party we made up and everything was normal again and we danced to Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca," which, by the way, was an excellent musical selection by the hosts of the party, so props to 715. 

During our fight, Linus pushed Antoine, reason unclear, and Antoine totally ate it. Antoine was pissed, Linus was sorry, but then again, Linus is always sorry. He does a good job of pissing people off when he drinks, and that night was no exception. Nothing physical happened, but it could have been disastrous if it had.  Tensions were high. Again everyone ended up back at our place with the addition of a Ken Lansing 4 Sheriff sign that I picked up along the way. Everyone was getting along, minus Linus, who was moping on the couch and then suddenly disappeared.  Later, Jeff decided the time was ripe to try to get us to make our own porno in Antoine's room and the way to hook us was to ask if anyone was interested in making some money. We weren't.  The end of the night can be described by the floor in Antoine's room: Gobstoppers in one corner, hint of lime tortilla chips all over the floor, and texts books strewn everywhere. And I was asleep in the bed while the few remaining people watched South Park. Pretty much sums up every night at our house. 

Halloweekend was definitely successful, but pretty bizarre and destructive, but then again, I guess that is pretty normal for us.

Shameless Self Promotion

My first (and only) published piece in the Cornell Daily Sun!

Get Pumped

Gotta do it. I love pump up videos for the NBA and this one is gearing me up for tonight against the Heat. BronBron can suck it.

Here is the video of my fave Rondo doing what I called the "Scramble and Shoot" against the Magic in the 2010 playoffs. I said Scramble and Shoot around 50 times that night and everyone wanted to kill me. Too bad. Rondo is awesome. 

Losing My Way

Last year I started doing this thing where I would disappear from a party and no one would know where I went. At a certain point, it's just time to go home, but for me, I didn't like to let people know I was at that point.  Usually I drop the, "Oh, I'll be right back," or, "I'm just gonna run to the bathroom," and then bail.  I guess I don't want to have to explain why I am leaving or to have to wait around for the rest of the group.  Or I'm just an idiot.

It is okay to leave a party and walk home alone in Collegetown since the farthest you are going is probably around two blocks. But leaving a bar in an actual city (or in a different country) is not the smartest thing to do. My mom would not be proud of me.

I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, this past spring, and lucky for me it is a very safe city. It is also lucky that I am white and blond (read: not a Turkish immigrant). I left the group multiple times in CPH and made it home safely every time, but if I had been anywhere else, I would not have lasted a month. I would probably be lying in a ditch somewhere in Eastern Europe, or better yet, had been sold into white slavery/become a mail-order bride (I survived Russia, guys!).

One night early on in the semester our large group split up with intentions of meeting at a main bar downtown a little later. Being of the latter and smaller group, I only had a few people to latch onto. Unfortunately for me, they were all spitting game at Danish men.  I figured I would just head to the other bar to meet up with everyone else. Too bad I was leaving a place called L.A. Tequila Bar and too bad I had just moved to CPH and knew none of the streets.  I wandered around the city for close to an hour before finding the other bar. And the pathetic thing is, I knew exactly how to get there.  There is a main walking street that goes from City Hall Square to Kings Square, two main areas of Copenhagen. All I had to do was follow it. There is one section of the street in the middle, however, that confuses the shit out of everyone. It totally throws you off and you have no idea which direction you came from, which direction you want to go, or why you are even there. I hit Kings Square three times despite turning around every time to head to City Hall Square. It's like the Bermuda Triangle or a vortex or something. Or, again, I'm just an idiot. I finally made it to the bar, shoes in one hand, and plopped down in the corner, exhausted. Someone handed me a beer and I stared at the wall until we left 10 minutes later. Great night guys! I was the loneliest girl in Denmark that night.

Another time I thought I could take one bus home when in actuality I knew that I couldn't, but I took it anyway.  There was a stop called Jagtvej on this bus route but there is the same stop on the route I was supposed to take, so I figured it couldn't be that far off. Too bad I was in the wrong neighborhood.  I walked 2.8 kilometers (which equals 1.7 miles) alone and lost until I finally recognized my section of Jagtvej.

Oops.

Soon it became a big accomplishment if I came back home with everyone else.  People would actually tell me how proud of me they were.  Hey, at least I was making progress.  I had one relapse when I went to a club for under 30 minutes (???), told someone I was going to the bathroom, and hopped in a cab to go home instead. I even got lost in our own apartment building that night, so let's all be happy I knew my address.  

Best Halloween Costume Idea EVER

Dress up as a beeper. Black cardboard box, whatever. Then style your hair like Justin Bieber. Now you are Justin Beeper. Walk around singing "Page me, page me, page me, oooh" to the tune of "Baby."

 

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Total mind explosion.