No Place Like Home For The Holidays
Well. That's one semester down. I am home, after a stressful day of locking myself out of my dorm, losing my I.D. and flying halfway across the country on 4 hours of sleep. I'm only mildly unsettled by how much quieter my parents' house is than Dickson (and colder, too. I'm wearing 3 layers and hiding under my blanket right now).
I realized something, while calculating the angle of fuzzy dice during my physics final: I'm going to miss Cornell during break. Despite the grueling work, endless problem sets, frustrating projects, and screaming drunken hallmates, I've really grown to like school. I'll miss being sprayed by the waterfalls next to the footbridge at nine in the morning. I'll miss basing the worth of a day on whether the Happy Dave taps the table after swiping my I.D. card at lunch. I'll miss the long, happy trek back to north campus from the engineering quad after my classes are all finished for the day. I'll miss being caught in a downpour after a math prelim and running from building to building, trying to fit four people under two umbrellas. I'll miss running around Beebe Lake, where I can convince myself that I'm in the middle of the woods. I'll miss our ridiculous names for mundane objects (Gay Pride Tarantula Pillow? Skinned Cookie Monster Blanket?). I'll miss watching Christmas movies with my friends in JAM, seeing the clock creep farther into uncivilized night with that gnawing sense of "I should really be getting back to my room," before finally deciding--as light creeps back into the sky--to just crash on a couch in the lounge (and being woken up by the cleaning lady).
But I can't pretend that over a month without schoolwork won't seem like the coolest thing since soft-serve ice cream. Ithaca still doesn't have any real snow--we had a few inches (along with a few snowball fights and sledding rounds) the aforementioned Night of Crashing--but not enough to really stick. So I felt pretty cool saying "yeah, there's 14 inches and a windchill of 10 below back home" and watching my southern friends' reactions. We should totally have lots of sledding and skating+hot chocolate parties. Let the winter fun begin.
I realized something, while calculating the angle of fuzzy dice during my physics final: I'm going to miss Cornell during break. Despite the grueling work, endless problem sets, frustrating projects, and screaming drunken hallmates, I've really grown to like school. I'll miss being sprayed by the waterfalls next to the footbridge at nine in the morning. I'll miss basing the worth of a day on whether the Happy Dave taps the table after swiping my I.D. card at lunch. I'll miss the long, happy trek back to north campus from the engineering quad after my classes are all finished for the day. I'll miss being caught in a downpour after a math prelim and running from building to building, trying to fit four people under two umbrellas. I'll miss running around Beebe Lake, where I can convince myself that I'm in the middle of the woods. I'll miss our ridiculous names for mundane objects (Gay Pride Tarantula Pillow? Skinned Cookie Monster Blanket?). I'll miss watching Christmas movies with my friends in JAM, seeing the clock creep farther into uncivilized night with that gnawing sense of "I should really be getting back to my room," before finally deciding--as light creeps back into the sky--to just crash on a couch in the lounge (and being woken up by the cleaning lady).
But I can't pretend that over a month without schoolwork won't seem like the coolest thing since soft-serve ice cream. Ithaca still doesn't have any real snow--we had a few inches (along with a few snowball fights and sledding rounds) the aforementioned Night of Crashing--but not enough to really stick. So I felt pretty cool saying "yeah, there's 14 inches and a windchill of 10 below back home" and watching my southern friends' reactions. We should totally have lots of sledding and skating+hot chocolate parties. Let the winter fun begin.