First days at Cornell

I've had at least one of each of my classes now at Cornell, and have had now over a week to adjust and to settle into my apartment and Ithaca in general. It's difficult, and drastic changes like this always are. I miss my family (but most of all I miss my dog! Rudy!), but none of them are too far away.

I guess the hardest part is the transition to living alone. I've never done it before. I've always had people around when I wake up and when I go to sleep, and have had people to talk to before and after the daily activities. And now there's no one except me when I get up, or go to sleep. It's a lot quieter, and I don't talk as much when I'm by myself, which is probably a good thing.

It is also a strange transition to cooking food for just myself. The first stir fry I made lasted me three nights. On the other hand, there is no negotiation with housemates over what to eat, when to eat, etc. I have my parent's old wok, a gas stove, and am now stocked up with most of the cooking essentials, so I just have to build up the motivation (and the nerve) to cook strange and possibly horrible things. I have recently purchases cookbooks that feature Asian foods (in general), Chinese foods, Japanese foods, Vietnamese foods, foods from Norway and Finland, and cookbooks that focus on salads and soups (two separate books). I also have a large baking cookbook, and the Moosewood vegetarian cookbook. Add that to the gas stove, wok, KitchenAid mixer, and no one to disagree with what I make, and I have a wide world of foods in front of me.

Besides this food freedom, I've adjusted pretty well to Ithaca/Cornell, at least so far. The campus is on a hill, and my apartment is on the bottom of the hill. Now, this isn't just a regular hill. Oh, no. It's a beastly, unforgiving, almost comically steep hill. The first couple times I walked (read: climbed) it, I was out of breath and not a little sweaty. There are neighbors who walk to campus every day up this hill, and they require no other exercise to keep in shape. It takes me just over half an hour to get to my building on campus. But of course, there's an alternative route: a 10-15 minute walk (very flat) to Ithaca commons, and then a 10-15 minute bus ride to the center of campus. So I'm working on the hill, but taking the bus most of the time.

As for Cornell, it's big. Things are far apart, and there is a lot of people on campus. Well, obviously. But those were my first impressions. I'm taking four classes and TAing a class. I could list the names of the classes, but they're long and somewhat intimidating. In short, it's a Matlab (programming) refresher class, a statistics class, thermodynamics class (both focused heavily in the realm of the atmosphere), and a planetary atmospheres class (heavily math / astronomy based). The class I'm TAing for is an introduction to atmospheric chemistry class.

So, in a nutshell, it means that for the first time, my academic realm matches pretty closely with my spare-time imagination realm. Or, in other words, I am studying in full force the things that I dwelt on outside of classes at Clarkson. I find myself surrounded by meteorologists and astronomy majors, and I find the text books I'm reading and the work I have in front of me in a domain that floats above the surface of the earth. Pretty much everything from the air I breathe up to the planets and stars in the sky. I still can't believe I'm taking a class that walks through the atmospheres of the nearby planets. I mean, the freaking syllabus mentions specifically Venus, Mars, Titan, Jupiter, and Saturn. I don't think I've ever had a syllabus that has gotten me so exited before.

Now, I'm also terrified. The guy who ran the first class (who was not the prof., who wasn't there) said that we all should be relatively comfortable with vector calculus. Now, I remember vector calculus, and have been reviewing it over the weekend, but I don't think I'd call myself comfortable with vector calculus.

Oh yeah, and I have two classes in the same room, on the eleventh floor of a building. Clarkson had a maximum of three floors for all of its buildings. Now I'm on the eleventh! But damn, it has a nice view. Many buldings have a nice view, and many random locations on campus have a nice view. I guess that's the trade off: I have to climb a steep hill and get all sweaty, but it looks really pretty when you take time to stop and look. I left my camera at home, so will include some pictures when I get that (probably this weekend). I'll also post some pics of my apartment. It's already a pretty comfortable, cozy place.