161 Things

Big Red Ambition:161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do

HOW MANY DID YOU DO?

o 1. Make the library into your bedroom and have sex in the stacks o 2. Finally meet the dazzling Denice Cassaro o 3. Go to the Cornell-Harvard men’s hockey game and throw fish on the ice o 4. Sing along to the Alma Mater with the marching band at a hockey game o 5. Sled down Libe Slope during a snow storm o 6. Take Hotel Administration 4300: Introduction to Wines o 7. Streak across the Arts Quad o 8. Take Psychology 1101: Intro to Psychology o 9. Test out Olin Library’s musically calibrated steps by throwing stones on them o 10. Attempt sake bombing at Plum Tree in Collegetown o 11. Order ice cream at the Dairy Bar o 12. Climb the Lindseth climbing wall in Bartels Hall o 13. Listen to a full chimes concert from the clock tower and guess the songs played o 14. Order the same thing off the Collegetown Bagels menu all four years o 15. Register for classes during Freshman Orientation, then switch out of every single one by the time Add/Drop ends o 16. Wear flip-flops to class in January o 17. Go to the Fuertes Observatory on North Campus and gaze at meteor showers o 18. Have a snowball fight in May o 19. Milk a cow o 20. Skip class to play frisbee on the Arts Quad o 21. Bury a bottle of Bacardi on the Slope. Dig it up on Slope Day. o 22. Observe the golden hour from the Newman Overlook in the Cornell Plantations o 23. Attend the Apple Festival on the Commons o 24. Flirt with your professor o 25. Bomb a prelim o 26. Ace the next one to save your grade o 27. Attend Hotelie prom o 28. Meet Happy Dave from Okenshields o 29. Turn your face blue from screaming at midnight before the first finals o 30. Get heartburn at the Chili Cook-off on the Commons o 31. Enjoy Ithaca’s two months of warm weather — spend a summer here! o 32. Go to a Shabbat dinner at 104 West o 33. Watch the AAP students parade down East Avenue on Dragon Day o 34. Drive an hour and a half just to visit the closest drive-in movie theater o 35. Build a snow penis or count how many you see around campus o 36. Dress up and view The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Risley o 37. Take a class you think is impossible just for fun o 38. Go on a wine tour o 39. Kiss on the suspension bridge at midnight o 40. Sleep through your alarm for a 1:25 p.m. class o 41. Shop at the Friends of the Library Book Sale o 42. Get out of a University parking ticket o 43. Buy an Ithaca Is Gorges t-shirt, then get sick of wearing it and buy a variation (Ithaca Is Gangsta, Vaginas Are Gorges, Ithaca Is Long Island...) o 44. Learn the “Alma Mater,” “Evening Song” and “Give My Regards to Davy” o 45. Attend an opening at the Johnson Museum of Art o 46. Smuggle food from the dining hall and run for your life as they try to get back your stolen cookies o 47. Do the Walk of Shame o 48. Have dinner at a professor’s house o 49. Get wasted at a professor’s house o 50. Take a #selfie with a Cornell president o 51. Play a game of tag in the Kroch Library stacks o 52. See a play in the Schwartz Center o 53. Rush the field at the last home football game of the season o 54. Start your freshman year pre-med. Graduate as a Hotelie. o 55. Gamble at Turning Stone (try not to lose money) o 56. Watch dancers fly through the air at a Bhangra show o 57. Have a midnight picnic in the Cornell Botanical Gardens o 58. Wait in line for half an hour for a salad at the Terrace o 59. Ignore “No Winter Maintenance” signs … slip and fall on the icy stairs o 60. Sit in Libe Café when you have no work to do and watch the worried studiers down gallons of coffee o 61. Write an angry letter to the editor of The Sun o 62. Go to Wegmans on a Friday or Saturday night o 63. Explore the secret underground tunnel between Uris and Olin libraries o 64. See the library’s Rare Book Collection o 65. Pretend you are Harry Potter and study in the A.D. White library (looks like Hogwarts) o 66. See the brain collection in Uris Hall o 67. Eat at Taverna Banfi and charge it to CornellCard o 68. Buy beer at Jason’s in Collegetown and charge it to CityBucks o 69. Take Plant Pathology 2010: Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds o 70. Take part in a psychology experiment o 71. Take an unplanned nap in a library o 72. Take over a building o 73. Following the legend, watch a virgin cross the Arts Quad and then witness A.D. White and Ezra Cornell shake hands o 74. Live through an Ithaca blizzard and tell your friends how you survived frostbite o 75. Throw a flaming pumpkin into the gorge o 76. Play co-ed intramural innertube water polo o 77. Spend all your lectures figuring out the day’s crossword. While sitting for the final, wish you had taken notes instead. o 78. Hook up with your T.A. o 79. Order a PMP at Shortstop Deli o 80. Play trivia at Rulloff’s on Sunday nights o 81. Make the trek down the hill: Go to a townie bar o 82. Make a fool of yourself at karaoke at Loco on Tuesday o 83. Buy a drink at every on-campus establishment that serves alcohol o 84. Go bowling at Helen Newman Lanes o 85. Hand out quartercards on Ho Plaza o 86. Drive your car up and down Libe Slope or Ho Plaza o 87. Have a friend’s parents take you out to eat at John Thomas Steakhouse or Boatyard Grill o 88. Eat a chicken parm sandwich from Louie’s Lunch o 89. Order at Wings Over Ithaca at 3:59 a.m. o 90. Get thrown out of Balch Hall o 91. Hook up with a freshman o 92. Go skinny dipping in a gorge o 93. Walk to the Commons and back o 94. Go to an a cappella concert o 95. Go ice skating at Lynah Rink o 96. Instagram the cherry blossoms in the spring o 97. Sell back your books; use money to buy alcohol o 98. Drink bubble tea o 99. Eat a Pinesburger o 100. Walk to a fraternity party with your entire freshman floor o 101. Go to a fraternity party as a senior; convince yourself you were never one of them o 102. Get lost in Collegetown during Orientation Week o 103. Get negged at a bar because the bouncer is actually friends with the person whose I.D. you are using o 104. See a foreign film at Cinemapolis o 105. Eat mongo at RPCC o 106. See a concert at Barton Hall o 107. Gain the freshman 15. Pay $145 for a gym membership and don’t go o 108. Eat brunch on North Campus o 109. Go to Buttermilk Falls for a hike and to take pictures to put on Instagram to prove you did something outdoorsy o 110. Fail your swim test, just for kicks o 111. Tailgate for homecoming o 112. Model for the Cornell Fashion Collective’s annual fashion show o 113. Host a prefrosh o 114. Request a song to be played on the clock tower o 115. Get guilt-tripped into giving blood o 116. Get asked if you are pregnant at Cornell Health (regardless of your gender) o 117. Drink with your R.A. o 118. Make a chalking; weep when it rains that night o 119. Sing drunk on the drunk bus o 120. Meet Bill Nye ’77, “The Science Guy,” and give him a hug o 121. See how long you can go without doing laundry o 122. Go on a road trip to Canada, flirt with the border patrol, smuggle booze back o 123. Try to order pizza from a Blue Light phone o 124. Go to the sex shop on the Commons o 125. Get drunk on Slope Day, run into a vice president o 126. Complain about the Slope Day headliners o 127. Get tapped for a secret society o 128. Go to The Shops at Ithaca Mall, realize it is severely lacking, then drive to Destiny USA in Syracuse o 129. Lose a friend over signing a lease in Collegetown o 130. Run out of BRBs in March; live off campus events’ free food for the rest of the year o 131. Walk holding hands around Beebe Lake o 132. Visit the Sciencenter o 133. See Yamatai bang it out at Pulse o 134. Get J.A.’d for urinating on the Law School o 135. Hook up with someone randomly and then see them every day afterward o 136. Go to a coffee house in JAM o 137. See how many people you can cram into your dorm room o 138. Claim a big table near an outlet in Temple of Zeus and occupy it all day o 139. Write dirty messages with rocks in the gorge o 140. Ride a horse at Oxley Equestrian Center o 141. Ring the giant bell in the Botanic Gardens o 142. Crash a political rally on Ho Plaza o 143. Do the COE ropes course o 144. Attend a show at the State Theatre o 145. Prank call the CIT HelpDesk o 146. Wake up at 7 a.m. for pre-enroll; realize that your choice classes are full anyway o 147. Ski at Greek Peak o 148. Take a night prelim near the vet school, walk back in the dark o 149. Trespass on Alumni Fields o 150. Find your way onto the roof of a Cornell building o 151. Take the BASICS program o 152. Walk to class in the snow, uphill both ways o 153. Buy a Cornell-grown apple from a vending machine o 154. Furnish an apartment entirely with items from the Dump & Run o 155. Eat at each dining hall at least once o 156. Ask for an extension on a term paper o 157. Take part in Holi and get colorful o 158. Pull an all-nighter in the Uris Library Cocktail Lounge o 159. Tell a professor what you really think of his/her class o 160. Attend a Sun organizational meeting o 161. Climb all 161 steps to the top of McGraw Tower