July 19, 2009

Big Red Ambition: 161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do

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Compiled from student responses to an e-mail survey in 2005; updated 2009.
o 1. Make the library into your bedroom and have sex in the stacks
o 2. Finally meet the dazzling Denice Cassaro
o 3. Camp out overnight (re: sleep on AstroTurf) for hockey tickets
o 4. Go to the Cornell-Harvard men’s hockey game and throw fish on the ice
o 5. Sing along to “We didn’t go to Harvard” with the Cayuga’s Waiters
o 6. Sled down Libe Slope during a snow storm
o 7. Take Hotel Administration 430: Introduction to Wines
o 8. Streak across the Arts Quad
o 9. Take Psych 101
o 10. Test out Olin Library’s musically calibrated steps by throwing stones
on them
o 11. Attempt sake bombing at Plum Tree or Miyake in Collegetown
o 12. Order ice cream at the Dairy Bar
o 13. Climb the rock wall in Bartels Hall
o 14. Listen to a full chimes concert from the clock tower and guess the
songs played
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. Pick apples at the Cornell Orchards
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 Okenshield’s
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 (CornellCard it)
o 33. Watch the AAP students parade down East Avenue on Dragon Day
o 34. Enjoy corn nuggets at The Nines
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 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. Have lunch with President Skorton in Trillium; ask if he’s done
with that burger
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. Attend a Cornell Night
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 Plantations
o 58. Wait in line for half an hour for a salad at the Terrace
o 59. Ignore any and all “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 Law School library
(looks like Hogwarts)
o 66. See the brain collection in Uris Hall
o 67. Eat at Taverna Banfi (formerly Banfi’s) and charge it to CornellCard
o 68. Buy beer at Jason’s in Collegetown and charge it to CityBucks
o 69. Take PAPL 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. According to 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 Sudoku. 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 the Hot Truck
o 80. Play trivia at Ruloff’s on Sunday nights
o 81. Go back for karaoke night on Monday
o 82. Dress in pastels for ’80s Night on Tuesdays at Johnny O’s
o 83. Hit up Group Therapy on Wednesdays at Dunbar’s
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. Eat breakfast at 2 a.m. at the State Diner
o 90. Males: 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. Eat in the Risley dining hall
o 96. Write a message on the wall at Collegetown Pizza
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 or Fall Creek Theater
o 105. Eat mongo at RPCC
o 106. See a concert at Barton Hall
o 107. Gain the freshman 15, pay $300 for a gym membership and don’t go
o 108. Eat brunch on North Campus
o 109. Do your Freshman Reading Project before you graduate
o 110. Fail your swim test, just for kicks
o 111. Tailgate for homecoming
o 112. Be a model in the Cornell Design League’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 Gannett (males and females)
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 Vice President Susan Murphy ’73
o 126. Complain about the Slope Day headliners
o 127. Get tapped for a secret society
o 128. Go to Pyramid Mall, realize it is severely lacking, then drive to
Carousel Mall in Syracuse
o 129. Attend Cross Country Gourmet at a dining hall near you
o 130. Complain about your writing seminar to no one in particular
o 131. Walk holding hands around Beebe Lake
o 132. Visit the Sciencenter
o 133. Watch a soccer game at Mama T’s, crammed in like a sardine
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. Watch people play Dance Dance Revolution in Appel
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 Plantations
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 CoursEnroll; 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. Ask Uncle Ezra a question
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. Prepare to pull an all-nighter in the Uris Library Cocktail Lounge by drinking three Mountain Dews and two cups of coffee, then eating a handful of No-Doz; accomplish nothing due to an inability to sit still
o 159. Tell a professor what you really think of his/her class
o 160. Attend a Sun organizational meeting: Go to cornellsun.com for details
o 161. Climb all 161 steps to the top of McGraw Tower