The quandary I find myself in as a fifth-year architecture student is a contagious middle-aged syndrome that has instigated a plague-like epidemic affecting both my fashion and manner. Though I still go out during my semester in New York City, I have recently begun to prefer soft Merlots over countless shots of vodka, Feist and my dear friend Fiona over loud Top 40 hits and sweaters and boots over skimpy tank tops and heels.

We are obsessed with our own destruction. Somehow, perhaps, we know we can’t keep cutting down rainforests, driving vehicles with single-digit MPGs or allowing Disney to keep unleashing clones of Raven and Miley upon us. How do these societal fears of worldly limits curbing our unlimited desires manifest themselves? In fiction. The big screen. Lots of CGI.

Today, Nov. 17, is by all accounts an unspectacular day in the calendar year. But it, like each passing day now, is momentous for us seniors, for it brings us another pace closer to adjourning our undergraduate experiences.

You can tell quite a bit about a musician from the guitars he plays. This is not, as it may seem, a superficial judgment of a book by its cover. Rather, an instrument is a legitimate indication of an overall attitude towards the experience of playing and creating music.

I think it’s fair to say that I, more than the average person, really love updating other peoples iPods. There are few feelings better than being handed an iPod and asked to upload 10 albums that I think someone will love. It’s such a fun game and when I succeed, I feel like a champ. However, every time I go home for a break I inevitably get asked by my father to update his iPod. The only problem is that my father’s music taste makes me question his sexuality. Which is obviously a very big issue.

My recent incursion into the workforce has rendered me confused as to what exactly constitutes business attire in architecture. With no enforced dress code, the firm I have been working for in the past months continues to surprise me each week, with its similarity to the casualness of a Silicon Valley start-up (though, with the unfortunate exclusion of the free beer, massages and laundry pickup).

This past summer, I interned with the website of a major news network and received an unexpected initiation into the world of celebrity journalism. Though I was assigned to the website’s science and technology section, I often aided with celebrity-related stories, which seemed to exist in infinite abundance.

Horror films and Hollywood have had a relationship that’s more like a romantic comedy. They met, they courted, there were ups, there were downs and then years of neglect and ball-and-chain treatment, and now no one even knows why they were even together in the first place … “I don’t even know you anymore!” says Hollywood. Horror Film replies: “You used to have taste! Now you’re this completely different person that doesn’t care about anything!” Leave it to the movies to be the Woody Allen character in the relationship.

As a music lover and college student there often comes the time when one must make the painstaking decision whether to journey to see a concert or not. When and what music makes it worth it to trek away from Ithaca and give college a pass?

Sometimes it almost seems as if The Man has a sense of irony.

On July 17, Amazon.com pulled copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 from its new, fancy-schmancy electronic Kindle readers. These digitized books were apparently “illegal copies” that the website had inadvertently offered for sale. The company quickly refunded readers for the misunderstanding (and cognitive dissonance). Ha!