On the first night of Orientation Week, alone and lost, I called my roommate in a tearful panic.

“Jenni, where are you?” she screamed into the phone.

“I’m lost. I can’t see you. I don’t know where I am. I think I’m about to get arrested.” I cried and ran to hide behind a bush as a police car drove past me. I was living out everyone’s worst first week of college fears. Alone, slightly intoxicated and completely disoriented — I couldn’t imagine a worse way to start off the year.

“Just look at the street signs. What do they say?”

“Um … Cook and Eddy,” I managed to spit out through my tears. There was a click at the other end of the line — I’d been hung up on.

Collegetown can be a terrifying maze for the herds of overexcited freshmen that venture down from North Campus each year during Orientation Week. Crying is somewhat understandable as a result of the stress of walking endlessly in circles (always uphill), trying to figure out how to get to that party on Linden that your roommate’s sort-of boyfriend from high school’s cousin told her about only to be abandoned by your new found friends. This experience, however, took place last year during my third Orientation Week. My apartment, I’m humiliated to add, is a block away near the corner of Eddy and Catherine.

Although this pathetic ordeal subjected me to months of deserved ridicule from my friends and confirmed that I am clearly lacking something in both the sanity and common sense departments, it wasn’t completely without benefit. The next morning, I proudly marked a large blue check on the “Big Red Ambition: 161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do” list hanging in our apartment, denoting that I had accomplished #102: Get Lost in Collegetown During Orientation Week.

The list is a compilation of reader suggestions that can be found in The Sun’s Freshman Issue each year. The items range from miserable (#58: Wait in line for half an hour for a salad at the Terrace) to amazing (#38: Skip class to play frisbee on the Arts Quad. Highly recommended.) to totally weird (#75: Throw a flaming pumpkin into the gorge. Do people actually do this?!), but they all represent experiences that are distinctly Cornell.

Contemplating my upcoming year as a senior with minimal credits to fulfill and an abundance of free time, I decided to undertake the task of completing as many of the 161 things as I can. I would say that I’m going to finish them all, but some are impossible this far into my Cornell career (#110: Fail your swim test, just for kicks) and some are just too stupid (Again, #110: Fail your swim test, just for kicks).

Despite the appearance of the posted list in my apartment, on which there are a few erroneous blue checks intended to outnumber the pen marks of my roommates, I can only honestly cross out 57 things on the list. This leaves 104 left to accomplish. First up? #92: Go skinny dipping in a gorge. That water is only going to get colder as the year progresses.

I can already anticipate failing at a few of the tasks; People would literally have to be quarter carding on Ho Plaza with dying children before I’d be convinced to do #115: Get guilt-tripped into giving blood. That being said, I’m excited to seek out experiences I would have never thought to try (#123: Try to order a pizza from a Blue Light phone) or would have never gotten around to otherwise (#66: See the brain collection in Uris Hall). At the very least, I expect to be able to beat my roommates in number of completed items without cheating.

A final disclosure, because I’m sure you’re wondering by now: No, I haven’t completed the most famous of the 161 things — #1: Make the library your bedroom and have sex in the stacks. Yet.