https://medium.com/@beccaakane

It is 11:30 on a Friday night and the upper quads are quiet, brisk with the smell of winter in the air. The scene is cold and dark and snow is falling softly on the ground.

It was quiet but not completely silent; there was a subtle noise, just a few giggles and shouts coming from the snow-covered grasses in between Rowland, Tallcott and Hilliard. I looked out of my window to find a group of people playing in the snow.

Excited by the weather and the playfulness of our neighbors, I grabbed my friends and headed outside to join in on the fun.  

Once we stepped out of our building we began to run around, throwing snowballs at each other and just being plain old goofy. We were having so much fun just fooling around, keeping to the little group we had created.  

The next thing we knew, a door burst open from Hilliard and more bodies came running outside. With a rush of people joining in on the fun, what was at first a small friendly snowball fight turned into a crazy war between two sides of the quads.

A majority of Hilliard formed their own group, planning and plotting to attack those on the Tallcott and Rowland side. It started getting pretty intense, as the number of people grew, but the war was still in good fun.

Cameras were flashing, people were riding sleds down the hills and I even saw someone being pushed around in a cardboard recycling bin. My one friend ran outside in just jeans, no shirt and a red cape, running around like a superhero.

People were shouting, “CHARGE!” and “FOR NARNIA!” in an effort to rally their side and being to attack the opposing team, while tons of others just ran around like crazy, paying no mind to the cold Ithaca temperature that surrounded them.

I couldn’t tell you for sure who was the official winner of the fight because honestly, even as organized as it may have sounded, everyone was all over the place. There were sporadic blows hitting from all over the quad and by the end of the fight everyone was intermixed, standing around talking as if this was some big planned event.  

What surprised me most about this entertaining war was the fact that nothing was actually planned or organized ahead of time. It just happened, in the spirit of the weather and excitement for snowfall.

I have to say that it most definitely served as a great break after the long week of coming back to classes after thanksgiving break. Everyone seemed to just let go and have a ball.

The night turned out to be pretty great. What we thought would be a dreary winter weekend surprised itself in a good way. I can’t wait for more Ithaca snowfalls and to see what’s in store as the winter season progresses.

Photography by Bethany M. Rock

When I was about seven or eight years old, my dad took me (along with my two other siblings) to his work for the infamous “take your child to work day”. The event was more like a big party, publicizing the company, rather than a normal workday.

There were lots of things going on, which included getting your picture taken in the company Jeep, enjoying popcorn and cotton candy and my personal favorite, being interviewed in front of a camera that projected out to all of the TVs in the entire building.

We walked around admiring the different stations and exhibits that the Cable company had to offer, even stopping and waiting in line to get our pictures taken in a monstrous black jeep with the “RCN” logo on it.

After a little while we filtered into a portable television studio that was set up in the back parking lot of the company building. All of the kids lined up and waited to be interviewed by the witty and outspoken interviewer.

As each kid sat down, they answered a series of questions such as: “What’s your name?” “Which parent works at RCN?” and then the zinger, “What is your favorite TV show?”

I half listened to each and every response, only waiting to hear what they enjoyed watching on TV. The answers all seemed similar and as the line progresses there was a numerous amount of “Spongebobs, Scoobydoo and Hey Arnold”.

Now, I neglected to mention that when I was seven eight years old, I always felt like I had something to prove. I wanted to stand out and be different.

While waiting in line I figured that I had my perfect chance. What I was hoping to prove, at the ripe age of seven or eight, was that I was mature and older than I seemed.

The kids standing before me all looked so intimidating like teenagers who had greater experiences than I. At the time they seemed so grown up; kids who towered a foot or two over me, with their hip 2000s style clothes looked as if they were years and years older. Little did I know, these kids were not more than two or three years older and I was already holding them to the status of grown teens.

So anyway, as each and every kid sat down to answer questions, I waited anxiously, thinking and thinking of a show that would make me sound older, cooler or something other than my tiny and childish self.

As the person in front of me rose from there seat and began to walk away, I nervously sat down in front on the interviewer. He held up a big microphone to his faces and proceeded to question me, as he had done with all of the other kids.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Becca”

“And your parent works here?”

“Yes, my dad, Mike.”

“Great! Now tell me, what it your favorite TV show?”

“Umm… Jerry Springer” I said, timidly.

At that moment the interviewer let out a big laugh, as did the rest of the crew in the makeshift studio. “Mike! Did you hear what your kid just said on TV?” yelled one of my dad’s coworkers.

Started to flush and was immediately embarrassed. Right as I had uttered the words “Jerry Springer”, I immediately regretted it. It was the first thing that had come to my mind and I figured that it would make me sound cooler.

Even though I proclaimed The Jerry Springer show to be my favorite on a TV station that broadcasted to a few hundred people, I was not entirely sure that the show actually was.

They reason I had stated this and the reason that this show had come to mind was because I had seen I while sitting at the foot of the television stand one Sunday afternoon.

My dad had been flipping through the channels and paused on Jerry Springer’s show as he went to answer the phone. I watched for a few minutes, and when my dad came back into the room I asked him what exactly the show was about. He took one look and brushed me off, saying “Nothing, It’s a bad show…only for grown ups” and then proceeded to flip through the channels.

Thinking back on it, I remember getting upset about the whole situation. At the time I had thought that I was saying something that would make me sound older or different. I never realized that I would be saying something that would make a whole slew of people laugh and joke about for the next week. I don’t think I was as upset for myself, but more so worried that my dad would be upset over something that I said or be mad at me for making his coworkers think that I watched such a show like Jerry Springer’s.

In hindsight, the incident made for a great story. I was mortified at the time, realizing that I had said something on a public station that probably shouldn’t have, but it sure is funny to look back upon. 

For the past few weeks I have been trying to get out and do different things. This whole concept was presented to me through my seminar class when our professor asked as an assignment to go on a “quest”.

This assignment required us to do something different, whether it was something we had never done before or accomplishing a new task. It got me thinking about all of the new things I wanted to try and the experiences I was looking forward to having.  So, I decided to list two interesting quests I have been on during my time here at Ithaca.

Here we go!

GORGES

The gorges surrounding Ithaca are undeniably GORGEous. I visited about the third weekend into school when the weather was warm, the sun was shining and people were everywhere. Tan, glowing bodies congregated around the swimming area like animals huddling by the water hole.

And as if the delightful views weren’t enough of an attraction, it is an awesome place to go cliff jumping.  And while there is a sign stating “absolutely no swimming in dangerous waters”, swimming in the warm waters of early September was very calm.

You’d think that people would be quite apprehensive about jumping, but from what I viewed, everyone seemed to have such a free spirited attitude.

Cliff jumping is definitely not something I would consider to be an everyday activity, so when it came time to start thinking of a quest, I knew this would be a good one to start off with.

The jumps were exhilarating. It was such a wonderful feeling, flying free through the air, hovering just a few seconds before hitting the water.

It was completely surreal and I would suggest jumping to anyone who is looking to do something different.

THE FESTS

Luckily I was able to attend both of the most recent fests in and around the common area of Ithaca.

The first I attended was Porch Fest. It was an assortment of various musical groups spread all around the neighborhoods surrounding the commons. These individual musical acts would place themselves on porches, playing sets and livening up the neighborhood.

The whole idea of it just fascinated me. I loved that you were able to listen to one group and then walk just a half of a block to see another. I also liked that the locals didn’t over publicize the event, making it into something it wasn’t. Instead, everyone looked as if they liked having a the quaint little festival in their within their reach.

This whole concept just seemed so fascinating to me and I enjoyed the fact that no matter what type of music the performers were playing, people seemed to enjoy it.

Then there was Apple Fest. I had the pleasure of going both on the Friday and Saturday of Apple Fest weekend.

When I first went down to the commons on Friday I’ll admit I was a little disappointed. I had gone down with high expectations, because of all the positive talk about it on campus.

When we reached the commons around noon the crowds were not as big as I thought they would be. It looked less like a festival and more like a gloomy ghost town. Even heading back to campus I realized that I hadn’t seen a single apple the whole time we were there.

The next day I decided to give it another try and to my surprise it was like a completely different scene. There were double or even triple the amount of people there as opposed to the previous day.

We walked around a lot, taking in the large crowds, the delicious smelling foods and of course, the apples!

My favorite thing about the whole festival was most definitely the yummy apple crisp sundaes served by scoopers of Purity Ice Cream.  Eating it was the highlight of my day and made the second trip back down to the commons something worth going back for.

I’m glad that I took the opportunity to explore a few of the wonderful attractions Ithaca has to offer. Hopefully there will be many more quests to go on in my future!

So there has been a lot of harmless pranking going on recently. Through texts, whiteboards and even funny decorative rocks, these shenanigans have been very prevalent in the first few weeks of my freshman year. Here are some instances in which I have experienced taking part in this silly tomfoolery.

Cat Facts

A few weeks into the current semester my roommates and I had begun to make some new friends. One day, I decided to have fun with our newfound amigos and figured that the best way to test our friendship would be to prank them. How else?

I thought it would be funny to send my friend Dan anonymous texts about cats, appropriately named “Cat Facts”. After the first text all I got was a simple “what?” in response. Believing I could get more out of him, I pushed on with more and more interesting facts about cats. Facts like, “Cats use their tails for balance and have nearly 30 individual bones in them!” And I would sign off by texting “Have a purry day!”

He grew a suspicion pretty quickly and asked if I knew anything about his strange messages instantly upon greeting him the next day. After denying his questions, he got his roommate Jake into the matter.

There is some sort of sick funniness about the paranoia of people that just sometimes makes you laugh. This is unfortunately how my brain works.  Although, I would not necessarily recommend telling this to anyone in particular if you feel the same way because it is surely a trait that could end you up in a mental institution.

These guys were easily puzzled and confused as to what was going on. They even tried calling the number a few times, rightfully receiving no response on my part.

The prank went on for a few days and you could see how the frustration manifested on their faces differently each day.

I had also begun to text Jake some Cat Facts too, just to for kicks. And this was probably the start to my downfall seeing as he was ultimately the one who figured me out.

The boys were persistent and even did their research. Wondering whom this jokester could be with the (610) area code, they continued to question me, reasoning that they did not know anyone else from the Philadelphia area or anyone with those three digits at the beginning of their number.

In the end, Jake and Dan discovered that it was I behind the infamous Cat Facts. They had called my phone from an unknown number when we were together and noticed the hesitation on my face when I attempted to ignore the call.

I think it is safe to say that the prank failed in the end, but I at least it was fun while it lasted.

Whiteboard Mystery

A few days later we realized that the tables had turned. Instead of performing the prank, I along with my roommates had begun to be pranked.

This prank consisted of fun facts written on our whiteboard. Mind you, these were no ordinary fun facts that our mysterious pranker(s) were supplying us with. Instead, they happened to be fun and false facts about us three roommates.

It started right after the Cat Facts fiasco, with a random message once or twice a day for about a week.

The first one was short and sweet. It read, “Autumn was actually born in the winter” and then followed the next day with, “Carson was born in a barley farm in north east Nebraska” and then “Rebecca can’t pronounce the word ‘lemons’”.

Theses strange and obscene facts kept us questioning who it could be and why were they doing this to us?

Our initial thought was to blame Dan and Jake for this whole thing, until they reassured us over and over that they had not part in it and offered to help us figure out who it could be.

After about a week went by, we began to get paranoid. It seemed as if every time we stepped out of our dorm we found another note. Now I could understand Jake and Dan’s frustration.

It got to the point where we would make a mad dash for the door whenever we heard someone approaching, but were greeted by nothingness and a false sense of hope.

When it seemed as if we had finally given up all hope we received a gift at our door. It was a tiny rock with beady white eyes and colorful pipe cleaners attached to form hands and feet. Our whiteboard had “Fun Fact” written on it, with an arrow pointing down to the colorful creature.

This little gift threw us even more off our guard and at that point we seemed to lose all hope.

But then as we were about to get ready for bed, I got a call from Jake. “Come up to the lounge, you have to see this.”  The three of us hurried up to the lounge to find two people sitting down, decorating rocks.

Our culprits turned out to be two random people who thought that they would have some fun writing witty facts on our door. I have to say, I was a great idea and I’m sure they got a kick out of seeing our frustration.

I was relieved to know that the pranks were finally over. I guess being pranked turned out to be a bit of karma for pranking my friends earlier on but hey, no one was harmed by a little monkey business. 

So I wrote a blog article for my college’s alternative literary magazine. I did not realize that after having your content run through proofreading and editing, it could turn out to be something you didn’t intend it to be. The article that was posted on the website was different from my own and didn’t feel as personal to my writing as it did before editing. I wanted to post my original copy on here to share the full story of my first say day of college. 

It was August 25^th; Move in day. I rolled onto the campus feeling great. I was pumped to be meeting new people, meeting my roommates and decorating my dorm room! Driving up the winding roads I thought nothing could go wrong … correction: I had a small sick feeling in my stomach that I pushed deep down (assuming it was nervousness) and went on to tell myself that nothing could go wrong….

Fast-forward about thirty minutes and we were pulling up to the beloved Tallcott Hall to begin unloading the packed car and hope that no tears would be shed by those over forty. As soon as I stepped out of the car about six eager helpers were standing there waiting for me as I nervously struggled to open the back door of my overly stuffed vehicle. My initial feeling was as If I were a movie star stepping out of a limousine, except in this situation there were smelly dumpsters, handcarts and extremely excited people dressed in “move-in crew” t-shirts, as opposed to paparazzi and cameras… so I guess you could say that it wasn’t quite a glamorous feeling.

As we walked into the dorm carrying loads of various things, our jaws dropped. And I mean dropped. It was like something you would see in a cartoon or an animated movie, where the characters eyes go wide and you can see the whole contents of their mouth. I think the move-in crew as well as us future residents all thought one thing. “Whoa this room is huge!” which would be correct since I (along with my other two roommates) currently reside in the very spacious, former Resident Director’s office. But contrary to popular belief, that thought would not necessarily be the first of which should come to ones mind while walking into the current situation. About 0.3 seconds after these very thoughts were uttered, I spoke. “But there’s NO furniture in here!” and then everyone sprung back to reality. The fact was, that right as we walked into our dorm on move-in day we discovered that there was not one single piece of furniture inside of our dorm room. You see this might pose a tiny problem for us dormers as we still held what seemed like a whole life’s worth of “stuff” in our hands.

As we waited on furniture to be shipped over to our dorm, we used our two-hour gap as a bonding session. Parents got to know one another, exchange numbers, stories, remedies, recipes’, anything you can think of talking about was discussed within that two hour period.

And then the stomachs started growling. My roommate suggested we check out the free bagel brunch down in the chapel. She had heard about it from the fall welcome schedule and it seemed like a great solution to our angry abdomens. We headed out of our dorm, walking past the newly arrived truck of furniture, which incidentally spat out a piece of wood that broke off of one of our desk chairs. (How nice, right?) I took it as some form of karma for having been excited about college, making this odd day the revenge for being so antsy to come to Ithaca.

We proceeded down to the chapel, getting lost on our way there because that’s what freshman do, but no fear we pulled out our freshly printed campus maps and directed ourselves to the right place. We walked into the chapel to find an arrangement of bagels waiting for us. Looking like scavengers rummaging for food, we selected our bagels, quickly spread on some cream cheese and turned to head out the door. Before we could exit, a kind woman came forward and asked us to sign in and mingle with “the group” before heading out. Thinking nothing of it we walked over to a guy holding a clipboard and each put down our emails and names on a sheet of paper before intentionally not mingling and slipping out the back door to head back to our empty dorm.

When we got back everything seemed to fall into place. The movers kindly brought in our furniture, grumpy stomachs were filled and our freshman life on campus was all coming together! And then we received an email. It turned out that our free bagel brunch was actually for the Hillel foundation of Jewish campus life here at Ithaca. We were all surprised and a bit confused to receive this email but laughed it off as we realized that we had just joined the Jewish community when none of us are actually Jewish. I don’t mean for this to get anti-Semitic or anything, I can assure you that my roommates and I are very fond of the Jewish religion and culture, but as three religion-established incoming college freshman it wasn’t really our intent to join the Jewish community, no matter how good their bagels were. Although, seeing as this happened by accident, we graciously accept the fact that we have been taken into Hillel and I think it’s safe to say that this has been the on going joke of the month.

The day turned out to be something pretty special and despite all of the craziness, it was still very memorable. It’s pretty funny to look back and say that our dorm room was empty for the better part of our move in day, and even that we became unofficial members of Hillel because we just wanted free bagels. I hope that everyone else’s transition into college went a little more smoothly than mine, but if not, remember that even the craziest of moments make for the best stories!

Things that make up an interesting first few weeks of college:

1. Moving into your dorm and realizing that there is no furniture

2. Prank texting your new friends Cat Facts and watching them freak out 

3. Tables turned and being pranked by random people via whiteboard

and decorative rocks….

4. Cliff jumping like a crazy person 

5. Conquering your first frat party 

6. Falling off your bed within the first week, obtaining the first college battle wound… not due to alcohol but clumsiness

Welp thats all for now folks! My first few weeks here at college have surely been eventful and I can’t wait to see what the next four years have in store!

The other day at work, a group of middle school-aged girls came up to order at my window. Decked out in their lacrosse uniforms complete with lululemon head bands, gleaming white iPhones and a couple of Jackson’s in each hand. I inhaled, ready to take on the madness that was about to ensue. The giggling and shouting that came from 5 feet in front of me set my ear drums ringing, as I waited for their orders. “Can I sample this? Can I sample that?” The game of sampling went on for a few minutes. Their beady little eyes watching my every move as I handed out the spoonfuls of waterice. After what seemed like an eternity of contemplation, each began to order. One by one, the words “small” and “fat free” came out of their mouths, specifying their orders. And ya know what? I just don’t understand why. I’m not at all saying that you should order large or jumbo sized products, and I am in no way enforcing the tragic obesity rate of this country, it is just that these stereotypes and imaginary restrictions are placed on girls this age. Are they really and completely satisfied with kid-sized cups and fat free ice cream? Because I sure as hell know that it does not taste any better! Their hands clutched a wealthy dose of their parents’ money, which definitely did not symbolize poverty. If they can afford it, why settle for the least possible? I guess I just do not understand the psychology behind it. 

Hi! I’m Becca. I am a soon to be college student who has her wits about her. I really enjoy writing, especially that of the humorous variety. I figured that I would give this blog a try and see how it works out! It can’t hurt, right? Oh well… be ready to dive in along side me as I explore the wondrous world outside of my computer! xoxo gossip girl

just kidding…. 

- B