Friday, July 8, 2016

Penultimate Friday

Week 2 at Cornell is officially done, and it's getting very bittersweet. Today I allowed myself to sleep in and just go to lunch. I tried the "burrito" Trillium had to offer, and I wasn't entirely disappointed, thankfully. I made it as authentic as possible. Since they didn't have pico de gallo, I simply asked for them to add tomato and onions to it, along with everything else a good burrito should have. Some of my vegetable choices I've made here surprise me, like I've been voluntarily eating mushrooms.I headed to class with Amelia and Abe, and most of us were raving over the new app store game Pokemon Go. A man walked in and asked if Sam had arrived yet, and of course since it was still a little early the answer was no.

Turns out this man, Chris, was here to help us research for our assignment for Policy debate, the 1AC (1st affirmative constructive). He works in the ILR library, which is the one I frequent the most to study since it's just down the hall from my class. He showed us the Cornell database that proved to be very useful for our assignment. With this database, we can not only look up scholarly journals, articles, and books, but also Congress hearings. It interested me to know that all this information is very accessible to us for the time being. The presentation only took about 30 minutes, and when it was over Sam told us we could pick up our tests from yesterday. I got an 88 on it, which was decent enough because it was a lot of vocabulary to study, but I wish I would've gotten just one more answer right to get the A. Nevertheless, the test is only 10% of  my final grade, so I still have the possibility to ace the class itself.

After we got our tests, we were divided like usual for a debate. This time, though, we wouldn't be guided by Armands or Rubin to format our argument. Instead, we'd all be given sides at random, and the topic. The resolution was, "This house should ban violent video games." Amelia and I had to be affirmative, and this time we would be second government, so either 5th or 7th to speak. We went to a hallway and began prepping. Between the two of us, we came up with some solid arguments about why violent video games should be banned. We used the usual promotion of violence/sexism in the games in addition to how there's already an age restriction on them so children shouldn't even be playing them. I felt like we took a good angle on it by adding the fact that it affects people with PTSD relating to violence and/or isn't very healthy because you're in front of a TV all day. Some of the opposition side's arguments made me laugh a lot, and maybe during a real debate I shouldn't laugh. It was an interesting debate, because these are all ideas everyone came up with on their own. Like most debates, we aren't necessarily ranked like in a real debate, but we got feedback from Armands, and he said I did a good job and gave some constructive criticism for all of us. 

I met up with Paula to go to Target after class, since she had a couple things to buy and wasn't there yesterday. We roamed around Target for a while, and when we got hungry we met up with some of our other friends at the Commons. We ate at a Mexican restaurant called Viva with mostly our guy friends (Keith, Tommy, Doug, Aziz, Harrison, and Joon) since the girls had gone off somewhere else and we didn't know. Viva was crowded, but there was an option to get tacos and faster foods in one side of the restaurant. Paula and I arrived when everyone had already received their food, so we just go some Nachos. Then we walked around the Commons and got some Ice cream from 15 Below Ice cream. It was delicious, and it's a must-have. The Commons have many shops, kind of like 5th Street Promenade in Santa Monica, except a little less high-end and nice.

The rest of the night wasn't very eventful, which is a drag because check-in is at midnight and there wasn't really much to do that would last until midnight. Our friends were going to play Monopoly, but we couldn't join, because we don't live in Donlon. Night check-in would end up halting our game halfway, and they didn't want that. So, before going back to our dorms Paula and I played Pokemon Go and caught a bunch of Pokemon around the area.

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