Cornellian Twilight

As many of our avid readers know, my last blog was posted around the early morning hours.  This was because I was working on my individual CHESS report, which I happened to not finish until after lunch.  But I am getting ahead of myself, so I will start at the beginning.

I woke up a little late today, around 7 AM.  This was not anywhere out of the ordinary really though, after all, class started about half an hour later today.  But that ended up not mattering, as I would arrive two minutes late due to a variety of circumstances (a flash drive search combined with catching the wrong bus resulted in that).  Despite being late by around two minutes, I did not miss anything much -- the guest speakers at class today had not started yet.

Barbara Lang started out with an overview of proper behavior and etiquette, not only in business, but generally in life.  With a flair for the dramatic and the energetic, she went over the basics to presenting one's self properly, including the proper handshake and when and where one should carry themselves properly.  It was an incredibly interesting lecture and she was extremely engaging.

With a complete 180, Robert La Fleur appeared to class via a Skype call in order to speak about the business aspects of hospitality.  He gave an overview of the stock market, a little bit of hospitality economic history, ending with the trends that he has observed and what to look out for on Wall Street.  While it was not live, it was interesting in it's own way.

A screenshot from a very long report-in-progress.

Once the lectures were over, I dealt with taking care of the rest of my CHESS report, a fourth of which I finished by the end of the office period.  It was extremely long and extremely difficult, but I hope that I did it well enough -- or well, hopefully.

When I finally finished my work and set off for lunch, I realized something -- this was the beginning of our last weekend here at Cornell.  Considering what we have been through over the past few weeks and the huge workload and amazing experiences that were still to come, I realized that it had not really hit me yet.  That I had been in Chicago, and now Ithaca, away from home, away from everything, doing something really rigorous.

This makes it imperative that I do some fantastic things before this weekend is over, and obviously, before we finally leave this place.  It has been a home so far, and I think I will continue to see it as such.  But there are still memories to be made here, so let's keep them coming.