I was Already Awake, so...HA

The horde of people brought outside in the morning.

I got up around 5:00 AM this morning and couldn't quite fall back asleep. I wasn't quite sure why, but that was how my Monday morning began. Approximately around the time of 5:57 AM a screeching/ear-popping sound began to pierce my ears from seemingly nowhere. I knew exactly what it was so I woke up my roommate who was sound asleep during the fire alarm--only to find him wanting to sleep through it. He got up within 20 seconds and soon enough everyone on the entire floor was rushing/running/walking to the staircases (but surprisingly not the emergency staircases). By the time we all got outside, it quickly became more and more obvious that this was a prank or accident because there was no visible fire or damage to be seen. Consequently, we ended up spending around quarter of an hour doing just about nothing. 

Decent Italian food for lunch.

After we were all allowed back inside, some people were barely getting down the stairs while others were still sleeping in their rooms. I even had one floor-mate who's roommate didn't wake him up and just left him for dead practically--that's honestly one of the worst feelings I think a person could get, knowing that someone could've easily (possibly) saved your life but chose not to--especially if this person is familiar with you. Moving on, everyone was really cranky about the situation and many threats were made against whoever or whatever pulled the alarm. I've never heard an alarm quite as memorable or ear-shattering than that one--it might even give me nightmares for all I know. 

Breakfast around 8:20 AM should mean coffee and a banana for me but since there were no bananas, I just settled on coffee mixed with milk. I was dissatisfied but nonetheless carried on to class, not knowing what to expect for Burke the philosopher. Professor Kramnick (PK) explained how Burke was an Irish man that is essentially looked about as the founder of modern conservatism. Burke honestly just thought of tradition before anything else and including desires. One can even say that Burke so valued religion that nothing else could be considered before it.

The college workshop was packed, not exactly proven in this picture.

In our discussion groups today we all went over some of the confusing parts of Burke. This included having talks on how Burke believed in an unequal society, how in Burke's society no one was naturally better than anyone and government was God's gift to the people. After lunch we all went to our essay partners and peer-edited essays for the rest of class. When our writing workshop went into overtime, Vijay began passing out our midterms. My prediction of a B came true in the form of a B+, SO CLOSE! Ironically I had all the correct information in my essay, but I didn't include my thesis statement until the very end in the final paragraph--which you can actually do, but my TA disliked. Other than that only two other points were lost, to know you had all the correct reasons yet your TA didn't like how your essay was structured really got to me. 

Immediately after class ended, the entire F & J cohort went to a college application workshop where an admissions officer told us how in the application process it all matters on the individual grader that is examining it. Based on whether or not this person likes it, will determine whether this person will debate before a review committee to allow an individual student in. In the workshop the commissioners asked the crowd questions on how to make an essay stronger and weaker and so various (mainly obvious) comments were given. Eventually we got to reading personal statements that many people had differing views on and we were all mind-blown in the end to realize that all the people in the packet handed to us were accepted to Cornell. In the end it was really helpful, because it proved that there was no one simple "correct" way to write a personal statement because it all depends on the individual.

I got chai iced tea, but didn't like it.

Later on, after dinner I got to reading Marx and he's a very interesting character. Leading me to realize, it's not surprising why many people found his philosophy to be interesting--mainly because his thoughts were so detailed and essentially a road map.