Purple, Gold, and White

By: Daniel Patrick Moriarity '14

I have always enjoyed the holiday season. The smiles, the laughter, that indescribable feeling of optimism and the love of life that only comes during winter are things that I cherish as I enjoy them, and reminisce on with a smile when I can’t. My first holiday season was a great one, full of new friends who felt like old family, and I will remember it as long as I live. One of my favorite moments last term came on one December night, right before finals week, where my friends and I sang Christmas carols around the piano in the Anderson lobby to an ever growing audience of our peers and Ando staff. From “What Child is This?” to “Silent Night” people kept coming downstairs to join the fun and help us celebrate the spirit of the holidays. After over a half an hour of bonding and laughter we all turned to return to our rooms. As I turned to leave I looked out the window to see a halo of light created by one of Elmira College’s antique lampposts illuminate the large, fluffy snowflakes as they gently fell from the sky, almost as if it was a just-shaken snow globe left next to a burning fireplace. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Trying to Stay Sane

By: Sarah Schwadron '14


Hello. My name is Sarah Schwadron, and I am an eBay addict.

Well, not really. But still. It’s become an unhealthy addiction, as well as boredom buster.

I blame my floor. When we’re bored, that’s what we will do. Go on eBay and try and find cute designer stuff for cheap. I’m not as bad as some people, as I am cancelling my account fairly soon. But I bought a bag that I have wanted since sixth grade for pretty cheap, which I’m happy about…although my bank account isn’t. Opps.

So my optimism about this semester is starting to decline a bit. It’s all thanks to Freshman Writing. Two papers due on Friday. Plus a presentation due Monday, along with a lot of reading. Most of the freshmen I know are not excited about this week. At least my Core class has one essay due on the fourth…even though that’s the same day my European History paper is due. That’s on the French Revolution so that should be fairly simple/straightforward though. Oh and I have a Human Services test on the first.

All I can say is thank God for my To Do list. If I didn’t have that, I honestly do not know if all my work will get done. Every time I find out that I have a new assignment due, it gets added to the list. While the sheet of paper becomes a bunch of scribbles to anyone else, I can decipher it and that’s all that matters.

Now it’s time to go tackle at least one paper (translation: open a word document, type in a heading, and then wind up on facebook or eBay for all the time I’m supposed to be working).

Procrastination.

By: Tyler Cuddeback '14

Procrastination. We all do it. Sounds like the beginning of an Oprah special, sure, but it’s true. And is it just me, or do we do it at the worst possible times? As it is, writing this blog is a form of procrastination for me. Sure, I get paid to do this, but I’m also looking at 3 half finished essays for Freshman Writing, studying for a week’s worth of Chinese that I’ve missed from being sick, and I have to seriously start considering what I want to do for my 10 page research paper for this semester. On top of that, I’m looking at a pile of dishes, a load of laundry, and I should probably change my sheets soon.

These all seem like easy enough tasks to accomplish, right? Throw the laundry in to the wash, do the dishes, swap over the laundry to the dryer, throw my sheets into the washer, sit down and finish up my essays, finish up the laundry and go to bed. I could have all this stuff done in a matter of 3 or 4 hours, tops.

I blame winter! Before the snow started to fall and it got so cold outside that your snot turns into icicles, my friends and I entertained ourselves by going out around campus or hanging out outside or walking around town. We found ways to blow off steam so that when it came time to do work, we weren’t so pent up that the last thing we wanted to think about was work. Right now, if we went outside to do the things we used to, after about a minute, someone would scream some random expletive and complain about how cold it was until the rest of us went back inside.

When I first moved here, people told me that the winters were cold. I live about an hour south of Elmira, so I didn’t think it would be that much of a difference. Boy was I wrong! Unless you have lived here for years, or grew up somewhere were your closest neighbor was a herd of moose or caribou, you need to throw on a big winter jacket or layer up just to leave your dorm and go to the Campus Center for Dinner.
So most of us just stay inside and try to find a way to entertain ourselves. I can’t wait for the sun to stay up later than 6PM and the snow to melt enough so that I can finally get some work done!

Photography Filled Break

By: Paige Kleinfelder '14


Over break I finally bought a new digital camera and I couldn’t wait to start taking pictures. As my family drove over snow-covered roads to the eco lodge at Bald Eagle State Park to spend New Year’s Eve, I was hoping for more snow covered hills and a frozen lake but as we got closer there was less and less snow. When we arrived, the lake was frozen, but there was no snow. None. This meant no snowboarding, no sledding, no photograph of snow covered hills. Even without the snow I found a subject to take a picture of, a large willow tree on the edge of the lake.


For Christmas I received the Lomography Fisheye 2 camera and have been taking pictures with it since I opened it. I got a lot of strange but very interested looks because of the camera. It is bright pink with silver trim and an oddly shaped lens and viewfinder. (It looks more like something Fisher-Price made for one of my young cousins than something a college student should be carrying).


Saturday I finished the roll of film and took it to be developed so that I could finally share some of my pictures here on the blog. The problem is, out of a roll of 24 images, only four of them showed up on the negative and those prints didn’t turn out well. However, I decided to still share one of the photos on my blog. This is a picture of Meier Hall that I took to test the camera:


I am learning that photography, like many art forms, is an endless mix of skill, practice, trial and error and chance, but I will keep snapping photos and trying to get the perfect shot.

All for a Good Cause

By: Rachel Masselle '14
After working in admissions for four and a half hours on Thursday I left to head to the campus center to donate blood. My appointment had been at 1 o’clock, but I was running late because I had taken a prospective student and her family to the campus center for lunch. When I arrived I gave my name and they said they would try to squeeze me in. They instructed me to take a seat and read over a blue book they had given me.

I did as I was told, but I have to say that I could barely concentrate on the blue book. I was so nervous, but not because of the needles. I have had too many needles in my life to be nervous of them any longer. No, I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel afterwards. I really didn’t want to faint or get nauseas in front of everyone. To calm my nerves I, of course, started talking to all the people around me.

One of them was my friend Jessie, who I found out was deathly afraid of needles. Although I will not divulge why she rises above her fear (that is after all Jessie’s to tell and not mine) I do want my readers to know that she is an absolutely amazing and inspirational person to do what she does. After some conversation I promised her that while we were giving blood I would sing songs to her to distract her from the needle.

We were both called back and went through the normal screening process. I gave them my name, birth date, address, etc. Then they took my pulse and temperature. Everything seemed fine, until the finger prick. The finger prick is meant to test your iron level. In order to donate blood you have to have a 12.5 iron level. They pricked my finger twice and in both instances I was under the requirement. I was disappointed to find out that I couldn’t give blood that day.


The nurse gave me a letter that instructed me to eat iron rich foods such as spinach, beef, and iron rich cereal. Can I just say, as a side note, to any first time blood donors that it is VERY important to get your iron in you before you go to donate blood. Believe me when I say nothing is worse than getting your finger pricked, which is the worst part of the entire thing, and not be able to actually donate. Moral of the story: eat your iron!

Anyway, after I was deferred I was heading out of the Tifft Lounge when I saw Jessie getting ready to give blood. After giving her my sad news I kept my promise. The whole time she was giving blood I was singing songs like “Bad Romance”, “Poker Face”, and “Tik Tok”. Not only was I singing, but since I didn’t have the restraint of having to lie down on a cot I started dancing as well. The entire place, nurses, patients, and volunteers, were looking at me like I had completely lost my mind. Maybe I have. At any rate it made Jessie laugh and relax while the needle was in her and even though I made a complete fool of myself it was worth it in the end.
I’m not sure what they all thought of me when all was said and done, but ah well. It doesn’t really matter. It was all for a good cause.

Szechuan Chicken

By: Tyler Cuddeback '14
Sorry this one is getting to you guys so late. I’ve been really sick the past couple of day and the last thing I wanted to do was do anything that resembled work. You know what that’s like, right? Also, because I’ve been so sick, I’m probably not going to make a new recipe this week. Tragic, I know. Speaking of recipes, let’s dive into last week’s.

So for the very first recipes I made for this project I chose things that I never would have thought would go together, but somehow they did. Being on a college budget means a lot of things, but in the food world it means not always being able to cook what you want. I ended up making Szechuan Chicken, Green Bell Peppers stuffed with a vegetable medley couscous and Spaghetti Squash.

I know that I promised I would have a breakdown of how much everything cost per person, but since I’m not feeling too hot right now, I’m going to save that for the end of the month. I’ll put all of the breakdowns for the entire month’s recipes in a blog. I promise not to make a habit out of it.

First, let’s take a look at the Szechuan Chicken. The chicken is served over a bed of rice. Everyone knows how to make rice. 2 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice, bring the water to a boil, pour in the rice, cover the pot and let simmer on medium heat for 15 to 25 minutes depending on how much rice there is and how done you wish for it to be.

The actual chicken recipe calls for:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast that has been cut into 1 inch cubes
3 Tbsp cornstarch
4 cloves of garlic
and
4 green onions (I used half of a sweet Vidalia that I chopped finely)

This all gets mixed together in a bowl until everything is evenly coated with garlic and cornstarch. Then this mixture is cooked in a skillet, or in my case a wok, until it is lightly browned.

Then, the recipe calls for:
1 cup of water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1/3 cup of soy sauce (low sodium if you can because there is already enough salt from the bouillon cubes)
and
1 ½ Tbsp of White Wine vinegar

This is mixed together until the bouillon cubes have dissolved and the whole mixture looks more like a soup than a chicken dish. This is then covered and simmers on medium heat for 5 minutes or until that soup has reduced slightly into a syrup.

Finally add:
1 cup of sugar snap (or snow) peas
1 (8-ounce) can of sliced water chestnuts
And finish it off with crushed red pepper flakes to taste.

My party and I found this dish to be delicious, but not worth the effort that went into making it. In a college setting, on a college budget, buying a knife to chop up chicken or buying already cubed chicken breast fillets is just not practical. On top of that, actual work of chopping all of the chicken, onions and garlic with a butter or steak knife was far too time consuming. It was a delicious dish… just not practical. Only make this if you have the equipment or the time to do it.



The side dishes to this were Spaghetti Squash and Green Bell Peppers Stuffed with a vegetable medley couscous. First up to bat is the Spaghetti Squash.

There are many different ways to cook and serve Spaghetti Squash. I like to bake it and then serve it with a little butter and brown sugar. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any brown sugar lying around so I only did butter. Now… in order to correctly bake the squash it has to be baked on 400◦F for about an hour and a half (or until the outside is a golden brown color), left out to cool, cut in half and then the inside is scraped out with a fork into long strips, like spaghetti. However! Do not let the squash cook for anything more than 90 minutes or this may happen…

Try explaining this to your RA.

Finally, there is the Green Bell Peppers stuffed with Couscous. They’re simple enough to make. Make couscous by following the instructions on the box, and then clean out as many peppers as there are people. Mix in a few of your favorite vegetables (for my group we decided on carrots, peas, corn and garlic) then spray the peppers with canola oil, apply a liberal amount of salt and black pepper to the outside and bake on 350◦F for 40 minutes.

One Week Back and Overwhelmed

By: Paige Kleinfelder '14


The finely tuned balance of homework, sleep, and friendship has been all mixed up after coming back to EC from break. New times for classes, a vigorous community service schedule, and friends that I hadn’t seen in three weeks all had to fit into my schedule.

So here is the recap of my week:
Monday: Attempt the find my Freshmen Writing class in the library (I had no idea where classroom 1 was). Go to Foundations of Education Class. Take a quick break before heading over to Core class in Carnegie Hall (which I had never before stepped foot in). Spent the rest of the afternoon working on reading assignments and then went to Elmira Little Theater to work on God’s Favorite for my community service.

Tuesday: Went to Drawing I. Fell in love with the class (which is probably good since I am an art major). Ate lunch with friends. Finished reading assignments. Headed over to towers to meet up with friends.

Wednesday: Repeated Monday’s classes. Finished my sketchbook journal for The Brooklyn Art Library. Rushed to the Welcome to Sunnydale club meeting and then went to community service to paint.

Thursday: Drawing class again. We learned about diagrammatic line and shading. The assignment to practice these skills was a single piece of paper with eight well shaded spheres on it. Later that night I attended Pub Trivia with my roommate and two other friends. We didn’t win, in fact we ended completely broke, but it was fun and we did manage to make some interesting drawings on our leftover paper.



Friday: Repeat of classes. Homework. Watched The Social Network over in Meier with my roommate (Pickles) and Sarah before returning to Columbia for a great deal of insane laughter as we attempted to play Just Dance.

Saturday: Community service for four hours. It was really fun. I got to paint French doors and a fireplace (and somehow the bottoms of my jeans). Later Pickles and I went down to Sarah’s room and met up with Mikayla to watch Troy. At some point we decided to have a sleepover, so Pickles and I went down to our room and carried her mattress down the hall. We got a few odd looks, but none compared to our own when we found a fork under the mattress!




Now it is Sunday and I am trying to catch up on some last minute reading before heading out to community service. I think I have finally figured out my new time management for this term. So far it even more fun than last term.

New Term…Same Deal

By: Sarah Schwadron '14

It is the second week of classes and I am already exhausted.

I shouldn’t really complain. I probably get more sleep than half the school gets. But I just feel run down cause I’m fighting off a bug. I just have a sore throat and a sinus headache, plus achiness. The boyfriend is currently sick with a stomach bug. I’m doing a lot of holistic remedies to protect myself from getting any sicker than I already am. So far they seem to be working. And on top of all of this, I sprained my knee over Winter Break and it has just started to act up again, after feeling great for a full week. But I digress.

Classes are really good so far. I am fairly positive that I am going to become a Human Services and Psych double major. My Human Services class is great. I’ve only had two so far, but every time I go, I am more and more convinced that it is the profession I want to go into. Every topic that is brought up is something that I am intrigued about. So I think I might end up being a social worker instead of a history teacher. Major career change, but whatever. I think it’ll be right for me.

Freshman Writing is its normal self; Lots of writing. I think that’s the annoying part about it. It’s easy work, but there is so much of it. At least it’s only a ten page paper this term. And every idea I come up with for my paper really interests me. I might end up doing a psychoanalysis of Queen Elizabeth I. If you know me personally, you know that that is a topic that I really love. So, we shall see how that goes.

Oh. Some good news. Me and my roommate finally got a bigger room. We were in what is known on campus as a “forced double”. It’s a room that is for a single person, but they put two people in it. So we had forced bunk beds, and all of that good stuff. But not anymore! We each have our own sides of the room, and not just ‘cubbies’ as we called them. It’s actually funny. In the small room, we never ran into each other. Now, in the bigger room, we’ve collided with each other. Twice in twenty four hours. Only we could do that.

Speaking of the roommate, we get along really well. Everyone seems shocked when I tell them that. We didn’t even pick each other out. We filled out the roommate selection sheets separately and we were matched. And we just fit together. It’s so weird, but great. I know everyone hears horror stories about college roommates, and trust me, those do happen unfortunately. One of my good friends has that problem now, and it really stinks. But you can always switch if it comes to it. Luckily, I don’t believe I will have to though.

Some New Years Lists….

By: Sarah Schwadron '14

Top 5 Reasons I Love Being Home
1- No flip flops in the showers
Showers in bare feet are such an underrated commodity at college
2- Free food
On the plus side, if you’re like my mother, it’s all healthy food
3- Seeing family and high school friends
Pretty self explanatory
4- Can drive places
I miss being able to just get in the car and go places when I felt like it (mostly…)
5- Sleep in!
Or at least have the option too more…

Top 5 Reasons It’s Great to be Back At EC
1- Just swipe a card, and get food
Even if it’s not healthy, it’s easy
2- Seeing friends whenever I want to
Just have to walk down the hallway and see people that I know and like. It’s a nice feeling
3- My bed is really comfy
I have a twin at home, so the size difference doesn’t bother me
4- Only have to worry about my schedule
As long as I have my schedule set up, I don’t have to worry about if it conflicts with anything else
5- Where else can you see purple and gold every second of the day?

New Year… New Term… New Me

By: Rachel Masselle '14

I have never been one for New Years Resolutions. It seems that no matter how many of them I made in the past they were forgotten in a week’s time and never fulfilled. As a result I stopped making them…until this year when I made two. They are:

1) Shed a few pounds

Although I haven’t gained the famous freshman fifteen I have gained at least ten pounds since entering Elmira College. The school does offer some healthy choices, but it also offers the fried and greasy foods, which I always went after. Also, I didn’t get up and move around a whole lot First Term. Instead, I chose to sit in front of my computer screen and do homework or play video games. Well, no more of that! The time to start eating healthier and exercise more is now, before my weight gets too out of hand.

2) Learn to balance college better

It is no secret, to my friends or to my family, that towards the end of the First Term I was spending more time with my friends and less time working on actual homework. Not that I didn’t get good grades or finish the work required for class. I just had to stay up late to finish it because I spent all day hanging out in my friend’s room. Then I would get all stressed and curse myself for waiting until the last minute to get my work done. Although I ended the Term with a 3.2 GPA I know I can do better. I just have to put my mind to it.




With a strong foundation of moral support from friends and family, self-discipline, and a little luck I hope to keep up with these two New Years Resolutions. I’ve already started toward the first one, by working out in the gym after my parent’s left. As for the latter resolution my friends and I decided that since there was no work to be done until tomorrow we should celebrate the beginning of the Second Term with a reunion dinner in the Campus Center and then some Disney Karaoke. With big smiles and a few laughs we welcomed in the new term and all the trials and joys that will follow.

Expanding Musical Taste

By: Tyler Cuddeback '14


I was hanging out with some friends the other day and one of my buddies kept trying to get me to listen to this rapper Asher Roth. Asher Roth's most famous song is "I Love College". I've heard it before. It’s an ok song, but the other stuff of his I have heard kind of turned me off to the rapper. But my friend Ari, the guy that got me to listen to Roth again, baited me in with this song. I think you might enjoy it. The beat for it is very simple because there really is no need for music. It’s almost a slam poem more than a rap, but I feel like it personifies what I feel a college educated person should be like. Understanding. Well Rounded. Accepting.

I’m going to just put in the last few lines of the song that really got to me.

…What if, I was picked for grave? Sick for days? Aged to be sick with aids?
Would you listen to my story that I swear is touching,
Or just, blank stare cause you're scared to touch me?
If I'm, Jewish or Christian does it affect your decision to,
See past religion and simply listen to wisdom?
Would you, really listen to my views on the government
If my, raps were democrat and yours are republican?
Whether I'm black or white, gay, straight, hermaphrodite,
Half the time trash the light and we all act alike.
So, pass the mic, don't assist being ignorant,
Unclench your fist for a bit and just listen.

Just Listen. Isn’t that what the point of a diverse liberal arts college is? We have people from over 30 US states and just as many foreign countries on campus. We live with them. We eat with them. Some of us are friends with them. So wouldn’t it benefit us to listen to them?

Dorm cooking on $20 a week

By: Tyler Cuddeback '14


My birthday is today, January 8, 2011, and my wonderful girlfriend has given me a college cookbook as a gift. For those of you that don’t know, I love to cook. I’m known, on occasion, to make whole pseudo-gourmet meals for my friends out of stuff I bought from Sweeney’s. I also just got every season of the Food Network’s “Good Eats” on DVD.

So this is my project. Using nothing more than what I can buy in a one mile radius of campus, or what Elmira refers to as “walking distance” I will prepare, once a week, a healthy, delicious meal that will feed a minimum of 4 people for under $20.
Seeing as Anderson dorm only has Stoves and not Ovens, I’m going to have to enlist the help of 2 people if a recipe calls for baking. My friend, Lauren Harris, whom lives in Meier. Meier is one of the only dorms on campus to have ovens in their kitchens. And my RLC, Adrian Jones, who has an oven in his apartment.

I have saved all of my receipts. This way I can tell you how much each meal costs. There will be a per person breakdown of how much it costs just to see that you can do it too. Also there will be lots of pictures of the whole process to tantalize your appetite. Wish me luck! My first meal is on Friday. Couscous and Vegetable stuffed Green Peppers and Szechuan Chicken.