cornell 5-year reunion
June 3
Today I flew into JFK to stay the night at Anna’s new posh Brooklyn apartment. Anna’s apartment sits on the 19th floor, towering over a nearby river. Anna greeted me warmly, and we caught up as she showed me her well-furnished living spaces. I scarfed down a delicious teriyaki chicken sandwich from the nearby market while we got carried away in conversation as usual touching base on many life topics including our boyfriends, friends, travels, and running. Before we knew it, it was 1 AM and our early wakeup was looming over us.
June 4
I woke up to the grand view of the city just outside Anna’s large bedside window. Anna had miraculously already hopped out of bed and was on her way to pick up Ilana. After a seemingly difficult journey back from the airport where they accidentally ventured into Manhattan, they picked up me, Anjali and Jayla. To my disbelief, everyone made it on time and our friend group, usually scattered across multiple states and time zones, existed in one place again (Shlyn to come later).
Naturally, bagels were the first order of business. Somewhere in the back of a big truck on a Thursday morning, with a BEC in one hand and a Dunkin’s iced coffee in the other, surrounded by my friends, I was feeling overjoyed.
After five long years, we were rolling onto campus via Dryden Road. Everyone was mentally rusty, so we took a few wrong turns before we were on our way through campus. We cruised by our old home, 325 Dryden Road, only to find a tacky grey and blue apartment building in its place. Collegetown and West Campus did not impress us as both areas were under major construction.
Driving through campus felt surreal and silly, serious, formative, and ridiculous memories played through my mind as we neared our destination: North Campus. There, we united with Shlyn and our group was finally complete. Since graduating, we’ve struggled to have all members present at once, so again, this was a major feat for us.
Cornell appeared to be putting the freshman football team to work since we got chauffeured from the parking lot to Donlon in one of their minivans. I experienced a wave of anxiety stepping foot on campus for the first time in five years and entering a freshman dorm. Luckily, no one of note was in sight and we slipped away into Low Rise 10, aka Ujama hall.
This dorm was structured just like Low Rise 6 and brought me back to my freshman days. I roomed with Ilana, Jayla and Ashlyn were in singles, and Anjali and Anna resided in the other double.
To prepare for our big night ahead, we got lunch at CTB where I bought the classic Zabs. Afterwards, we tried to buy alcohol from the grocery store and were tragically denied because Anna didn’t have her ID. Thankfully we snuck into Walgreens, pretended we didn’t know Anna, and successfully secured our alcohol.
As the hours till the happy hour dwindled, we frantically changed our outfits, pregamed a little, and prepared to see all our ghosts of the past. At Donlon, we ran into some boys immediately upon entrance. From there it was one familiar face after the other. Ilana and I stuck by each other as we know ourselves to be a recognizable duo. I forgot how many people I knew from college and was overcome with genuine joy seeing every one of them. Despite our initial reluctance to attend, I stayed the entire duration of the happy hour energized by the socialization and surprised by my surge of extroversion.
The happy hour segued directly into an ice cream social, so we were left to fend for ourselves for dinner. We strolled to Collegetown with hopes of eating at Plum Tree. It was bursting with alumni, so we had to settle for the empty Thai restaurant across the street. We devoured the food since Cornell had been starving us. Full, dense, and heavy, we rolled up to Hideaway, one of two bars we frequented in our youth. It looked the exact same and even had the same bartender working. I had one prolonged awkward conversation in there, and we promptly decided it would be best to leave.
Level B was exactly the same. A dingy basement famous for serving fishbowls, sickeningly sweet neon drinks served in a fishbowl with a plastic toy, usually a dinosaur, with a cup of vodka. We forced our way through the jam-packed basement ordering drinks, taking $3 gummy bear shots, dancing, taking pictures, and reuniting with all our friends of the past.
I became a socialite saying hello to people every few steps in every direction. While it seemed to me like I reconnected with thousands of people that night, it was maybe thirty. I lost my voice by the end of the night and Ubered home feeling very fulfilled and elated to relive my college days.
In the dorm, we post-gamed with conversation. A lengthy debrief took over the night. I told Sam about the innocuous cheek kiss that both Ilana and I received. His jealous reaction was endearing but caused him to become the laughing stock of our night. We fell asleep around 3 AM.
June 5
I woke at 11 AM today to discover my pals had already participated in many activities. Unbeknownst to me, most of the crew had woken up at 7:30 AM, gotten coffee, and already exercised. Shlyn and Ilana rollerbladed somewhere outside as Anjali jogged near them. To my relief, Jayla was on the same schedule as me having just arisen from bed.
I went on a run with Anna through North Campus, across the suspension bridge, and around Beebe Lake. Unfortunately, Anna took a big faceplant and ripped her leggings, but she rose like a soldier and kept running.
In the dorm, I ran into Ilana who was dying of hunger just like me, so we visited the new Toni Morrison dining hall and oohed and aahed over the selection. After our feast, I hopped on Zoom for some insurance related meetings. These were not very productive, and I felt rather sick during this time.
I recovered quickly after we visited the Cornell store, and I bought a new sweatshirt. We romped around campus a bit until we all overheated and had to go lie down.
Next up, the reunion flagship event: Class of 2021 dinner. We had each spent the last week pondering our outfits for this event deeply and all ended up in some sort of long and/or floral dress. We got dressed, took some pictures, and approached RPCC, the worst freshmen dining hall, with skepticism and found our hesitation to be validated.
We entered a stuffy big room full of people and no tables. We waited in line for 45 minutes to get a few pieces of Wegman’s sushi. I was very anxious in line because I noticed people I did not want to speak to hovering nearby. Though the food was certainly subpar and seemed to all be from Wegmans and we had to stand to eat, I had a great time reconnecting with everyone. We continued to run into tons of people from the past, and I had an extended conversation with Lauren, who is Michelle’s boyfriend’s cousin, which is a very fun coincidence.
After dinner, we migrated to the slope for sunset, placing us near the arts quad for the event of the night: the famous alumni tent parties. There were three tents: one with live music, one with a DJ, and one with karaoke. We bounced between tents engaging in fragmented conversations, spilling wine around, and dancing the night away. Jayla, our big social butterfly, was quickly whisked away by people I’d never seen before. I video chatted Sam to show him the scene and let him in on all the intel I had gathered from the night.
Around midnight, I couldn’t take the lack of dessert anymore, so Ilana and I ventured into college town for a treat. She ate a bagel while I ate vanilla ice cream. Back at home, Anna joined us, and we recorded a long podcast where we reviewed the characters of the night, and I sent it to Sam so he could be in the loop. One of our main findings was that many of the characters we fawned over in college now looked horrible which was satisfying.
June 6
I woke up at 11 AM again and discovered everyone to have already started their day hours ago, minus Jayla. I took a nice slow run through the botanical gardens and arboretum and thought to myself how almost nothing has changed. Afterwards, Jayla and I strolled to Collegetown and joined everyone else at CTB where it was packed. Some gals were drinking, some were eating, everyone seemed a little hungover.
Ilana and I got poke from Pokelava, and I was hit with the nostalgia of having worked there for two weeks. Anna and I signed up to serve poke there in our junior year, but Anna abandoned the job after one shift. We later drifted around town towards commons after passing by all the places on College Ave that we used to frequent such as Jason’s and Greenstar.
Ithaca Commons was very cute as usual. We meandered through the vintage market that was taking place. We stopped in a few more stores where I bought some trinkets like reusable sponges and 3D cat cards. My interest in homeware caused Anjali to comment on my domestication.
At the end of the street, we reached the piercing place where Jayla bravely got some new bling on her nose. We immediately Ubered home, and I napped for an hour.
By this point, I was on the brink of exhaustion and my Garmin was corroborating this. I persevered nonetheless and got ready for our Dinosaur BBQ dinner. Our expectations were in hell given the dinner the previous night, however we found the BBQ to be rather delicious. There were no dietary accommodations though which caused Shlyn to eat disproportionate amounts of brisket.
Nightfall pulled us back towards the arts quad where we again faced a night of tent partying. The night involved Kyler’s Anaconda karaoke performance, many Goldwin Clarman visits, moshing in the “rave tent” and more run-ins. There was a funny encounter where Anjali was mistaken for Ilana.
I stayed at the tents till 1 AM before peeling off to Donlon with Shalin and Alexa motivated by the Cornell Dairy ice cream bar. Ilana met us there and seemed to be feeling better. We sat outside and gobbled up the ice cream as we played word games competitively, which is what initially united us. Back at the dorm, we watched a few scenes of Off Campus for which I had no context though Shlyn thankfully detailed the plot to me.
June 7
Today was a big travel day and we hustled out of the dorms at 9am. Anna kindly bought me an iced latte and scone from Gimme Coffee which was a classic combo for me back when I did my engineering homework in Gates. We piled into the giant truck and were on our way.
The drive started off very smooth with Jayla valiantly taking the middle seat. We were well ahead of schedule and took a very relaxed break at Denny’s which also reminded us of the olden days where we’d hit Denny’s at an unreasonable hour after a long night out. When we got back into the truck, we realized quite a lot of time had elapsed and now Anjali was at risk of missing her train. Anjali reassured herself and us that her train had been delayed one minute. Our energy became less laid back as we checked the ETA every few minutes and Anjali started reading the fine print on her train ticket. We determined she would make it as long as nothing went wrong.
After a few minutes, the car signaled that there was a lack of tire pressure. I said “that’s fine as long as it’s not a flat”. It was a flat. We watched the tire pressure rapidly dwindle as we rolled into a nearby gas station.
I had to leave fairly immediately to make it to JFK to catch my flight which Anna was thankfully very understanding about. Anjali and Jayla stayed back and roadside assistance was able to change the tire quickly. Anjali’s train was out of the question at this point, and she Ubered back to Philly.
Ilana and I talked incessantly for the two hour car ride which I hope the driver was cool with. By this point, I was really only a fraction of my former self due to the sheer exhaustion and sleep-deprivation from the weekend but I got to see Ilana’s parents after all these years and hug both of them.
I boarded my flight after eating a Nutella acai bowl that is still on my mind. In Seattle, Sam picked me up in the convertible and presented me with a funny packed lunch that consisted of a Sam-crafted italian sandwich, a lime seltzer, blueberries, blackberries, and my favorite chocolate panda snack! So sweet!