Rude Awakening

I was fast asleep in my bed before a loud fire alarm went off and became even louder. There didn't appear to be a fire, but everyone in my suite rushed down seven flights of stairs anyways. The whole building was evacuated and even the RAs didn't know what was going on. When we got to come back into the building, my two other suite mates and I discovered that we were locked out. Our fourth suite mate left at 5AM to go to a Good Morning America concert, and the rest of us didn't think about grabbing a key before leaving. So here's three girls who are still in their pajamas, sitting in the hallway. We had to wait for an hour because our fourth room mate luckily came back before the door services people. The moral of our whole dilemma was to never forget your room keys. We barely had enough time to take showers, change, and head to our classes. The morning was so stressful and I'm going to make sure that I never forget my room key or miss a cohort meeting again.

I was a little nervous going to class because I was already so flustered and we usually start out by having verbal quizzes on the readings. Last night's assignment was especially difficult to understand because of the diction that the author used. The article was about Abraham Lincoln's attitude towards the constitution. It was similar to our article about Thomas Jefferson because both authors were defending the presidents of following the constitution. Apart from the reading and discussion, we watched old campaign videos! Most of them were from the 1900s and it was really interesting to see how the advertisements have evolved. One of the most prominent ads was the Daisy Ad in support of Lyndon Johnson. It showed a little girl plucking the petals of a daisy and then nuclear bombs going off as the video zoomed into the little girl's eye. It basically stated that innocent people were going to die if Lyndon Johnson didn't become president because he was going to stop all the wars. I found it to be a bit crude. Other ads we watched were in support of Reagan, JFK, Bush, and Obama. Unlike the others, Obama's ad had a lot of celebrities that appealed to younger generations. We ended the first half of class by breaking into groups of three and making sketches of our own presidential ads. My team supported Obama, and it was similar to an Old Spice commercial. We used the same structure for the script, but changed the words to be more appropriate for the campaign.

I continued my day by meeting up with Lisa, another student, and two RAs at the gazebo. We were supposed to go to Cloisters Museum and Garden, but we found out that it was closed. We still wanted to go somewhere though, so we went to South Ferry. We got to see the Statue of Liberty up close and got off on Staten Island. There was almost nothing on the island. We walked around for an hour, but we couldn't find a single bathroom. Other people were no where to be found. Going on to the island was a bit of a mistake, however, I really enjoyed the ferry ride. We even saw the sunset as we headed back to Columbia! Even though things didn't work out the way we expected, I'm happy that everyone was flexible and able to make the best out of out trip. Tomorrow is going to be cohort day. I don't think I've seen everyone at the same time since move in day. Hopefully there won't be any fire drills(or actual fires) tomorrow. 

Posing on Staten Island

The sunset on our way back