Julie Block '10 talks goodbye columns, writing in the shower and much more in her final column.

Former Arts and Entertainment Editor says goodbye to her time at Cornell with a style fitting of her role: a playlist.

Although Cornell considers itself a cosmopolitan campus, the problems with its study abroad program inhibit the University's cultural growth.

Once upon a time, a long time ago — before my ancestors were running away from Cossacks, people still wore togas and the only twittering and tweeting and twatting came from small annoying birds — higher education was only for wealthy white poobahs.

Let’s get autobiographical:

(In the beginning.)

Unlike many of my brethren (sistren?), the first time I read the Torah wasn’t until the year after my Bat Mitzvah. A friend convinced me to do it. I was against it, only because I felt the act would negate my First Time. Friend made a good point: “Why do you feel like everything that comes after your first time [reading Torah] needs to be less? What if the introduction is a sort of anti-climactic stepping stone, and everything that comes after is better, or bigger?”

It’s kind of a no-shit-Sherlock that I’m one hell of a chatty Cathy. I talk fast, I talk a lot; and if you were to ask my brother, he’d tell you that I dispense with more words in a week than most do in a year. That said, any therapist would probably tell you that I am really good at talking a lot without saying anything at all.

“And after I walked out of the movie, all I could think was, where’s my little black boy to adopt? I want one!”

I was getting my nails done, a very irregular occurrence for me, and the woman next to me was giving me bite-sized movie reviews of this season’s Oscar nominees. Avatar was a favorite — the love story between the “cute white crippled boy” and the “exotic blue cat girl” was beautiful, apparently — but The Blind Side took the cake, mainly for Sandra Bullock’s portrayal of that heroic woman, Leigh Ann Tuohy.

You know the story: Girl starts middle school as “mean girl.” Poetic justice intervenes, and after mean girl-related trauma in high school, girl swears off other girls for life. Because girl has mostly male friends, other girls deem girl a slut. Girl retaliates by deciding all girls suck, declares that she hates other women, makes the requisite “woman make me a sandwich!” jokes, and tells her mother, spitefully, that she is anti-feminist. (Girl clearly does not know what this means. Mom throws up hands in air.) Then: girl goes to college, meets cool women-folk, starts studying feminism, joins sorority. 3.5 years later, girl has more female than male buds, gets over-reactive to the same sexist jokes she used to make, and has been writing papers about vaginas, columning about breasts and even devoted her entire THESIS to ze wimyns.

You can picture it, I’m sure: It is 2 a.m. My body is a tightly coiled slinky of stresserosity, ready to go springing out of my house, roll down the hill and into Beebe Lake. My hair is a frizzy mess, my eyeballs are bugging out at all sides and I have a Jason Segel-sized bowl of soymilk and entire box of Life cereal (think: Forgetting Sarah Marshall), two cooling cups of coffee, a beer and a pack of cigarettes in front of me. I am a crazed person. I qualify for a straightjacket.

I have a paper due.

I often daydream about beating up my enemies. Usually in these daydreams, I’m wearing an awesome Wonder Woman costume.

I approach said naysayers and say, “Naysayers?”

“Yes, Julie?” Except instead of Julie they use a word that starts with B and ends in -itch.

“Hiyaaaaaaaaa!” (Those are my mad ninja sounds.) “Prepare to get an ass whooping!”

And then I whoop their respective asses.