I did not reflect upon behaviorism until I was asked to read Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog for my internship working with dolphins this summer. It did get me back on track with a theory that I had not looked at for a while, considering behaviorism is not all that popular in the human psychology department at Cornell (which is fine, I guess). But lately, I’ve been coming back to the typical thing you hear everywhere when you start studying this school of thought: Our society, as a whole, is a wonderful web of stimuli and rewards.

7:00 a.m. is too early. Course Enroll, what pre-enrollment is commonly referred to at Cornell University, should not be so early in the morning. A better time would be more like 9:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. is early but it isn’t too early. You can wake up at 9:00 a.m. and enroll in courses and continue with your day, seamlessly. For example, if you have a class at 10:10 for which you typically wake up at 9:25, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to wake up a half-hour earlier, at 8:55, to enroll is classes. 8:55, by the way, to allow for five minutes of preparation. This involves turning on your laptop, connecting to the internet and dealing with that general early-morning fogginess.

Alright people. It’s time for me to confess a dirty little secret. I am a Capricorn… no, not a casual Capricorn— a hard core, anal retentive, pica wielding, algebra-double-checking, relationship-controlling Capricorn. During this stressful time in the life of Cornellians we call “finals week”, I please my anal desires (tehehehe) by making a detailed study schedule.

When a page designer makes a schedule, it of course has to reflect all his design fetishes. For me, it’s neat, clean cut boxes, with gentle shades of green, punctuated by rich bloody red. My font of choice? California FB— light and springy, like the weather that beckons from beyond the library walls.