April 22, 2011 —By Abdul Taylor Even a Young Professional Hustles Sunday, April 17, 2011 was the semi-highly anticipated Lupe Fiasco Concert with special guest K’naan. I showed up a little before show time hoping to sell one of my tickets in front of Barton Hall. To my amazement, several other Cornell students were doing the exact same thing. When Cornell University announced that tickets for the Lupe Fiasco concert would be available for purchase on March 1, students used all mediums to remind themselves. My Twitter timeline was full of students tweeting about waking up early to buy their tickets. Facebook statuses about Lupe Fiasco tickets flooded my news feeds. And emails were going and coming about how many tickets one would buy in order to sell them at a greater value. I was not aware that Cornell students actually bought concert tickets just to sell them at a greater cost. I was told that during my freshman year, 2008-09, students were able to sell their Ludacris concert tickets at five or six times greater than their face value. A retail store calls this business, while young college students struggle to pay for expenses calls it hustlin’. Because I was new to this money making process as a freshman, I only bought one ticket for myself to attend the Ludacris concert. But luckily for me, I was able to get a front row spot at this truly sold out event. I didn’t make any money that time but I sure did get a good view of the performers. When March 1, 2011 finally rolled around, I made sure that I bought the maximum amount of Fiasco tickets I could charge to my bursar account. Soon after I checked my email and saw that people were already looking for concert tickets because they were sold out online within minutes. From there, I got my hustle on. I immediately posted my four available tickets on craigslist.com. There I saw that everyone with extra tickets had done the same thing. Greed was on the mind of every individual attempting to sell their extra tickets. My prices began at $85, but drastically declined $10 every week. The reselling of Lupe Fiasco concert tickets was a tough game to play. By the time the concert started, there were students, including myself, still trying to get rid of the tickets they could not sell six weeks before. Eventually, tickets were just given away. I was able to sell three of my four tickets before hand so I simply used the fourth for myself. I must say the concert wasn’t half bad but it sure wasn’t like Ludacris two years ago.