Drink Responsibly

"I'm not an alcoholic, I just enjoy the occasional 15 shots." These are the famous words of one of my good friends.

He is an avid drinker.

Now drinking is a big deal in college. There's a really good chance your going to come across opportunities to drink wherever you go. If not your first year, then definitely at some point. And if you go through college without ever being offered a drink, you really need to get out more.

That's not to say drinking is a good thing. Nor a bad thing either. You see, it really depends who you are. If you like to just chill and have a beer or so once in awhile, that's totally cool If you get a thrill out of getting so smashed that you can't move, then I'm not going to judge you. Actually, that's a lie, I will judge you. But I'll keep it to myself.

So here's the deal. If you are a fan of drinking, and you do plan on drinking when you get to college, hear me out. There are some bits and pieces of information I feel that you should take into account. You probably know most of them already, but a refresher course never hurt anyone.

Probably the most important: Don't drink and drive. I mean, it's just a bad idea. And don't think I'm looking out for you here. I'm worried about the poor sap you run over during your alcohol crusade. For real though, it's not worth the trouble you could get in. It's a much better idea to hike it or look for a sober ride. And don't hop into a car with a guy that's been drinking either, cause if you do so knowingly your dumber than the guy behind the wheel.

Next thing is to know your limits. If your a lightweight, then drink what you can handle. Don't get peer pressured to an extra 6 shots over your usual. That just ends up being extra cleaning for whoever's place your at. And trust me, nobody likes the guy that adds a hour of cleaning to their agenda the next morning. So if your going to drink, drink what you can, get drunk, smashed, all that good shit. Just know when to stop. If you overdo it you could get your hands on some alcohol poisoning, which is bad. If you didn't already know?

Don't get caught. We all know it's illegal until you hit your junior or senior year usually. It's not worth getting busted and in trouble for something like that. You could get booted out, and then one night just cost you between 10 and 20 grand. That's a pretty expensive night for downing a shot of Bacardi and a few Keystones. So don't drink in the dorms, and when your getting back to your dorm, try not to make it obvious that you're hammered... because that could backfire on you as well.

So ...
1) Don't mix alcohol and vehicles. Just a bad idea.
2) Know your limits.
3) Don't get caught.

Stick to those 3, and you should be okay. So go on, knock yourself out. But not cause of the alcohol. That would be violating Rule 2.

The Writer's Strike

So you may not think that the NBC Writer's Strike is a big deal. Or that it's not college related at all. Well I am here to prove you wrong.

When you get to college, Thursday night becomes real important. Almost as important as Sunday. It's real, real close. You see, Thursday night marks the beginning of the weekend pretty much. When your in high school, Friday is the night. When you get to college, Thursday is the new Friday. People even drink on Thursdays!

Here's the real reason why Thursday is so good. Every Thursday night something excellent happens. For 60 minutes, the world is at peace. Terrorism disappears, racism is absent, and world pollution is vanquished. Everything is good and green in the world.

Why you ask? Because of Dwight and Jim and Ryan, J.D., Turk, and Carla. And I'm not bisexual. It's the Thursday night TV shows. "The Office" and "Scrubs" are cures to the hell that is school. The new episodes play Thursday night. And now their gone!

I sit through 4-7 hours of classes each Thursday. And through insufferable lectures and murderous labs, the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that I get to watch those two shows. Now their reruns. The "r" word for TV watchers. Now I have nothing to hold on to. Nothing to keep me going.

The Writer's Strike needs to be stopped. I don't know what I am going to do with myself. Thursday has become a day from hell. Like Monday, but not as terrible. But still pretty terrible.

So the writer's strike must end. For the sake of Thursday's, let it end. I will give anything. So if any of the 2 people who read my writing have any power in the world at all, do something.

Yule Time

It is finally December. December is that magical time of year when everyone goes temporarily insane and runs amok in shopping-induced frenzies. The night of Thanksgiving, when most of us were still in our tryptophan-induced comas, some crazed shoppers were already out at stores to start their Christmas shopping. I was one of these shoppers (even though I bought nothing). I went to hang out with my friends while they shopped, since I had nothing better to do at 4 am.

I am one of those people that likes to put off everything until the last minute, Christmas shopping no exception. Last year I didn't start shopping for presents until Christmas Eve. In retrospect, this was a mistake. I will not be doing that again. One of my friends is the complete opposite on this. She will just randomly see thing she thinks someone would like and get it to be a present. She went shopping today and bought a lot of stuff. A lot a lot. Presents for almost everyone in her family and cards to boot. She's sitting behind me right now writing Christmas cards. Now if this was me, I wouldn't have any cards to send out. If I was going to write cards, I would do them somewhere around the 21st, not the 1st.

It amazes me that some people can be motivated to shop this early. After going out on Christmas Eve last year though, I am beginning to understand their motivation. Going out that close to the holiday means it is very hard to find gifts for people. Also, it is almost scary to shop then. Everyone out is in a frenzied rush to find gifts before the stores close. While you (like me) may not feel like shopping early for people, remember not to go out too late. Shopping earlier will save you a lot of time, stress, and frustration on Christmas Eve.

Zombies!

Well, we are right at the end of the semester now. Only this week and finals week to go. Do you know what that makes this week? That's right, dead week. There are two reasons this week is aptly named. The first is that this week is traditionally one with little work given in classes, since the semester is about to end. The activity comes to a 'dead' halt, hence the name. The second reason is that this is the week that practically every single class has a project or something due, making the students stay up all night and act 'dead' all day. I am one of these students. I am dead. Sooo dead.

Compared to some people, I don't have THAT much to do. However, compared to the work I've been doing the rest of the semester, I have a crapload to do. I have three papers and a website due this week, along with most normal work I would have (a bunch of math homework sections, some online chem homework, etc.). Even though I have known about my projects for months, most likely, I haven't started on any of them. You know what I did all day instead of working? I played Kingdom Hearts II. For nine hours. *shakes head sadly* I guess I'm going to be really busy these next few days.

One good thing about dead week is that the libraries are open all day. FINALLY! Having the libraries open all day is the best thing that could possibly happen for all my projects. See, my internal clock runs on Tokyo time. I would probably be waking up at about 3 pm if I didn't have class, but I would be up until 7 am. The libraries being open all hours finally allows me to go and do research in textual sources at 4 am when I have nothing else to do.

Sadly, the dining halls haven't followed the libraries' example. 24 hour dining halls would be so pwnzor! I would eat there at all hours of the night. *sigh* If only, if only.., Well, I'll have to make do without it. I expect my dining expenses to at least double this week. It's hard to work and study on an empty stomach. McDonalds must love this time of year.

Something to remember about dead week is that sleep is the last thing you need. It sounds stupid, but it's true. You can make it through five days with practically no sleep. Besides, you can always sleep in class. It's not like much goes on in class this week. You can also catch up on sleep next week in between finals. Abuse energy drinks and caffeine all you want this week. Sleep is for the weak, not this week. The only thing you need to do this week is get your work done and handed in! Everything else is secondary.

Anyhow, I'm pretty swamped right now. The important thing to remember, if you end up in my situation, is to not panic! Panicking will only cause you to worry and stress, losing valuable working time. Work done while in a panic will be subpar at best. DO NOT PANIC! The best way to do this is to make sure you stay fairly relaxed. Take some time off working or studying if you feel stressed and do someting that will make you feel at ease, like hanging out with friends or playing a video game. Playing music while working will also help stress levels because it will give your subconscious something else to think about besides your overwhelming volume of work. Good music will help your stress and also make you more energized and able to work.

Family appreciates time with you

Now that you are in college you see your parents less and less. Even when I do go home, I still do not spend that much time with my parents. This is because I go out and do stuff with friends when I am home. You have to realize that your parents want to see you to.

When I went home for thanksgiving I did stuff with my family every day. We would usually do dinner together. I would just meat up with my friends afterwards. Also instead of going to someone else’s house, I got everyone to come to mine. I parents liked this a lot since they got to see me more and they also got to see my friends.

My parents actually thanked me several times for spending more time with them. Try to make an active effort when you go home to spend time with your parents. Whether it be helping them with something in the house, going shopping, or having dinner.

End of Semester

As I near the end of the semester several things happen. Teachers realize that they are behind on giving quizzes, assignments, and projects. Students also realize all their procrastination has caught up with them. This means there will be lots of work. Also this being the week before dead week means a lot of tests. Instructors are not allowed to give tests or quizzes during dead week.

When the end of the semester nears the work load increases. This has happened to me many times. Frequently not any fault of my own. Usually a professor will have a plan for the semester of topics they lecture on and assignments. They frequently get behind on their lectures and therefore have to push back assignments. Since there are a limited number of weeks in a semester something has to be cut from the schedule when stuff gets behind. My professors seem to only cut out the time that I have to work on a project but none of the assignment.

A group project was assigned in a class on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. It is due next Tuesday, giving us two weeks to do the project. The project should have been two weeks longer I believe. Two weeks is a short time to get a project done in the first place. Then you have to realize that half of the time was lost to thanksgiving break. The week that we have left right now to work on a project is a very busy week too. This being the end of the semester there are exams in many classes and projects in many classes. I personally have three group projects, three exams, and one lab exam this week to do. My business is not me alone either. Everyone in the groups for my group projects is in similar situations. This means it is extremely hard to get things done since we need to meet up to get things done.

Know Your Math

When I started off learning my times tables back in the fourth grade, I knew them good. From 1 to 15, I was good. Real good.

Then I learned the magic of the TI-84 Plus. And all of that went to hell. That calculator can do anything. It will do your math homework, walk your dog, cook dinner, and tuck the kids in for bed. Not that I have kids. Or will. Ever.

But you get what I’m saying. It’s a damn good calculator. While it’s also a great calculator, it ruins a person’s math skills. Through middle school, you learn how to do solve all these equations and being able to answer all types of questions. In high school they let you pick up that calculator and you don’t need your brain anymore. You got one sitting in the palm of your hands. It’s quicker, it’s easier, and it’s also got games.

And it’s great. It’s all good. You breeze through high school math, spend a little time with the stuff that requires it, and your all set. Then comes college.

It was a cool, crisp fall morning and I was walking to my first class as a Purdue student. It was Calculus. I had my trusty TI-84 Plus in my hands, and I thought I was ready. I sit down in the lecture hall and I’m ready, I know I’m ready.

That’s when the bomb dropped.

“You will not be allowed calculators of any kind for this course. Once in awhile you will need them for homework. But on tests and quizzes they are not allowed.”

I thought he was joking. There was no way this man was serious. Professor Peter Cook was just scaring us first year students. He didn’t mean it.

Little did I know just how serious he was. In college, you are expected to know all the math that you let the calculator do for you. Now of course, they don’t make you do any ridiculous division and multiplications by hand, but all the graphing and equation solving and all the stuff that you usually just punch a few numbers in and your all set, isn’t that easy anymore.

So here’s my advice for anyone in high school. Use the calculator, but make sure you know what the calculator is doing for you. If you don’t, it’ll bite you in the ass. Hard. Know what you’re calculating, know how to get it. Make sure you do a few problems free-hand, because if you don’t it’s going to kill you down the road. Sure you might pull an A on the test or for the semester, but you’ll be hurting come college time.

So just know what you’re doing when it comes to math, whichever math you happen to be taking. It might be a pain in the ass, but it’ll be a lot worse when you’re bombing tests and paying for it.

Teamwork

There are a lot of jobs in the real world where you need to work as a group or a team. That's why in college you will find a lot of your work is done in teams. Especially in the science and engineering fields, teamwork is extremely important.

Being able to work as a team is both a blessing and a curse. You get to bounce ideas off each other, you usually have less work, and it's a little more enjoyable. It's great because your supposed to be able to get more work done in a less amount of time.

This is not the case for me. You see, in one of my engineering courses we were put in teams at the beginning of the semester. This team was as good as I could have asked for. Everyone was intelligent and helpful and did what they could to make sure we got our work done. We were cruising, and I was happy with the way things were going.

Then disaster struck.

We were put in new teams. These new teams were not as much of a blessing. More of a curse. These are four person teams, and mine is basically a two person team. Me and another kid work hard and we do what we need to do, but the other two are non-existant. We don't even know one of their names. He doesn't show up for class or lab or anything. The other kid always has a excuse as to why he's not there.

So here's the deal, you need to be prepared for the good and the bad. You could get placed in a good team or in a disaster team. If your in a good team, then your lucky. But if your in a bad team, here are some things you could do to make it a good team.

1) You could always pull the fourth grade trick and tell the instructor. Simple, yet probably productive. You could get new teammates or the teacher could scare the others into participating.

2) Try and handle it yourself. Talk to the team members who aren't participating, tell them that you need them to work. Tell them that it's important towards all of our grades that everyone participates.

3) If nothing else, just keep moving on without them. This is what me and the one person who worked with me did. Just do what you got to do, get yours, and don't worry about the others.

While we did the third option, I don't think it's the smartest one. Since we're all in college and supposedly grown up and mature, the second is probably the best option.

So when you do get put in a group, hopefully I helped. And if I did, I will be oh so touched if you e-mail me and let me know.

Finally Home

One thing you'll find in college is that if you were like me, you took your hometown for granted. I just got back for thanksgiving break today, and it feels great.

You see I come from a pretty small town. There's not much to do here, so all throughout high school I was real bored with it. Besides school and sports, it was just sitting around. Real boring.

Not too sound pompous or anything, but I had a lot of friends... and now that I've been gone for so long, it felt real good to see all of them.

Unlike last time, all of my flights made good time so I got home at a normal pace so that was all good. Another thing I've learned is that for people who go home by flight, it is important to give an extra day in your travels. Especially on the way back. If you want to be back at school for classes on a Monday, plan to fly in on a Saturday. You will lose a day of break, but if you plan to fly in on a Sunday and your flight gets delayed you might miss some classes. This is just a safer method I believe.

So I am good sitting here at home, and I'm going to leave you here cause it feels good to be able to shower in my own bathroom now and I wish to go obtain that feeling.

Goodbye...

Well, this first semester is finally coming to an end. I have Thanksgiving Break next week, then 2 more weeks of school, and then finals week. I can honestly say that I have survived so far, but I better not speak to soon because, like I mentioned, final exams have not arrived yet.

I do not know what to expect on finals. I was under the impression that only two of my six finals will be cumulative, covering everything from the beginning of the semester until the end, but to say least, I was wrong. I found out last week that four out of the six are cumulative. FANTASTIC. Basically, I just cannot wait to get them finished. That's all I want--to be done so I can go home for three weeks and not have to worry about doing ANY homework at all, at least until January rolls around.

Honestly, I just wish that someone who has already experienced final exams in college would read this post because I have absolutely no idea what to expect of them. For one time, instead of giving advice, I actually need some.

Sadly, if you are reading this blog to gain insight about final exams, I can not help you, and this blog is mostly made up of freshman, and they have not taken finals either. I regret to inform you that I cannot give you any information about exams until December 16th, which probably will not help you because, chances are, you will already be finished with them by then, unless your exams are after Christmas break. If that were the case though, I CAN help you out!

Now I know how sad this following information is going make you. Be mature about it. You can cry, but I only ask that you not whine.

This will be my last post excluding the one that I will write around December 17th or so. I know how much you will all miss me. Good luck with your college careers!

BOILER UP!

Final Destination

It's almost the end of the semester. Hard to believe so much time has passed, isn't it? I know that to me it doesn't seem like I've been writing this blog very long. Well, no matter what I think, the semester is still almost over. Just a couple more weeks until finals.

Finals. Just the thought of the word leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A lot of people start to stress out about their finals right around now, studying like crazy because they have to relearn everything from the start of the semester. I try not to include myself in that group, preferring the 'relaxed' method of study. I.E., I sit here on the couch until an hour before the final, then I cram like crazy. I know most of you probably prefer that method too. The thing to keep in mind is that while most finals are cumulative, they do not have much more time allotted to them than to a normal test. This means that true, everything is covered, but most of it is barely touched on in the test. There is no need to raise your blood pressure studying when having a cursory knowledge of the information is enough to do well on the final.

Another thing about finals is that the schedule for that week sucks. I don't know about the rest of you, but my finals are just broken up enough that week that I can't go home until they are all over. I have finals on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday (for those of you who don't know, final exam times are listed on SSINFO). It is a 5 hour trip back home for me, so If I went home after my Wednesday final, I wouldn't arrive until late that night, and I'd have to leave on Friday to make it back in time for my Saturday final. If only I didn't have that damn Biology final on Saturday, I could go home three days earlier.

The good thing about finals coming up is that classes tend to become more review-oriented, meaning it is a lot less detrimental for you to miss them. If you can remember most of what you learned over the semester, going to class becomes a lot more pointless around now. For those of you (like me) who like to skip class, this is a good thing. Just remember not to completely ignore your finals. Looking over the things you have learned over the class, even if just for a half hour or so, can make a large difference in your exam score.

Infestation

Well, it's getting to be that holiday-packed time of the year. You all know what that means. That's right: it's cold out. Especially up here in Indiana. No mild winters for us; it is still fall and it's already colder than a dingleberry on a polar bear. As if the cold alone wasn't bad enough, it makes all of the animals that normally live outside try to find someplace warm to chill out for a few months. One of these animals happens to be the Asian ladybug.

For those of you blessed enough to have never seen one of these things, an Asian ladybug looks pretty much like a normal ladybug. The only big difference is that their shells vary in color more and tend to be lighter than normal ladybugs. When winter comes, they all flock indoors to try to avoid freezing to death. This is where they and I start to run into trouble.

For whatever reason, all these little Asian bugs think that my apartment building (I live in Hilltop) is a perfect spot to live for a few months. They are everywhere. Whenever I walk in the building's front door, I have to put on my hood because I always worry that some of them will drop off the celing onto me. In the stairwell alone today I counted 87 of the damn things just sitting on the celing and clustering in the corners. It looks like someone rubbed superglue all over popcorn kernels and just flung them straight up in the foyer.

My only consolation here is that there are none in my apartment. They were all over the place until my roommate snapped and caught every single one in the same glass bottle. There must be more than 50 in there now. The bad thing is that he won't throw them out, so some of them have been sitting in there more than a week. I try not to look at the bottle. If any of you have a similar problem, there are a few things that you can do. First, you could get them all early, like my roommate did. If you get every one that starts to come in, they learn pretty quick not to enter the apartment. Second, you could keep your apartment really warm in the winter. I know I prefer it this way, even though many people don't, and this may help in warding off the bugs. Third, you could always Raid the suckers. This may make your place really uncomfortable to breathe in, but at least you won't have ladybugs everywhere.

The Holidays

So basically no matter where I go, I am seeing Christmas/holiday spirit and decorations, and it is not even Thanksgiving yet! To be honest, I am loving this!

Around campus, I am seeing lights strung on people's dorm windows. Here, at Purdue University, we have a building called the Purdue Memorial Union (PMU), which is basically the center of our University. Most students congregate there, and the PMU is where you can find Purdue's Union Club Hotel (very nice, a little pricey, but highly recommeded!), Purdue's banking service, a food court, Purdue's traveling agency (good deals, by the way!), and my personal favorite--Starbucks!

The Union in itself has not begun decorating for the holidays, unfortunately, but Starbucks....well, that's another story. I went to Starbucks yesterday after my math class because the Union is located across the street from where my math class is located. Starbucks is already in the swing of the holiday season! There is no other way to put it. They are already offering their "Holiday Trio" selections--the Gingerbread Latte, the Peppermint Mocha, and the Eggnog Latte. Every year, I get the Peppermint Mocha. It is absolutely delicious. It has just the right amount of peppermint flavoring mixed with mocha (just to clear everything up, a mocha has a chocolate flavor, while a latte is milky). It actually tastes like mint hot chocolate or better yet, an Andes mint. YUM! Also, Starbuck's has decorated their store already with Christmas trees and garlands, and you can now buy advent calendars there that are shaped like Christmas trees, along with coffee cups, teacups, and t0-go mugs with different holiday settings on each. You should go to a Starbucks and check it out even if you do not plan on buying anything. If one is decorated, they probably all are no matter where in the world they are located.

I actually have my car up here now at Purdue, where freshmen cannot have cars. My boyfriend's roommate is a senior, and he does not have a car here anymore, so he gave me his parking pass.

Anyway, last night, I went to the mall because there is nothing to do at Purdue right now since the whole campus went to IU for the Indiana vs. Purdue football game. I was supposed to go, but I ended up having 2 papers and a major project due Monday so I couldn't. When I went to the mall, Santa Claus was already there giving children the opportunity to take pictures with him. Lights were hanging from the mall's ceiling, and in stores like Macy's, Christmas trees and other holiday decorations are already set up.

Basically, now that I'm in college, I enjoy the holidays even more than I would if I were at home. The decorations and the holiday spirit actually make me feel at home, and they put me in a good mood. I'm excited to for Christmas break and being able to spend a whole 3 weeks at home with my family, but I should probably get through Thanksgiving break first!

Group meetings frustrate me

I had a group meeting on this last Monday for my database programming class. I am in a group of 4 people and we had decided to meet up in a computer lab at 5:30 to get it done. We have to get this done this week since it is due next week and who wants to work the week of thanksgiving.

On to the story. I sent out a reminder email the day before the meeting to remind people. Come time for the meeting. I was at the location on time and two of the group members showed up 15 minutes late. I decided to call the person that was not there since we had several hours of work to do. I tried to call them only to get a message saying it was an invalid phone number. I also decided to try instant messaging them. He was not online though.

Half an hour in one group member tell me that he has to leave at 7:00 because he has another thing to do. He does not tell me what it is though. My theory is he just did not want to work anymore, though he could have been tell the truth. For the past couple of days I have been trying to figure out how to do this lab. I have been emailing my group saying what I have found out how to do and what we still need to do. No one responds. I sent out an email saying we need to meet again. I still did not even get a response to that email till this morning.

I think people do not respond to emails because they do want to have to do more work. They can just pretend like they never read them. I finally found the kid that did not show up to the lab on Monday today. He said he did not know we even had a meeting and had not gotten my emails. He said he was having email troubles. Then I had to fix his email so we could contact him. The only problem with his email was that he had it sorted by subject rather than date. His inbox still told him when he had new email, so he should have read my email.

In college people are extremely unreliable. We are meeting again tonight and I imagine that part way through the meeting someone will say that they have something else to go work on. Keep in mind everyone said they are free to work on the project tonight. This should have been done on Monday, but a person leaving early and another not showing up screwed me.
Moral is you cannot always count on getting done what you had planned with groups. You might have to adjust your schedule to work on something multiple times since you failed to get it done the first time. A lot of the time you also just get nothing done during the meetings.

Getting Around

So I'm a slow walker. Like really, really, really slow. There's a good reason for this. In high school, I hurt my knee playing football and had to have surgery. I was stupid and tried to play too soon.

This happened three times.

Which means instead of one surgery, I had four. And the condition of my knee just kept getting worse and worse. I know, I'm an idiot; but what's done is done. So since my knee has gotten progressively worse, my walk speed has followed that same trend.

Anyway that's not really the point of this post, just a little background information. The real point here is transportation at college. Now as much as I hate to compliment Purdue, their public bus system is pretty good. In fact, for slow walker's it's really good. You can get from point A to point B in a pretty short amount of time.

There are of course other ways to get around campus. One of them is walking. But thats for people who's left leg isn't dead. You can own a car, but that involves having money and a place to park. Both of which are pretty hard to come by at a big college. Especially if your a freshman and your not allowed to have a vehicle on campus.

A bike is another popular method of transportation. You just gotta watch out for dickheads to steal your bike (see previous posts.) And you have to be stellar like me and recover your bike if that happens. If you do get a bike, I recommend getting a cheap one, because let's be honest, I'm one of a kind. I think that's enough self appreciation for the day though.

The point is that in college you gotta be smart as far as getting around goes. You gotta time it properly so that you can get to where you have to go on time. It's usually good to have a plan ahead of how you're going to get to each class so you don't have to think of it on the moment. It works for me.

Getting down there..

I cannot believe that I am finishing up on my last round of exams and the semester is winding down. It seems like the first day where my parents and I were moving in and I had just gotten my room all situated and set up. Older students were shuffling around big totes and bags and helping us find our correct rooms and where all of the amenities are located in the building. I remember feeling so overwhelmed and thinking this was not the right decision to make. You never know unless you try and that was just the idea and mentality that I had coming into college. Throughout this semester I have begun to like college more and more and I am so glad that I made the decision to leave home and come to Purdue. It offers you an endless opportunities and situations that you can take advantage of that smaller colleges may not. Smaller colleges sometimes do not have the resources or accommodations to specific ideas and programs. They do not have available or offer a wide range of majors that you can choose from.


As the semester is winding down make sure you do not slack. You think that your main exams are over and now you can relax and take it easy think otherwise. This is the time where you need to make sure you attend and go to all your classes, keep up with your homework, and do your readings. The hardest thing about the semester still has not yet come which is the dreaded final exams. The worst is where the exam is cumulative and you have to try and remember everything from day one till now. A couple of pointers would be to study a little each day. There is no way that you can cram the night before for a final exam you will be so overwhelmed and stressed. If you spread it out over a couple of days or weeks you will be able to retain more information and not get everything messed up in your head. When you cram you get things all confused and can’t remember where information goes and how things connect. I have also learned in my psychology classes that if I apply specific ideas and theories to things in my life that have happened it helps. It is easy when you make connections to your own life and you can recall the information better by making these comparisons. Hope you do not wait till the last minute to start studying make sure you look ahead and do not get weighed down.

School Spirit!

Showing school spirit and cheering for your university is always a very positive and good thing to partake in. You want to get involved and support your college. How boring would it be if you never attended any sporting events or extracurricular activities? My advice to all of you is to take a little time out of a day or two and go watch one of the sporting teams or clubs play or perform. You would always have something to gain from it and feel better cheering on the team and if it is not a good game at all or does not interest you in anymore you can always get up and leave. There is something out there for everyone.


Now that we had our last home football game and sadly lost we should look forward to the next big sport that is approaching which is basketball. But this weekend the football team is still playing and it is one of the biggest games of the year against our rival team. So if you have a ride to Indiana University and do not have a lot of work to get done I would strongly recommend you venturing down there and showing some support for your team. Plus you may have other friends that go to that school so you could catch up with them and come back ready for a fresh start.


We should also recognize the sports that do not draw the large extensive loud crowds for example the soccer and volleyball teams. Some of these teams do not get the recognition that they deserve for their hard work and dedication all year round. This week the volleyball team will also be playing Indiana on Wednesday and Michigan on Friday. Every team seems to have many games scheduled at home and away so there has to be a time where you are not busy and can fit it in your schedule. If you do not have a planner that tells you when and where they take place you can find it on Purdue’s website which is very helpful. They also post the latest Purdue sights, sounds, and tours and a list of the intercollegiate athletics on the website.


By going to sporting events you may also interact and meet new people you never knew. You could just start talking to the person standing next to you, develop a friendship, and have a good time. While having fun you feel a sense of pride for the school that you go to. It makes you feel better knowing that maybe your cheering or positive attitude could help a player have more confidence. Also, when you do cheer more people around you will join in and it will get louder and louder. The best feeling as a player is knowing that people believe in you, come out during their free time to see you play, and are there to back you up and support you. Go Boilers!

Teachers making me go to class

Dam my teachers for making me go to class. I am talking about them making me go to class next week on Monday and Tuesday. Our break does not officially start till Wednesday. In my past three years I have always went home the weekend before thanksgiving, so I could have an entire week off for break. This has usually not been a problem since either all my classes were canceled or all except maybe one. I would just skip that one that was not canceled.

This semester I am not in luck though. I have at least two of my five Monday classes canceled. I would consider skipping them all except the problem is I have a lab on Tuesday. The lab is not canceled. The lab is a multi week lab and I get 50% off if I am not there on the entire lab. The thing that pisses me off is that we work on the labs when we want. It is not like we have to do anything specific during that lab. I wish I could skip it.

Since I am being forced to go to the lab I will probably go to two of my classes on Monday as well since they will most likely give quizzes. My plan is to go home on Thursday since my Friday classes are canceled and come back Monday morning since the teachers are forcing me too. I then plan on getting drunk on Monday night and then going to lab for 10 minutes on Tuesday and then going home.

I asked my teacher a few weeks ago if we were going to have class the week of thanksgiving and he actually made fun of me. He said it was not a liberal arts class. Funny thing is I have had plenty of classes from the same school canceled before.

The reason I wanted that lab canceled is not because school is bad, but I want more time to see family and friends. I think Purdue should have class canceled for that entire week of thanksgiving. I guess the moral of the story is teachers sometimes don’t do what you want.

Small Isn't So Bad

When I first walked into my dorm room here at Purdue a few months ago. My reaction went something like this, "oh shit this going to suck." It is small, really small. There was a bunk bed, 2 desks, 2 dressers, and then maybe 3 square feet of empty space if even. Not to mention that when I got here it was a solid 90 degrees and of course, there was no air conditioning in my dorm. I was sure I was going to be cramped and boiling hot and that it was going to suck.

I was half right, it remained 90 for about a month, and that did suck. But as far as the room size goes, I dont mind it at all. Now that I've lived here a few months, I've found that your room is basically only good for sleeping, homework once in awhile, and relaxing. There are so many other places to do everything besides sleep, that you don't end up in your room as much as you'd think.

Lots of homework gets done in computer labs or libraries. I've found them personally to just be better environments. You don't have many distractions, so you work a lot more efficiently. Computer labs are nice, because you can find other people working on the same stuff you are, and lots of times it helps to be able to work together or get tips from another person.

As far as relaxing, there are TV rooms and lounges on almost every floor, so lots of times you end up there. These are obviously much bigger, so you can hang out with a lot more people in them.

One perk I've found is that there is much less cleaning to do. You are not responsible for very much space at all. As my roommate can attest to, I am a pretty messy person... so a small room means its that much less stuff that I can mess up. It ends up working out pretty good in the end.

So when you get to college, and if you do get stuck with a small room, remember that it's not as bad as you think, in fact you might find it better. I gotta be honest though, air conditioning is a good thing no matter what the room size is.

The 4-1-1 on Chem 115

So there's a class here at Purdue. Chemistry 115. It's just the basic first year chemistry. And it's terrible. Everything about it is terrible. Their lectures are pointless. You learn NOTHING. It's one of the few things I have found to be guaranteed in college. I will learn nothing in chem lecture.

I also dislike the labs. The other day I was kicked out of my chemitsry lab because I put my goggles on my forehead. There were no chemicals within 10 feet of me. And I was asked to leave by a jackass TA on a power trip. This guy is such a tool, he actually thinks as head TA he makes a difference in the world. I guarantee no one liked this man in high school. Probably not even his parents.

But anyways, your going to come across classes like this in college. I don't necessarily mean you'll find dickhead TA's, but I mean classes where they don't teach you much. These are the classes where they expect you to be able to learn it by yourself. This means you have to spend time with the material besides just doing the homework, because that's not enough.

These are the classes where you have to take notes, make outlines, or do whatever it is that works for you to learn the material. Before you could just sit and listen in lecture, do the homework, and everything would be fine. That will give you an F in this class.

My roommate is a junior, and from what he tells me lots of classes get this way as you get older. I think it's another main difference from classes you take in high school. As you get older and older, you must become more and more interdependent.

It sucks. I miss high school. But i just spilled lemonade all over pretty much everything. So good bye.

Links explained

As you may, or may not have noticed, we have links on the right side of the blog. Hello links!

These links lead you to some of our favorite places on the internet. I think it’s time that we passed on our reasoning for these links.

Links
AC Freshman Tips

Back to School

Surviving

All three of the above take you to the same website. I’m not sure why there are three of them, but there are. I didn’t put these here, but the website that it does take you to does have good information about surviving college. Granted, and I’m going to be blatantly biased, I think our information is better.


Related Blogs and Websites

Student Life
The article is missing! Oh no! I don’t know what happened to it, but it wasn’t my fault.

Student411: Surviving Your Freshman Year
This is a blog post with some general suggestions for college.

Suite101: College Freshman Year 101
This is a website/blog that gives general advice on college.

unrelated websites that give you something to do

xkcd
My personal favorite web comic ever. You should read it. It’s nerdy, hilarious, and it has stick figures. Besides, you know you want to know what ‘xkcd’ stands for.

Cube News
This is a video blog done by a cubicle worker. It gives great advice as well as makes you giggle. “Dear Feeling Post, I have 2 words for you…”

Slashdot
It’s nerdy news that matters. Need I say more?

Reuters Oddly Enough
If you want “real news” because you don’t understand nerdy news, then at least have it be entertaining “real news”.

Newgrounds
They have flash videos and games for free. You can spend hours on there just watching random stuff. Might I suggest starting with the top 50 of all time?

addicting games
The title says it all. It’s free games that are addicting.

I hope this clarifies our list on the right. If you have any other websites that you feel are being ignored, let us know and give us a reason. We can make that links list on the right as loooong as we want.

Take a Break: Part 2: Video Games

There’s nothing more statisfying than making something explode or getting to shoot something.

While I’d love to be a mythbuster have that form of stress relief every day, I can’t. I’d love to, but I’m stuck at college, with hours upon hours of homework, crazy professors, exams that make me want to change my major or just give up all together.

That’s where video games come in. I can shoot things and make things explode without causing too much paper work. The only paper work video games give me is the receipt.

But video games do more than just relieve stress. From Wikipedia: “In Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, he argues that video games in fact demand far more from a player than traditional games like Monopoly. To experience the game, the player must first determine the objectives, as well as how to complete them. They must then learn the game controls and how the human-machine interface works, including menus and HUDs. Beyond such skills, which after some time become quite fundamental and are taken for granted by many gamers, video games are based upon the player navigating (and eventually mastering) a highly complex system with many variables. This requires a strong analytical ability, as well as flexibility and adaptability. He argues that the process of learning the boundaries, goals, and controls of a given game is often a highly demanding one that calls on many different areas of cognitive function. Indeed, most games require a great deal of patience and focus from the player, and, contrary to the popular perception that games provide instant gratification, games actually delay gratification far longer than other forms of entertainment such as film or even many books. Some research suggests video games may even increase players' attention capacities.”

And to think that my mom used to yell at me, telling me that video games would rot my brain. You can fight Wikipedia all you want, but it’s not just Wikipedia saying that video games aren’t bad, and may in fact be good for you.

Henry Jenkins, a professor at MIT, wrote an article debunking 8 myths about video games. Helium.com also has articles debunking the same myths and citing other sources.

From my own experience, my brain is jello after assignments and exams. I can’t think about doing my simple calculus homework or writing up a chem lab. But I can beat levels of Zelda, play hours of fpsers or an rpg. I relax. I know that I can die in a video game and it’s not the end of the world. I can still rescue Princess Peach (who really needs to stop being kidnapped), save Hyrule, and get some head shots in before entering “real life” again. I float. And I find that I think better after playing.

My thoughts are more fluid (have you ever tried writing a paper after a college exam? If not, your thoughts are not fluid. They are cottage cheese.). I can balance chemical equations like there’s no tomorrow, I can integrate, finding the volumes of solids of revolution, write tens of lines of code, and manage to do it all properly (ah, there’s the catch) and still manage to sleep.

I’m sure some, if not all, of us have tried to do homework on little to no sleep or after a big test. It doesn’t work.

The moral of the story: play video games when you can’t concentrate. Play video games when you have free time. Hell, just play video games because they’re awesome!

photo courtesy of http://www.quicksavejunkie.com.

I am entertaining

I AM entertaining. Quite. Well, I have people over (though I am pretty fun to talk to too). My friend has two of her cousins over for a few days, one guy and one girl, so naturally she has the guy stay over at my place. Not that I mind. Her cousins are interesting people and I am always glad to talk to anyone. The only bad thing is that I have to make my place presentable for company.

Now, I am not that messy a person, and I do not hate cleaning that much. I don't mind doing it every once in a while. Lately though, it seems like people are visiting every weekend, be it her cousins, her parents, my roommate's family, etc. It used to take me a long time to clean up. Since I've had to do it so much I have gotten a lot more efficient out of necessity. I don't have the time to lose on spending hour after hour cleaning every week. Now I have gotten to the point where I can clean the entire place from top to bottom in about 40 minutes. I live up on Hilltop, so I have a little bit more to do than most people in dorms. It takes me 15 minutes to do the dishes, 10 minutes to clean the room in general, 5 minutes to clean the bathroom, 5 mintues to clean the kitchen, and 5 minutes to vacuum everything. Quite quick, if I do say so myself.

There's also a certain way I have to start acting when company is over. None of them know just how weird I am, and I prefer to keep it that way. I have to act like a normal person and be polite and make small talk and stuff. It's soooo hard. Anyway, here are some tips on entertaining company. Actually, there is only one tip. Appearance is everything. People will only be visiting for a couple of days, max, so everything they think is based on brief impressions and appearances. Having a tidy place and acting nice is all that matters. Doing that will make them leave with a good impression. It doesn't matter if you just swept all the dust and crumbs and radom pieces of trash under the rug as long as they never see it.

This is one reason I have gotten able to clean so quickly. I have learned exactly what needs to be done to maximize appearance with minimum effort. For instance, with cups, I line them all up in neat rows with the nice, clean cups in front. The ones that are kind of cloudy and have weird rings go in the back where no guest will ever see them. Kitchen trash is swept under the fridge. Everything that could be trash but might not be is not worth thinking about. It all goes into a drawer. Basically you just do everything possible to get things out of sight as fast as you can. Do this and everyone wins. You get free time, while your guests end up thinking you are a very nice and neat individual.

Dorm Room Advice and Safety

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, there are a couple of things that you should do to close up your dorm room for the much needed break. You want to make sure when you come back everything is normal, nothing is ruined, and your room does not smell horrible.

First of all I would advise you to make sure your window is tightly shut and nothing can get in. You would not want any bugs or insects to get through your window if by chance you had a whole in your screen. Also, if there is any severe weather in the area you would not want this to come in your room. When there are high winds and storms there is a chance your window could break or shatter into a thousand pieces if it is not shut.

Secondly make sure that you have gone through your refrigerator and shelves and disposed of any food that will expire over the break. You should always make sure you go through and rotate your food and drinks around to make sure nothing get stuck in the back. That would be the worst to come back and your room smell like rotten spoiled food. It only takes a few minutes to look through everything and is definitely worth it.

Of course the most obvious and important is to make sure your door is tightly closed and locked. I know that at Harrison Hall alone this week five lab tops have gotten stole and 2 people’s iPods are missing. I feel horrible for the victims of theft but if you take a couple of seconds to lock your door you will not have to worry about any of this. Even if you are still in the building like down in the laundry room or in the computer room for example you should still lock your door just in case. It only takes a few minutes for something to happen and that would be devastating.

Off Campus vs On Campus

I know it sounds crazy but we all need to think about where we are going to live next year. If you wait till the end of the school year everything is usually sold out or you are left with the old run down places. The first major task that you need to address is how many people do you want to live with and who do you get along with? You want to make sure you can deal with them for a whole year, they share some of your same interests, and you have some rules and guidelines to follow. Make sure you sit down and try and make a list of the preferences you want whether it would be an on the site laundry room, exercise room, or being able to have a pet live in the apartment with you.

Next is the question should you live on campus or off campus and what are some of the advantages and disadvantages to both? Living on campus the most obvious and notable advantage is that you can walk to campus and get around easily. There are more restaurants and places that are accessible to you especially if you are looking for a job to earn some extra cash. You do not have to worry about driving to and from campus which takes up time. When you live off campus you have to plan in advance and when the weather starts getting bad you never know how long it will take you to get to your destination. Also, I know at Purdue you may not even get a good parking pass it just depends you may have to park at Rossade and then you have to walk still. So living on campus just cuts down on the whole driving aspect and just includes a little walk to and from the university.

Living off campus in some of the apartments they seem to be more spacious and have more amenities to offer. You seem to just have more space to work with, more privacy, and freedom. There are a lot more options to choose from and they seem to not go as fast. There is a greater variety in price ranges so you can find the one that is perfect for you. Also with getting an apartment you need to take into the fact and find out if there are additional utilities to pay for such as heat, electric, cable, and water. These can all add up if you have to pay for them in addition to your monthly rent which could end up being very costly. Unlike living in the dorms like most freshmen do you now have to worry about getting groceries and making your own meals that may be very costly if you do not budget your money. You may also need to buy additional furniture, appliances, and decorations to furnish it nicely. Here is a helpful website that will show a list of available apartments around the Purdue University area.

Another thing to decide is whether you would want to live in an apartment or a house. With a house you will have more room and space to do stuff. You can have more people over and have more room to do activities and games. Although, with having more space you may just want to have some alone time and people may always be popping in and out which could be very irritating and distracting. Finally, I would highly recommend that you should start considering where you want to live at, who you want to live with, and either an apartment or a house.

Test Prep.

So yesterday I had another Calc exam. Ugh. I hate these. I had this class in high school and passed, but somehow I'm still managing to do terrible. In my math class we have two midterms and a final. The midterms are 20 percent of our grade apiece, while the final is 40 percent (and it's multiple choice :/ ). Anyway, this was the second of the midterms. I got a 58 percent on the first one. That's pretty bad. Somehow it was a B though, so maybe it wasn't just me.

After my dismal grade on the first test, I vowed to better prepare myself for the second one. My preparation for the first test consisted of me waiting until 2 hours before the test and then attempting to learn all of the material at once. Somehow this failed to work. For this test I decided to slowly study the material over several weeks before the exam.

Well, it got to be about 4 o'clock yesterday and I realized that the exam I vowed to prepare for was in three hours. Not counting an hour to eat dinner, an hour to walk everywhere, and probably 30 minutes of screwing around and not studying, I had half an hour to learn all the material for the test. The material we were covering wasn't that bad. I looked at the practice test and I could actually do most of it. The problem was that the test questions tended to be application problems and critical thinking or some weird thing like that. "Test my mastery." Blech. Also, the tests in this class have 7 questions, so missing even one is disasterous to my grade.

So I crammed, ate, and went to the test. I walked away feeling ok about it (better than the last one), but not great. I probably scored somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 percent. The sad thing is that I know I could have scored at least a 90 if I had spent more time studying. The problems were pretty easy but I couldn't remember some formulas. If I had memorized them, I would have aced it.

The lesson here is to spend time studying for tests. If you know you have an exam coming up, take a few hours out of your day to review material for it beforehand. Don't wait until an hour before the test to start studying. It is a lot harder to learn material when you are under a lot of stress. I just hope the rest of the class did as poorly as I did so the curve can help me out a li'l.

Visiting Parents

My parents are visiting me this weekend. Some people dread this; I personally think I am going to have a good time. I am of drink age, so I figured I would have some fun with my parents. In addition to going out to meals with them, I will be taking them to breakfast club tomorrow. That means my parents brought costumes for breakfast club and they will be drinking with me at 7:00AM. This is not they type of thing you usually do with your parents. I am then going to take them to Triple XXX. If you are a freshman, you might not know what Tripe XXX is or breakfast club. That’s for a future post though.

By doing this, I get to have fun with my parents. It also allows them to experience some of the things I do in college. It also just gives me some good time to bond with them. I think it is cool that my parents are willing to do this.

Pets in College

I personally have never had a landlord that allows pets. Most landlords do not allow them. There are a few that do but most do not. If they find out that you do have a pet even though they told you that you can’t they won’t be very happy. The landlords that do allow pets usually charge extra for a pet.

I know there are a lot of people out there than want to get a dog. I currently am taking care of my parent’s dog for a week, even though I am not allowed to have a dog. There are many things that are a pain that you might not normally think about. The first problem is I do not have a yard to just let the dog go out in and do its business. I have to take the dog out on a leash every time. Also around campus there are no parks or fields to take the dog to. This is a major problem because labs, the type of dog I have, like to go run around. In order to do this I need a large field and have it not be next to a major street, so the dog does not run into it accidentally. It seems really strange to me that there are no parks around; there are not even playgrounds for kids to play at. I know by the dorms there are big fields, but I am on the other side of campus. I have been putting the dog in my car and taking her to one of the elementary schools to play.

I am just saying having a dog in a environment to more work since you have to go much further to find a place to play with it. You also have to go with the dog to do its business every few hours. I live in a house, if you live in an apartment, this would be even more of a pain since you would have to go downstairs.

EW! SICK! NASTY!!!!!!!!

I'm sure you're familiar with those fast-food restaurant stories, whether they're true or not. For example, the time that Wendy's served chili to a customer and the chili had a human finger in it, or like the time when McDonald's sold chicken nuggets to someone, and the customer found a real cooked chicken head in the chicken nuggets box. I won't lie. I have no idea if any of the stories like that or true or not, I just vaguely remember hearing about them. Basically, the point I am getting at is that sooner or later, you're going to come across something disgusting in your food.

Let me just say that I just got back from dinner here at one of Purdue's dining courts called Earhart. They have all sort of things at Earhart. I was having a tough time deciding what I wanted for dinner. I considered making my own stirfry at the "make-your-own-stirfry" section, making my own pasta, making a sandwich, soup, or making a waffle.

I chose to make a waffle. I'm almost positive that I made a really bad choice tonight.

After I made my waffle, I went and sat down to dinner with a couple of my best friends. To say the least, there was a dead, cooked fly in my waffle!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah. I'm still throwing up in my mouth over the whole deal.

College can be extremely random. I guess it was just one of those "you were at the wrong place at the wrong time" kind of thing.

College & Relationships

No matter how many days I spend here at Purdue University, the same thing never ceases to amaze me: the amount of couples here.

I was here for only a week, and most girls living in my residence hall had boyfriends. I can’t say much, but that’s because I’ve been dating the same guy for over five years whom I met in eighth grade, but that’s beside the point.

As we were walking to class, I was talking to my friend, about how many couples I see here. We began wondering if most people begin dating if they meet at college, or if they come to college together already dating from high school. Then, my friend began discussing her long distance relationship with me.

She and her boyfriend have been together for over four years. They both lived in the same town, which was so small that everyone in their high school knew each other because they all lived on the same two streets. They saw each other everyday, and graduating high school was a real big step for them. No longer would they be together 24/7; he accepted a scholarship from Toledo University, in Ohio, to play baseball, and she chose to go here. They are having a hard time with the long-distance thing. In fact, my friend says it’s one of the hardest things she’s ever had to go through.

My friend has the most trouble when she sees other couples at Purdue who are spending all their time together. I can understand where she’s coming from, like I said, I’ve been dating Jason for over five years. Unlike my friend’s boyfriend, Jason goes to Purdue, but he’s on the flight team, and just got home from Tennessee after being there for over a week. It was so hard for me to be here without him, especially since I ended up in the hospital the day he left. Seeing couples all over campus just made me miss him so much more. I mean, I see him everyday, and going a week without him almost felt impossible to do. I have no idea how my friend does it; she’s basically amazing (haha).

Lately, her boyfriend has been a real pain the ass. He hasn’t been calling her, he won’t come visit, he barely has anything to talk about when they actually do talk, and he just doesn’t try anymore, but then when she talks to him about a potential break-up, he tries to avoid the discussion. Sooo, why won’t he try if he doesn’t want to break up? He won’t end up being with her for the rest of his life like he wants and hopes to be if he doesn’t put forth the effort. It takes two people to make a relationship work, not two, and right now, my friend is the only one contributing to the relationship at all.

In all honesty, I think they’ll make it because they want it so bad. After Jason left for a week, I began thinking about how it would be if he were never around, and it’s just been something I’ve been thinking about lately, especially after hearing the stories about my friend and her boyfriend. Jason and I were about to go to different colleges. I was going to come here, and he was strongly considering going to Florida and attending Embry-Riddle, one of the top flight schools in the country. The only think that kept him here was being close to his family. He has a problem with homesickness (which is weird because I go home like every other weekend, and he’s gone home once). In all, I’ve just realized how thankful I am that Jason is around, and since I’ve been pondering it so much, I figured I might as well blog about it and get it down in writing rather than tossing it around in my brain every five seconds.

If you’re going through a long distance relationship like my friend is going through, my advice is to just decide how much the relationship is worth and weigh your options—do what’s right for you, and make that decision on your own. Don't base your choices on what other's think is right for you. Only you know.

It’s getting cold, reduce heating costs

It is getting cold out now. I finally turned my heat on my house yesterday. I was trying to wait as long as possible to turn the heat on since natural gas can be very expensive. I let my house get down to 60 degrees before I finally caved and turned it on. Since the cooler I keep my house the more money I save, I set my heat to 67 degrees.
One way to save more money is to turn down the heat when you sleep. I set my heat to 60 when I go to bed till I get back from class the next day. Also you should make sure your furnace filter is clean since if it is dirty, it will have to run longer to heat the house.


Since I live in an older house a lot of my windows are single pane. Single pane windows do not insulate as well. Also since they are older windows they do not seal very well. I can feel gusts of wind through the windows. A really important thing I do is I buy plastic window covers from the hardware store. This adds a space of dead air between the room in your house and the window. Essentially this gives you a second pane on your window. It also catches drafts from leaky windows.


I am now living in a house for my third year. I lived in the dorms only my freshman year. Taking these steps makes a real difference. Doing these steps can make a $400 heating bill be $150. I have had those expensive bills and I do everything I can to avoid them.
If you live in an apartment you might not even have to turn your heat on. I have friends that did not have to turn on their heat at all since they had apartments on top, bottom, left, and right of their apartment. Their apartment was heated by the surrounding apartments.

Rejected

I have done many interviews lately with companies since I am a senior now and want a full time job when I graduate. I know companies use to send people letters through the mail when you they did not want to pursue further talks with you. It seems most companies these days are a little less classy. I have gotten emails from several companies saying they did not want me.

I think it would be a little classier to send a letter or make a phone call rather than send an email. I guess it is nicer that you find out sooner by emails, but it would be nice if the companies had a little class.

Group conflict

I am a senior so I have worked on a lot of group projects. Sometimes there are problems such as people not being able to meet at the same time. A few times I have run into problems were one person is just lazy and does not do any of the work. I am usually the person that takes the lead.

I have finally found myself on the other end though. I am in a 5 person group in a computer class. We started of being assigned into groups and I told the group members to please email out when they are going to work on the project, so we can all help. This did not happen. Two of the members decided that they would mostly work on it at times without telling us. When we did meet during designated class time they would work on it and would not let us do anything.

Now fast forward to the last week of the lab. They started sending pissed of emails that we have not done anything. They took the lead on the project and would not tell us what to do. Even when I was sitting with them while they are working on it. The day before it was due they were saying we had to contribute our part to the project now. Since it is a technology class where we are configuring computers we tried our best. We did not know what they had done though since they did most of it without us. Since we did not know what they did we could not do our part.

I the end we did not completely get it done since there was not good communication. Not getting full credit on it is not even the worst part. The problem with group members refusing to work with us hurts my test grades. Our labs help us understand what we are taught in class and then get tested on. Without the lab for the first test I would have failed. I learn everything in lab, so now thing are not looking good for the next test.

The moral of the story of my rant is you must work together. No matter your position in the group you must communicate and make sure you get everyone involved. Also don’t jump to conclusions. My group members did not realize the reason that we were not help them was the reason that they would not give us work or tell us when they were working on it.

Alley Cat

Earlier this week I did something I never did before. I went on an Alley Cat. An Alley Cat is a bike race. There are checkpoints that you have to go to before you return to the start. On this race we were able to choose which checkpoint we went to first. After choosing the first checkpoint you had to do all the checkpoints in order after that. I had never heard of this before, but someone told me about it, so I took my bike out and tried it out. I went into this knowing full well that I had no chance of winning. I was doing it more for fun. I am not in enough shape to be able to win a bike race. Also the top finishers got prizes since it cost $10 to do the race.

The race was setup where we just had to go to five different places on Purdue campus. That might seem like an extremely short distance, but it was not since we had to do the checkpoints in a certain order. I went from the Memorial Mall to Hilltop to Lynn Hall to Westwood(where Cordova lives) to the Northwestern Parking garage to the Purdue Village to the Memorial Mall. If you were to connect the points it would make a star. The path was purposely designed not to be efficient. This way you have to go across campus many times. I think it was about 9 miles in total.

Map of ride

This event was announced through the Facebook group Purdue Critical Mass. Which is a group that organizes bike rides around Purdue about once a month. The point of the group is to do large bike rides as in lots of people. These types of events are very popular in Chicago. I personally have not had a chance to do one yet. I hope to go on the next ride.

All you need to do these bike events is to have a bike.

Late Night On Campus

For some reason I went out a lot late at night this week. Well, I know the reason, but that's a subject for another day. Let's just say I didn't feel like being around my roommate right then. I count going out late as anything past 11 pm. I think we can agree that that is fairly late for a night when I have classes the next day. Anyway, the first couple nights I went out I was clueless about what to do. I don't drink, so I wasn't very inclined to head over to a party or go hang around the bars. Instead, I decided to just walk around campus and see what there was to be found that late. Not suprisingly, most of the buildings were dark and locked up. I tried a few of them only to be rejected every time.

I did find some places to go though. It turns out that a bunch of the engineering buildings are open all night. MSEE is a notable one. It is the one right by the engineering fountain that has lots of big glass panes on the front. At night all the lights are on inside it and it is very easy to see. When I went over there, I found that some other people had the same idea as me and were studying in the main lobby. The elevated walkways connecting it to EE and physics were closed though.

I also found that Armstrong stays open all night. Well, kind of. Some of the doors get locked. The main ones and one of the ones on Stadium stay open, so you can get in if you really want to. Since I live in Hilltop, this was pretty cool for me, and I ended up wandering around in it for around an hour.

When I got hungry that late, I had quite a few choices. Cary Knightspot was a good one, since it is pretty close to where I live and it is open til one. McDonalds on Stadium and Northwestern was another good one. A few days after the first time I went out that late, I found myself over by Chauncy Hill. Taco Bell stays open that late. Hookah is also open. I probably would have gone there if I was a smoker. Most other food places are too far off campus for me to feasibly get to on foot at night.

After going to Taco Bell the second time I was out, I wandered around State street. Hicks undergrad library closes at 2 am or something, but I got to it after closing time. Stewart Center and the Union are open all night, but the food places in the Union are closed. It does have that large room on its first floor with lots of couches and armchairs and a big flatscreen tv though, so I stopped by it for a bit. Don't bother trying to go to other dorms that late, since they lock their outside doors at 11 pm.

Anyway, this is just me trying to give you all some tips on where you can go if you find yourself wanting to go out this late but you don't want to go get wasted. Even though I was walking around by myself at midnight, I didn't really feel unsafe or anything. We have a pretty safe campus and I was around lighted buildings for the most part. It would probably be better to go out with a friend, but if you can't find anyone willing to accompany you this late, fear for your safety shouldn't stop you from going.

Big Spender

Recently, I have noticed a disturbing trend in my daily routine. What happens is I wake up, go to class and stuff, eat dinner, relax, then get hungry again at around 12:30 am. Being me, I cannot stand being hungry. I just get so I really can't think about anything except food. So I end up ordering some delivery or making the ten minute walk to McDonalds and getting something there. Ta da! No more hunger. Once in a while, this is fine. It makes me feel good, I get a little exercise walking over there, everything is fine.

However, lately I have been doing this a lot. I probably spent around 30 dollars doing this this past week. If I keep this up, I'll have spent around 200 dollars by the end of the semester. In my opinion, this is a lot of money to spend on extra food every week. It's not like I don't have time to eat. Dining halls are open from like 7 am to 8 pm (or something similar), serving delicious buffets of food. I just end up getting hungry after they close.

Now I am a college student (obviously) and I have 0 income. For me, spending hundreds of dollars on snacks = BAD. What can I do about this? I have come up with two solutions. First, I have a 15 meal plan but end up eating only around 12 times a week. I could take those extra meals and get On The Go to tide me over when I am hungry. This works, except that most of the non-perishable food that they have at On The Go isn't very filling and would not help me much if I was really hungry. The other thing I could do is go to sleep earlier. This would solve my sleep deprivation problems and my late night snack problem in one fell swoop. The problem with this is that I just don't get tired earlier. I'm really a night person. I'm working on it though. I havent gone to bed later than 2 am this whole week : ) So to bring my rambling to a close, try and go to sleep earlier. It will not only help you in school, it will save you a lot of money in late night deliveries.

Cons of Cars on Campus

There are several cons that may have an influence on you if you are debating whether or not it is worth having your car on campus with you. The first would be the availability of parking. If you have to park your car several blocks away from you and walk there each time is it honestly worth it especially if you are allowed to just catch a bus on your street. On bigger campuses, they always seem to have parking everywhere but much of it is always filled up. You tend to have to park further away then you want to and then it seems like you have miles to walk to your car. Also, since you’re a freshman you don’t have the ability to park in the better spots that upperclassmen can receive. You have basically the parking spots that no one really wants to take unless you get lucky or want to walk for awhile.

Secondly, the cost of gas continues to rise who knows what it will be by the end of the year. It seems to fluctuate frequently and can be very costly for a college student. It’s nice to catch the bus and not have to pay for any of it and it doesn’t hit you hard in the wallet. You could always just shuttle or transport people around if they need rides and charge them then you would have some extra money to fill your tank up. But on the other side of that you may have people bugging you nonstop and ask to borrow it whenever they please.

When students have a car readily available to them some of them may go home every weekend just because that’s what they have always been used to. They may never experience the true campus life and activities. They may lose out on important activities, games, and clubs. It would be a bummer to never fully experience campus and lose out on key experiences.

The basic upkeep and routine things that you have to perform on your car to check up on can definitely add up. You have to do oil changes and maintenance to it that you would not have to deal with it if you used public transportation. You would also have to do a search to see where you should take it, who you would trust, and not just get ripped off. Also, when you have a car you need to have good insurance and insurance for college students usually tends to be higher. We are classified as higher risk drivers because most people are age usually get into accidents. This could be a huge monthly expense that you would have to undertake.

Many students go through college without a car on campus. They live in the dorms their freshmen year and then just get an on campus apartment or continue to live in the dorms. It is feasible you just have to weigh your options out and figure out which is best for you. By not having a car it can make you learn to problem solve, be creative in your own ways, and figure out public transportation.

Pros of Cars on Campus

What are the advantages you will have if you bring your car down to college with you? Is it worthwhile? Do most freshmen bring their car with them? In the next two posts I will give you both sides the pros and the cons. There are many good and bad things that pertain to each aspect.

First of all I think the major advantage is that you always will have a way to get around and you are not stuck in one area relying on other people or the bus to get places. You can go in town to shop, buy groceries, or school supplies and it less of a hassle. You have the freedom to go wherever you wish. You have the ability to go home more frequently and it is a lot easier rather than you having your parents always come down and pick you up and then bring you back down. Allow some people have the advantage of car pooling with people from their same town or city but not all of us are that fortunate. You will just have the ability to get away from campus, take a break, and maybe go to the coffee house or somewhere to study.

Secondly, it increases your chances of finding and getting a better higher paying job if you are looking for one. You will be able to have a better selection and choice to find one and it may even be an internship that will pertain to your major. The more experience you have in your area of studying the greater the chance that you will have to get a better job when you graduate. You will be a step up from other people that may be competing with for the same job. Also, we all know when you go to college you become in debt very quickly if you are lucky and find a good job that fits into your schedule you need to make sure you can get there in the most efficient way possible.

Finally having a car opens up more opportunities for you to get involved in your community or city. It allows you to branch out, join different organizations and clubs, and help the community in a positive manner. Some classes even require you to do a set number of hours to go around and lend a hand to those that are less fortunate and needy. It’s always the best feeling when you know that you have helped someone out and what it means to them. Here are just some of the pros of cars if you have them on campus that I have noticed.

Save Save Save!!!

Didn't those "post-it-up-on-the-refrigerator" A+ papers that you did in high school just give you such a good feeling? Being in high school, or even if your in college right now, it will do you well to keep your work--papers, notes, homework-- for college. Since I've been in college, I've found that keeping all my work from high school has helped me more than I ever thought it would.

I find myself calling home all the time to have my mom find an assignment that I did in high school that will help me with one that I have just been assigned in one of my classes here at Purdue. Believe it or not, you'll find yourself doing just the things you did in high school all over again.

Recently in my math class, all we have learned are things that I learned last year when I was a senior taking a course called Discrete Math. Saving everything and keeping all my papers, tests, and quizzes from that math class was the best choice I could have made. I really think saving work is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Before I started classes this semester, I had no idea that Math 137 here at Purdue University was anything at all like Discrete Math and Bishop Dwenger High School. I've had my math binder shipped to Purdue, and I've studied my high school notes/quizzes/tests along with notes I've gotten here. Let's just say I've gotten an A on every quiz and test here, and I think it's all because I've saved my work.

Also, once you get through high school, hearing the two words "research paper" pretty much makes you want to scream. Trust me, I know, I hated writing those things! However, I highly advise you to not only save your papers, but also save the papers your teachers give you that have the correct way of citing materials in a works cited and inside the paper (parenthetical citations). Although Purdue has a notorious website called OWL, which teaches people how to avoid plagiarism and how to cite materials, I prefer using my old papers that were given to me in high school that teach me how to correctly cite material instead of using websites online because I get annoyed switching back and forth on my computer from my paper and the websites. You may not care, but for those of you who do, I suggest keeping those resources. They are really helpful.

Now after bragging about keeping my notes and resources, I guess I just realized it was never my idea to do that in the first place, even though I basically said it was. After thinking about it, it was actually my mom's idea. So, basically, I have her to thank for this. I guess parent's know what they're talking about after all!

How to Deal with Illness in College

We all wake up in the morning sometimes and just feel absolutely terrible. We get sick, we skip school, we have work to make up. You all know the feeling.


For most of us, it was easier to miss days in high school. Most schools had strict policies, for example, that if you miss a total of 14 days, you needed a note from a doctor if you missed any more than that. The staff was smaller and your teachers were willing to work with you if you were extremely ill.


Now, we come to college and find out that absenses are a big deal. At Purdue University, I can only miss a certain number of classes, like three, before my grade is affected. After three or four classes missed, I can begin to lose many points if I do not show up. So, what happens in college when one of us students becomes very sick and attending class just isn't an option for the day?


I'll give you an example: Last Sunday night, I began to feel bruised and sore on my whole entire body. My body just ached all over the place, and I knew something was wrong. To make the story short, I went to bed, woke up with no sensation in my body, could not walk, and ended up in one of West Lafayette's hospitals around 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. My blood was sent to Indianapolis,and I have yet to get the results back. All I know right now is that my potassium level is very low, my anemia has kicked in (too bad I can't get my medicine until this weekend), my stress level is so elevated that my heart rate is extremely high, and I have some viral infection throughout my body. I hope that's all it is, and when I can all the results back from my blood, the tests are all negative.


To say the least, I've missed all but two classes since Monday and it's already Thursday. I've missed two quizzes and 2 exams, which I'll have to make up, along with all the homework. Talk about my stress level skyrocketing.


What I'm getting at is that even though absenses have a bigger role in college than most of us thought, our health is much more important. Teachers know this. Inform them of what's going on, and they will be willing to work with you. With health issues, they know you aren't just skipping class. They're smarter than that--you have a legitimate reason. My teachers aren't expecting me to make up the work, quizzes, and exams all in one day either. They know that it is physically impossible. Whether you want to believe it or not, teachers want what is best for their students. That's why they are teachers--to help us.


Your goal: Get yourself better--however it takes. Drink many fluids, get lots of rest, eat a good diet, and just wait it out.

Save your money--it's yours!

As college students, we are poor. We go for things that are free. We don’t have money to waste or to spend as we please.

You’d think that universities would be the last people to rip us off, but anyone can see that isn’t true based solely on the cost of tuition. But they rip our money out of our hands in another way: laundry.

Now, laundry is something that we all have to do, and it costs us money. At Purdue, it costs $1.25 per load to wash (unless you have Boiler Express, and then it’s $1.00, but those aren’t available in every dorm) and $0.50 per load to dry.
For starters, that $0.25 per load adds up. I tend to do 3 loads per week: one lights, one darks, one sheets and towels. That’s $0.75 per week that I have to pay extra because my dorm doesn’t take Boiler Express. Let’s just assume that I’m doing laundry once a week except for the summer (12 weeks). That’s 40 weeks per year.
That’s an extra $30 per year that I’m paying because I wasn’t fortunate enough to get into a dorm that has Boiler Express for laundry.

But it gets worse.

Not all your clothes need to be dried in the dryer. This is somehow not communicated to people. The only things that should go in the dryer are your sheets and towels. That’s one load of laundry to dry per week for me. If I were to dry all my clothes every week, that’d be $1.50 just in drying, which adds up to $60 per year in drying clothes. Instead, I only pay $0.50 per week, making my yearly total $20.

Instead of using the dryer, hand up wet clothes on plastic hangers in the warmest part of your dorm or get a drying rack. Clothes only take about a day to dry.

So, if you’re fortunate enough to have that $0.25 discount each load and you’re smart about drying your clothes, you can save around $70 a year. That’s $70 you can spend on pizza, video games, movies, and whatever else you want.