Purdue Football Keeps Rolling... Are They Indeed For Real?

At the beginning of the year, I was pretty skeptical about the Purdue football team. They had beaten 2 weak opponents, and I thought people were giving them way too much credit way too early. But lately I've been impressed with their play.

The are now 5-0 this season, their recent win coming against Notre Dame. The struggling Fighting Irish have been (in my opinion) the toughest test for the Boilermakers yet this season. Notre Dame put themselves in a position to tie it in the fourth quarter, but some key plays by the Boilermaker offense kept Purdue on top at the sound of the final whistle.

The game, which started off as a blowout gradually became interesting as the second half wore on. At the half, Purdue was up 23-0 and everyone assumed this just to be the fifth straight Notre Dame breakdown. The story of the second half ended up being Fighting Irish backup quarterback Evan Sharpley. With Clausen down with a hip injury, Sharpley threw 16 of 26 for 208 yards for 2 touchdowns.

The Purdue offense was itself with Curtis Painter throwing for 2 touchdowns and Corey Sheets running for 141 yards and a touchdown of his own. I've been really impressed with this Purdue offense in the last 2 games. Their last 2 opponents (Minnesota and Notre Dame) have at least been, in my opinion legit opponents, and the Purdue offense has still looked pretty good. Painter handles himself pretty well in the pocket.

Another interesting thing I took out of this game has to do with Notre Dame. Will Sharpley be the starting quarterback come next week? In my opinion he definitely should be given the job for now. Jimmy Klausen (the freshmen recruit) has struggled early, and Sharpley was very impressive in the second half today. Hopefully head coach Charlie Weis gives him the shot he deserves.

Next week will be the real test for the Boilermakers when Ohio State comes to town. If Purdue can prove themselves against this football powerhouse, I'll be convinced about their legitimacy for sure.

RIAA Cracks Down at Purdue

Purdue recently became one of the university's to agree to work with the RIAA in cracking down on students illegal downloading of copyrighted audio and video files from illegal programs such as Limewire.

The RIAA recently sent 47 letters to students informing them that they might owe large sums of money for their downloading habits. To check out the article, click here. As you might read, one girl owes $3000!.

If you would like to check out a copy of the letters students have been receiving, click here:
http://www.purdueexponent.org/extra/RIAAletter.pdf

Should this be happening?? Should Purdue be working with the RIAA against it's own students? As of now, Purdue says it hasn't provided the RIAA with student information unless it has received a court order to do so.

I'm pretty torn on this subject. While I agree it's morally wrong to own songs without the artist receiving some money for his work, I'm not going to sit here and act like I don't do it myself. I think there are much worse problems on college campuses than illegal file sharing though, and I feel that there is too much focus on this and too little on other things. I guess now that I've thought about it, I'm leaning towards saying it's okay to download and share. I just don't think it's that big of a deal. Musicians make millions anyway and who does it hurt if you simply download a song? No major ramifications I can think of.

The RIAA is cracking down everywhere, and college students who excessively download should be careful or they might get in trouble. A little thing I read the other day I found interesting. Now I'm not sure if this is true, but the RIAA is cracking on those who illegally share fires. I read that this means you can download the files illegally, but you must not share these files once you have them. So apparently it's safe to download, just unsafe to share. Again, take this with caution because I do not know the reliability of my source.

Dress Code???

Purdue recently turned away the idea of donning a dress code for students. Other colleges however, are implementing this idea. One such place is Illinois State University. At ISU, students are required to wear "business casual" clothing or else risk getting a zero on any assignments turned in that day. Check out the article: http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=7359

This is ridiculous in my opinion. It's a really good thing administrators were reasonable and did not allow this to pass through here at Purdue. There's no way a dress code at a university with 40,000+ students is a good idea.

College is supposed to be about preparing yourself for life after it. In other world, it's about getting ready for the real world. Last time I checked, there were no dress codes in the real world. You are supposed to learn how to interact with people no matter how they are dressed. And you are supposed to be able to function at your highest level no matter how you yourself are dressed.

The only rule as far as clothing goes should just be that the student has all the places covered that need to be. That's all that needs to be said on that. There are going to be some problems with a dress code at the places that have donned it. What exactly is "business casual?" Polo? Shirt and tie? Khakis? Dress pants? There would be so many ways to interpret whatever dress code would be placed on students at college. Instituting something like this would just give college students another thing to protest about. I can flat out guarantee that this is a bad idea. Personally, I don't see a single positive out of this idea.

Again, this is just my opinion. I think doing this is not only ridiculous but will take away one way in which college can be considered as "preparation for the real world."

To all the parents of college freshmen

I know that we’re your babies. You fed us, changed our diapers, clean up our puke, stayed at our bedside, and fought off the monsters under the bed. We appreciate this. There are some things, however, that need to be addressed.

Don’t panic when we don’t call. We will call if we need something. When we don’t call, it means that we’re busy, we’re fine, and that we’re having a grand time doing our own laundry.

If we don’t call every night, every other night, or even every week, we are not dead. This does not give the right to call our RA, our advisors, or the cops to see if we are still alive. All this does is make us never want to talk to you again for humiliating us in front of our roommates and peers. (You think I’m joking. My roommate is read to kill her parents for calling the cops.)

If you’re that worried that we’re dead, send us a box of useful things: candy, soda, coffee, chocolate, clean clothes, rolls of quarters, laundry stuff.

I know that you remember the good old days of back when you were in college. At least, you think you do. College is both different and the same. There are many new obstacles, new tasks, and new hardships that didn’t exist 20+ years ago. For example, one of the many harmless pranks that you got away with will now get us expelled and sent to jail. Don’t give us ideas.

We value your advice, but rarely hear it. No offense, but we’ve been ignoring it for the past 18 or so years. When we ask for your advice, we really want it. And, yes, we know that you told us how to do this every day over the past summer, but we really need it now.

Factor in time zone changes when you call. There’s nothing more annoying to the rest of us than someone’s cell phone going off in the middle of class ever 2 minutes, followed by the ‘missed call’ sound, and finally followed by the ‘new voice mail’ sound. While your child’s ringtone is catchy and fun to dance to, the other sounds are annoying and grating.

Really, when we don’t call, it’s not that we don’t love you. It’s that we’re fine, busy, and having fun. Honestly. I promise. We’ll call in a week or two when we need something, and we’ll remind you how much we love you then.

I'm up, I'm up!: A guide to energy drinks

While in college, it is likely that you will occasionally have to stay up for unnatural amounts of time for assignments, term papers, test studying, or whatnot. If you have ever done this, you will know that it proves quite difficult to think after being awake for 20 odd hours. If only there was some way to stay awake and alert longer... Well, thanks to the miracle of the energy drink, there is! But there are so many kinds to choose from. How can you choose the right one? Don't worry, I'm here to help. I have sampled quite a variety of these kinds of drinks and have found some to be much more effective than others.

When considering energy drinks, you must remember that no energy drink will taste great. There are too many concentrated ingredients in them to be able to easily mask them. There are also two ways energy drinks give you energy: sugar/caffeine rush and vitamin B. Rush drinks just have lots of sugar and caffeine, proving effective in the short term of an hour, maybe two. As soon as these wear off you will find yourself even tireder than before. B drinks aim at giving you excess vitamin B. Vitamin B increases cell metabolism, causing your body to burn food and fat faster and thus produce more energy. These drinks are the ones that prove the most effective in keeping you awake a long time. When getting an energy drink, go for ones that have a lot of vitamin B.

I tend to use Rockstar the most, simply because it works and is widely available. Red Bull seems to work a little better, but you only get a single size for the same price as a double size Rockstar. Monster is basically the same as Rockstar, but I never feel as awake after it for whatever reason. Amp is a rush drink, not a B drink, and is not a good choice for all nighters. Nos is effective and doesn't taste too bad, but it is slightly harder to find. 5 Hour Energy is insanely good at keeping you awake. It has 8300% of your daily reccomended value of vitamin B in it! There is a big crash afterwards though, so be warned. However, I would use it if I had it. Other energy drinks may or may not work, but I haven't had much experience with them. My advice on picking an energy drink is to look at the supplement facts on the can. If it has 100% or more of various vitamin Bs, riboflavin, or niacin (which are both kinds of vitamin B), it will probably work well.

Sleep Deprivation

A few days ago my roommate and I decided to pull an all nighter. Well, he decided to do that and I decided to help him do that. He, being a freshman engineer AND a procrastinator, had amassed a huge amount of work to do for the next day. I'm talking 30+ pages of calculations and programming. He started working at maybe 4 pm but decided to take a break for dinner and stuff. 8 hours later he remembered his huge assignment. I told him that if he was going to work all night, he might need something to help him out, and he agreed. So we went out at about 12:30 am to aquire some energy drinks. We came home with a 4 pack of Amp and a 4 pack of Monster. I am not a huge fan of either, but my roommate likes them, so whatever. I had one of each. Twenty four hours later, I finally went to sleep.

Staying awake a long time often seems like a good idea because it gives you so much more time to get things done. However, staying awake more than 16 hours or so starts to take a toll on you, both physically and mentally. After about 18 hours of staying awake, I began to experience the first of these problems: short term memory loss. I had just taken a test that day, maybe 6 hours ago at that point, but I couldn't remember taking it. Hell, I couldn't even remember going to it. An hour later I began experiencing loss of inhibition. I began just doing whatever random thing I thought of. My roommate took a ideo of me to prove it. I staggered around acting like a monkey for a while. After that, I felt extremely cold and lost the will to move. I sat in a ball on the couch underneath a pair of blankets for maybe two hours. During that time I never once looked around. I stared straight ahead, zoning out. My speech became slower and unintelligable. I also began to find things hilarious that I normally wouldn't even smile at. I could tell my roommate was experiencing the same things.

If you are planning on staying up all night for something, remember that you will not be quite functional without sleep. The next day you will be a zombie. Only do it when you know you will not have to do anything difficult the next day. DO NOT STAY UP ALL NIGHT BEFORE A TEST! The extra study time is not worth the consequences. It is much better to be able to think through problems on a test than to have memorized all the answers but find yourself unable to remember them.

What a Drastic Change!

Back in high school, everything was so easy compared to college, right? Your mom did your laundry for you (ok well... mine did), you could get your homework done during your classes and never have any homework to do at HOME (which kind of defeats the purpose of it, huh?), you didn't have to study as hard because the teachers spoon-fed you the material like crazy, and you were able to drive yourself to and from school whenever you were old enough to get your licenses, and now you might be going to campus that doesn't allow freshman to have cars, and guess what, you fall into that category!

Those are just SOME of the few things I've noticed.

Before you go to college, most people tell you that the professors don't care if you show up to class or not. That's a lie. All of my teachers take attendance and keep track. It doesn't matter if they tell you about it or not because rules for attendance are listed in the syllabus and if you fail a class because you've missed so much, you can't complain that the teachers didn't actually tell you about it. They give you a syllabus for a reason and that reason is to read it for that kind of information. In high school, the school worked around how many days you were absent and you could pretty much not go, and they would still allow you to make up the work. In college, it's just a lot more complicated. Just be aware of the rules and consequences for absenses and consequences that come with them.

I don't know about you, but I studied an hour, AT THE MOST, when I had a test in high school. I've come here, and I've studied, AT THE LEAST, for three hours for an upcoming exam. This is getting to be a real problem. High school teachers did NOT prepare me for this at all. Assignments and tests were so easy in high school compared to the ones I'm taking now in college. You'd think the teachers would make things a bit more challenging, seeing as how they went through college themselves. Isn't high school supposed to prepare us for this huge step in life? I think so...?

I'm a freshman at Purdue. I can't go anywhere unless I take a bus, and that takes at least a couple hours to arrive where I need to be if I have to travel off-campus. At home, I could just hop in my car and go to the mall, the movies, a friend's house, etc., and now, I'm struggling with not having one. All I know is that I'm taking advantage of my car when I go home next weekend for fall break. Heck yes.

Little necessities during high school were so much easier to take care of than they are now too. Laundry, showering, shopping, eating, just to name a few. I'm finding myself become frustrated here with all of these little every-day things, and at home, I wasn't.

This is such a change, but you know what? College rocks my world!!! It's SO much more fun than high school!!!!!!

Everyone’s favorite subject (part 2)

Last time I gave some advice on dumping someone, but that’s only half of the story. Being dumped is crap, and it’s one of the worst things to happen to a person.

While it is traumatic, there are ways to deal with the pain without the use of substances (other than chocolate).

Go for a walk, job, or bike ride every day. Don’t go in the day, but when the sun is bright and shining. Your body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D, and it’s thought that sunlight helps prevent depression. Vitamin D may also be a great preventative of depression.

Play video games. There’s something satisfying about beating something up. And no, videogames do not cause violence.

Eat chocolate. It makes everything better. (picture from http://www.phillipschocolate.com/gourmet-chocolate.asp)

Beat up a pillow, a stuffed animal, or some other inanimate object. If you take the pillow route, it will be soft and fluffy when you go to bed.

Take some of KJ’s advice on stress. Take a break from things. Breathe.

Get angry. Start a war with the opposite gender. It may sound difficult, but it’s actually easy and rather fun. I started a lynch mob (jokingly), where we’d just talk about taking out our anger. Date multiple people at the same time, and let them know. Schedule all of them to take you out on a date on the same night, but not at the same time. This means that you have legitimate excuses to get out of a date. Hey, you never said you were exclusive with these people. Get them to make you feel like a princess and battle over you.

Talk to people, and get help if you need it. It is much better to be single and miserable than in a relationship and a failure. (The quote from Grey’s went something like that.) Keep your friends and family close. They are wonderful in these situations. My mom sent me 7 boxes of brownie mix (which is completely awesome!)

Remember, people don’t make you who you are. You don’t need some guy or some girl to make you good, smart, or anything else. If they aren’t your best friend and if they don’t make you feel like a better person, then you’re better off without them.

**Simple Activities that Change**

If you are just beginning freshmen year, you will encounter simple daily activities that are vastly different than back home. It exposes students to a variety of different elements such as living in a small dorm room, community bathrooms and showers, and doing your own laundry. When you come down here you have to adapt to your new surroundings. These activities will obviously still have the same outcome just different ways of getting them accomplished.

My first example that changes greatly would be living in a small dorm room. At first, I did not think everything I brought would fit in these tiny rooms. You have to just bring down the necessities that you truly need and leave the rest back at home. You have to be organized and make sure you put everything back where you got it. Make sure you pick up all your trash and messes because your room will just fill up with clutter if not. Then you will never be able to locate anything in times of need and will be out of luck.

Another huge adjustment for me was the community bathrooms and showers. I never would have thought that I would be sharing the same bathroom with 54 other girls that are on my floor. One minute I have my own bathroom and the next anyone can use it. My advice to you would be to wear flip flops or shoes. You never know what is creeping around there that you might come in contact with, especially in the shower. I happened to be lucky and be on one of the floors where the bathrooms are usually neat and tidy. If everyone cleans up after themselves if they make a mess, it makes a worlds difference. You have to be considerate of the others that are around you and make sure you treat it as you would want them to treat it.

A third issue would be the simple task of doing your own laundry. In my first and second week of school, I have never seen so many people confused on how to start their own laundry. You just have to make sure you separate your clothes into darks and whites, put detergent into the machine, put it on the right settings, and hit start. I didn’t think it took a brain surgeon to figure it out but they were so many people down in the laundry room making it seem like some complex ordeal. A helpful tip is to make sure you save up your quarters! Do your laundry during the weekdays because on the weekends it is packed. I learned from personal experience when I did it on Sunday night I had my clothes washed and then no dryers were available so I had to wait 10 minutes. You do not want to wait down in that hot, steamy room for a dryer. I think it is good way to build some responsibilities up and not just depend on your mother to do your own laundry.

Keeping Your Priorities Straight!!

Who ever wanted to sit around all day studying and doing homework rather than going to a movie or hanging out with friends? We never want to do anything that involves hard work, tedious time, and our complete focus. We all would much rather be out having a blast and doing the things we love. We need to make sure we get things done in an orderly fashion that deals with getting the most important tasks out of the way first and leaving lots of time to relax and refresh.


I decided to write my blog about this because I think especially new freshmen try and socialize and make new friendships instead of what they should really be doing. There is always a place and time to get that accomplished but in college you need to get your priorities straight. You need to buckle down and not get distracted by the little things that arise and get in your path. When you stick to what needs to be completed, you will feel better about yourself in the long run. You will feel a sense of accomplishment and take pride in your work. If you come home late and try to write a paper that’s due by midnight and squeeze it in, the paper will not be up to your standards. Through your grades, you will be able to tell the difference and it will definitely catch up to you. If I was you, paying lots of money to get a good education I would want to take advantage of the opportunities that I have and stay focused on what will be very rewarding in the end. You do not want college to just be a waste of time, partying all the time, you want to get something out of it and have it with you the rest of your life.


You need to make sure that you do not get sidetracked and fall off the path that you are taking. If you keep all your priorities straight, that will be a huge contribution to your success in college. Getting things done and finished on time, with precise thought, and determination will be a huge attribute to your career. When you get everything prioritized and set a schedule up for yourself it makes life so much easier. It will be less stressful getting tasks completed on time and you will have an adequate amount of time to get it finished. It creates a sense of balance and structure too. As hard as it is to keep on track, not get distracted by wanting to out, keeping your priorities straight will help you be successful not only your college days but the rest of your life.

Get up off your butt

While at college you should do more than just go to class, do homework, and drink. Try to enjoy yourself some. Find a club to join. There are a ton of options to choose from. You go on SSINFO to see what clubs there are. On SSINFO click on Student Life, Student Organizations. On there you will find hundreds of clubs that do lots of different things. I personally have joined two different groups during my time at Purdue. I joined a fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, and an organization of students in my major, Association of Information Technology Professionals.

There are many good reasons to join clubs. The first is that it allows you to have fun. In a fraternity they have events through out the semester such a dinner somewhere, formals, camping trips, ect. Joining a fraternity or sorority also just gives you another group of friends to do stuff with. Almost every major at Purdue has a club that goes along with it. In my major, the club does not do that much. We put on a job fair in the fall where we get all of our money for the rest of the school year. There are also a few student/faculty mixers where you get to eat food, drink(if you are 21), and talk to your professors outside of the classroom. The last thing we do is send 20-40 people to a national conference to compete in competitions related to my major. There is also a club that just does outdoors activities called Purdue Outing Club. They really let you get away from college. They go backpacking, climbing, kayaking, biking, ect. That is a brief description of a few clubs.

Recruiters also really look to see that you have done activates while at college. They want to see you have joined organizations, but they also want to see that you actually did something with the organization. Recruiters will ask you what you did with the organization. They particularly like to see that you had a position in the organization. I actually have a recruiter ask me “Did you just go on the trip?” as in did I just let someone else do all the work in the organization. To that recruiter I was about to tell them no. I actually am both the treasure and help plan events.

Biking around

I have a road bike and I would love to go out for a ride here at Purdue, but there are not any good options. I am from the North shore of Chicago. I could go ride my bike there for hundreds of miles on bike trails. Around here there are not many paths. The paths that do exist are not very long and are not all connected. I can bike most of the trails in about an hour.

Most people around here just go ride there bikes out on the streets. It would not be quite as bad when you get away from Purdue and get on the more country roads, but it would still be really dangerous. Some of these roads are where people whip past you at 60. Remember you are sharing the road with them, so if they don’t notice you, they will hit you. The bike clubs in this area avoid Purdue campus like the plague because there are way to many cars around the campus that makes it dangerous and the problem is I live right across from campus.

The bike lanes on some streets here are just a joke. They are about a foot and half wide and consist of half asphalt lane and half concrete curb. The problem with that is not only is it really narrow, but the asphalt and concrete are not level, so you risk crashing it you tire touches the uneven edge.

Lafayette and West Lafayette need more bike trails. I know this area is small in comparison to what I see in Chicago, but I wish there were safer means of going for a bike ride than having to risk ones life while sharing the road with cars.

!~!~!~! LauNdRy LesSoNs !~!~!~!

One of the biggest things that college kids dread is doing their laundry. Most students will wait until the very last minute to do it. Chances are that students will wear every item of clothing they have taken with them to college as many times as they can until their clothes get so disgusting that he or she cannot wait them anymore. Either that or his or her roommate won't even sleep in the same room with him or her because his or her clothes are so dirty and the room starts to smell bad.

To spare yourself the embarrassment, just do your laundry when you realize its necessary. It really isn't that bad. Heck, I NEVER did laundry until I came to college. I was never forced to do my laundry at home, and to be honest, I don't think that was a very good thing. However, even though I never did my laundry until I got to Purdue, I've done my laundry four times in the past month and I've never screwed anything up--except that one shirt that I shrunk.

Laundry is not at all difficult to do, as long as you follow some steps and pay attention to certain things.

1) Sort your clothes into darks and lights before you go to the laundry room. It will save a significant amount of time and besides, if you're lolly-gaggin around and taking your time, people might get frustrated and mad because they want to do their laundry too and your preventing them from it. You may not think so, but this does happen... trust me. I know.

2) LOOK AT THE SETTINGS ON THE WASHERS AND DRYERS! If you don't set them to your own preferences, something terrible will happen. I repeat, SOMETHING TERRIBLE WILL HAPPEN!!!

3) Pay attention and don't forget to use stain remover on your clothes. Most importantly, don't forget to put detergent in the washer... you'll feel stupid, it would have been a waste of time and money, and you'll have to start all over again.

4) Watch how much time is left when you wash and dry your clothes. I know from experience that if your clothes are in a machine and the time has run out, people will remove your clothes in order to put theirs in. Your clothes will turn up missing or they will be lying all over the floor.

5) Chances are at some point you might shrink something. Your life won't end. I promise.

6) Leave the room with ALL of your things at the same time. This includes clothes, the laundry basket, bookbags, any homework, detergent, stain remover, dryer sheets, laptops...everything! You forget something like that, and it will be gone when you return.

Have fun. Do your laundry, not just for yourself, but for the rest of us. =)

Everyone’s favorite subject

Hello, again. Today, I’m writing about everyone’s favorite subject: relationships. There’s all that gooey PDA going on out there. : )

But that’s not the subtopic that I’ll be addressing today. Today, I’ll be talking about everyone’s least favorite subject: break ups.

There are a few simple rules to ending a relationship:

-when you break up over the phone, it means you’re a pansie or unable to talk to the person (as in, they’re on the other side of the planet, etc.)

-when you break up with a person, you don’t get to make them feel better. You just forfieted that right. If someone stabs your hand, are you going to let them gause it up for you? NO! You are going to run like hell from said person and you’re not going to want to see that person for a long time, and even then, you don’t want to see them if they have any cutlery.

-when you break up, give the other person at least a month to stop hating you before you try and contact them. Every time you text, e-mail, etc. the person, you’re pouring vingegar onto an open wound. If you don’t think it’s hurts, I’d be glad to demonstrate on you to prove my point. If they ever want to talk to you, they will contact you.

-at least have a good reason for dumping the person. “I found someone hotter than you” does not count.

-talk to the person before ending it. Tell them what bugs you. Hold a conversation. I know it’s hard to speak words. Get over it.

And most importantly, don’t be a jerk about it, especially if your new ex is female. There’s this saying: Girls don’t get even. They don’t get revenge. You will never see the truck that hit you.

Girls get all their friends to hate you, form lych mobs, plot your demise, and ultimately have a 12 or less step plan to ruin your life and chances of ever getting another girl ever again. You are placing your future in the hands of a distraught female. If you’re a jerk, you’re more likely to suffer the fate of that plan.