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!!!!!!