Spring Break con­jures up many dif­fer­ent ideas of how to cel­e­brate the tra­di­tional mid-semester break dur­ing col­lege. First let’s talk safety, then other ideas for what to do with this mid-semester break.

I thought it might be worth­while to dis­cuss that first parental visit after a new col­lege stu­dent has got­ten set­tled. For some it’s dur­ing the actual Fam­ily Week­end, for oth­ers it might have to do with a hol­i­day, and some­times par­ents just plain want to see their a while after that hec­tic move-in day in August.

If you're a high school junior, chances are your inbox and mail­box have been filled with let­ters from the mar­ket­ing depart­ments of col­leges across the coun­try. I also received those one page let­ters. And if you do not feel like wait­ing until the sum­mer before your senior year to fig­ure out whether you should apply […]

Face­book is one of those amaz­ing feats of tech­nol­ogy that does great things—but also opens up the pos­si­bil­ity for sit­u­a­tions like the one in Florida. So what are we to do?

Dat­ing in col­lege is some­thing that a) every col­lege stu­dent has thought about and b) few col­lege students/alumni want to dis­cuss. It’s awk­ward. It’s uncomfortable.

When you are a kid, get­ting sick is not too big of a deal.  You get to miss a day of school, your par­ents take care of you, and you get sym­pa­thy from your friends.
At col­lege, being sick is a totally dif­fer­ent story.
You have to take care of your­self, and miss­ing a class means that you […]

A col­lege cam­pus can also feel a bit sti­fling at times, espe­cially when com­pared with sig­nif­i­cant real world events that put things into per­spec­tive. Many U.S. uni­ver­si­ties are tak­ing action to aid the peo­ple of Haiti in the after­math of the dev­as­tat­ing earthquake.

Last week, Elizabeth's post about books that mat­tered in col­lege was a poignant review of the last­ing impres­sion of books: both in our minds and in the groove cut into our shoul­der from increas­ingly heavy over-the-shoulder book bags.
While noth­ing will ever replace the tac­tile sen­sa­tion of thumb­ing through hun­dreds of  high­lighted pages, e-books are here to […]

On Thurs­day, the New York Times ran an arti­cle describ­ing a grow­ing trend among senior cit­i­zens: sleep overs! After spend­ing the day­time acquaint­ing them­selves with the facil­i­ties, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing prospec­tive senior res­i­dents the oppor­tu­nity to take in evening social events and the oppor­tu­nity to spend the night. For senior cit­i­zens, this is a […]

Some­times when I look back on my four years of col­lege, I see stretches of time and expe­ri­ence punc­tu­ated with what I read. None of these books were for classes in my field of study, pol­i­tics. Of course sev­eral read­ings from courses in my major also stand out in my mem­ory, but these are the periph­eral three; a few vol­umes that formed a sort of cere­bral bor­der around the major­ity of my learning.