High School vs. College: Views of A College Freshman

“Beep… beep… beep…” The alarm clock goes off, and you hit the snooze button. You expect to have your mother’s kisses, or your father’s tickles, to wake you up. When you realize they’re not there, you jerk yourself out of your slumber. This isn’t high school. You remember… you’re now in the real world. You’re now at college. As you turn to look at the clock, you see you’re late for European History, having spent all night attempting to finish that psychology assignment. It’s now a quarter to eight, and you have to be across the campus in 15 minutes.

Forward Thinking: How looking for a job after graduation begins during the campus tour

Three weeks ago my cousin and uncle from Chicago came to visit my family in Los Angeles. Yet, this was no ordinary, visit. They were on a mission to check out five Southern California colleges in five days. That’s doable, I thought to myself. Each night, I would ask my cousin  what he thought about the school he visited that day. During one conversation, he shared that his tour guide opened up the tour by stating that there are “dreamers and doers” and that on this particular campus, students who identified themselves as “doers” thrived. The next night, he shared how the tour guide began his tour by boasting to all prospective students that last year’s senior class entered jobs where the average starting salary was around $70K. While I am unsure if my cousin has any remote idea what he see himself doing five years from now, his observations made [...]

Is Getting a Tattoo in College a Bad Idea?

The ankle butterfly. A Chinese symbol (which may or may not mean what you think it means). Everybody’s favorite barfly bulls-eye: the tramp stamp. You know you’ve thought about it. You’re 18, you’re out of the house and now that a tattoo is a legal option, it seems like a good one. That’s college. The world is laid out before you, waiting to be claimed. Surrounded by optimism, idealism and freedom, it’s easy to feel invincible. It’s a time when we begin making plans for the rest of our lives to define who we are and where we want to go. But the paradox of the college experience is that we are expected to know who we want to be before we really know. Society gives us the impression that at this age we should know, so we often convince ourselves that we do. We make choices that later on, [...]

To sleep, perchance to dream…

The nice folks over at The Huffington Post have been doing an interesting series about…sleep! More specifically, Dr. Michael Breus and other insightful authors have been taking a look at sleep and the college student.

Confessions of a recovering orientation leader

Working on Oxy’s Orientation Team (i.e. O-Team) for three years was an excellent experience: I learned to work well under pressure and with minimal sleep, bonded with other team leaders, and felt lucky to help new students explore their new college. I’ve also learned a few things about the college orientation experience, including….

Getting Religion – part two

A while back I shared my own experience exploring religion in college. This article by the Huffington Post’s religion editor provides excellent insight into how and why college can be such a breeding ground for religious exploration. With issues such as the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero dominating the news and national dialogues these days, now is as good a time as any to discuss religion as it pertains to today’s college students. So what do you think?What has been your experience with religion in college–or lack thereof? What was the spiritual and/or religious culture like on your campus? Share your thoughts below!

Summer in a College Town

(A.K.A. Invasion of the Townies) Okay technically it’s not an “invasion” of Townies, because they do live here year-round. But when you live in a true college town like Davis, you don’t see this much of the regular townsfolk during a majority of the year. I have never taken summer classes, so this year is my first time spending a large quantity of time staying in the summer. Previously I have gone home to work during the summer, but this year’s job market has been especially rough.  Without a job lined up, I returned up to Davis to spend more time with my friends who had stayed up. I hadn’t really thought about if or how the town might be different during the summer, but I made a quick discovery. Cities like Davis take on a whole different feel in the months between June and September.

Fueled by Ramen

Okay, so that’s the swanky indie music label that manages Paramore, but it truly does speak to this generation’s college-going-post-post-punk enthusiast culture. I’ve blogged about the merits of Ramen before, but this cartoon by our in-house BetterGrads artist Nick Schwartz sums up the perils of college cuisine much more succinctly. It’s true. You may find yourself uncontrollably floating in your bathtub due to the mass amounts of sodium leaking out of your pores each time you break a sweat. And I’ll find myself asking how the hell you managed to find a bathtub on campus. In preparation for this fall’s college semester, I strongly suggest you take some preemptive measures to plan for a wider selection of nutrition sources. Fruit snacks, anyone? © image by Nick Schwartz

Summer Fun (not really)

After finishing a full school year at college, it can be tempting to just kick back and relax for the duration of summer vacation. But the free time of summer can be put to much better use. Summer School Of course this is no one’s favorite option, but it can really help you if you have a lot of requirements for graduation. In some cases, taking classes in summer is the only way some students can finish their degree in four years. With summer school, you generally have the option of staying at your university to take classes, or taking classes at a community college. The advantage to taking classes at community college is that you can save a great deal of money, especially considering how expensive four years of college is. The possible drawback is that community colleges don’t always offer the right classes that you need.  And if [...]

An attempt to decode/decipher/deconstruct dating

A quick look at Cornell student (and columnist) Jeff A. Katz’s candid explanation of dating signals and communication between men and women in college.