A decision you can sleep on

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 great way to gauge social life and other nuances associated with retirement homes that one could not glean from a brochure. Retirement communities are not the only institutions to offer this opportunity. Colleges do too! I dedicate this post to one of the great (and relatively uncelebrated) pre-college traditions: prospective student overnight visits! Why you should do it: College overnight visits offer prospective students (or more cutely known as, prospies) an unfiltered, in-your-face opportunity to experience collegiate social life in a way that guidebooks or facebook photos could never showcase. For example, such visits give [...]

Thanksgiving Thoughts

As this is my first post-college Thanksgiving, I thought I’d take a quick gander at what I’m most thankful for regarding the past four years. Today, I’m thankful… …for rigorous coursework (most of the time). It wasn’t until I got to graduate school that I realized how hard my professors pushed me—they set high standards for the depth of our critical thinking and the quality of our writing. This may have resulted in some frustrating grades and more than a few lonely late nights in the library, but it made me a better student in the long run. It’s tempting to scope out the “easy” classes or professors, and I definitely did my share of that as well, but I don’t regret taking introductory economics with hardest professor in the department. I may wish I could change that C on my transcript, but I don’t regret the class because I [...]

Maintaining friendships from home while away at college

Maintaining friendships from home when everyone is at different colleges doesn’t have to be hard or stressful.