My past few weeks at home have been a whirlwind of doctor appointments. Since no one knows when I’ll have health insurance again, I’m cramming in all my possible doctors. It gets rough after awhile keeping track of all the different types of doctors and protocols. Before I knew it, I was sitting stark naked in the dentist chair one day and fully clothed with a paper gown on top of my outfit at the gynecologist the next day. It keeps my life exciting and, more importantly, it keeps my doctors on their toes.

However, home hasn’t been all mole checks and cholesterol tests. It’s also been a lot of cleaning. I’m moving to New York in less than a week and I’m slowly coming to the realization that I will never be home for college breaks ever again. After this it’s all long weekends and feel-sorry-for-myself unemployment weeks home. So I’m attempting to clean out my closet and keep only the things I actually want to bring with me. Read More »

Got a question for the Tuffster? Email her at TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com and get that shiz answered!

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I’ve been with my boyfriend – let’s call him P – for three and a half years. We graduated college together and have been dating since senior year. We moved in together right away – our college was in a town that neither of our families live too near – and we both have decent jobs with salaries. My question is, I really want to get married soon, or at least get engaged, but he doesn’t seem like he has any plan to do that. I don’t want to ask him to marry me so please don’t suggest that, because I want it to be traditional and because HE wants to! What should Ido?

Clare Read More »

Trojan, Durex, Lifestyles…watch out!  A new study indicates that there is another method of birth control that may be almost as effective as condoms in preventing pregnancy.  The best part is, it doesn’t require any pill, patch, or plastic; doesn’t include side effects of weight gain or nausea; and there’s no wasted rip’n’roll time.

It’s withdrawing, or “pulling out” as it is often referred.

The study, by sex researcher Rachel K. Jones, indicates that “if the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 % of the couples will become pregnant over the course of a year.”  With an 18% failure rate, the pull-out method comes pretty close to matching up with that of the condom’s 17% failure rate.

Whaaaa?  Haven’t we been taught forever that pulling out is the worst method of birth control? Haven’t we been giving up on the pleasure of condomless sex because it’s almost guaranteed that pulling out will leave us preggers? And, sidenote, condoms have a 17% failure rate? Why did no one tell me?! Read More »

Your boxes are unpacked, your bed is made, and your parents have left the building. You are officially a college student.

Woohoo! No more living under their rules. You are a free adult livin’ the dorm life.

It takes a few days of getting used to, but you’re finally feeling settled. You’ve even sorta mastered the cafeteria slop. This whole college thing isn’t so hard after all.

That is, until you need to do a little #2 in the public bathroom down the hall. The one every other girl on the hall also frequents to shower, wash up, dry her hair, and do her business. Girls you don’t know. Girls you want to befriend. Feeling the stage fright, you’ve been unable to go for days and, between the cafeteria salad bar (roughage!) and the frat party jungle juice, it’s been rather difficult.

But now it’s time and you have no choice but to suck it up, drop the pants, and take care of business. Read More »

So, Eminem knew about the Bruno prank?

Hot colors for summer.

Pink is not a Kanye fan.

Amy Winehouse big sister/little sister program?

Tips for enjoying family time this summer.

This is awesome.

“Excuse me, do you have a lighter, a cigarette or both?”

That is the question that I am usually greeted with when I  walk out of the  building where I take most of my classes in my college. For some reason, that is the “smokers’ hang out spot” where the smokers gather to share a cigarette  and basically fry their lungs while the rest of the non-smoking population is forced to breathe in their second-hand smoke. And then smell like it so their friends, parents and teachers think they have picked up a new extra curricular activity.

So when I read an article about Rockland Community College, a school that has totally banned smoking both indoors and outdoors starting September 1st, I kinda sorta considered transferring. A school that is completely smoke-free? A school where I can go anywhere on campus and not have to worry about coming home smelling like an ashtray? Heaven!

But is that really possible?

I can see this ban working at community colleges, as students don’t live on campus and can light up as soon as their car leaves the campus lot. But what about a regular university? Could a school really enforce that rule? And would banning smoking on campus really promote a “healthy environment,” (the goal of the ban) or are students just going to get in their cars, drive to the edge of campus and enjoy a cigarette over there?

Even more, is this really fair? I am all for a place where I don’t get smoke blown into my face, but is it really fair to take away a legal individual’s right to smoke when they have the urge?

What do you guys think? Would a ban work at your college or university? Would this ban help the nearly 30% of  American college students who smoke?

After the novelty of college graduation (and all the great gifts that came with it) wore off, I spent a year crying myself to sleep. And I’m not exaggerating. While being done with school after 16 years was pretty liberating, not knowing what was coming next scared the sh*t out of me. And the fact that no one ever warned me how difficult being an adult would be made things a whole lot harder.

I went through a lot that first year – looking for a job, moving to a new city, ending a long relationship, and learning how to care for myself, to name a few – all by myself and now feel that I have the experience and knowledge to advise others on the transition. Because it’s a hard one and every college grad should know that they are not alone. Come back every week for another nugget of information to help you survive in the big, bad world.

My commencement speaker, like most commencement speakers, spent 25 minutes telling my graduating class about the endless possibilities in the real world. He spoke of our bright futures, giving back, and making the world a better place.  The speech was inspiring, but now that I’m on the other side of the cap and gown, I wish he had gone in another direction.

Perhaps he could have taken a more realistic approach and warned us of how hard that first year after college was going to be. And that it was OK to be really, really unhappy.

When you’re a college senior, life after college seems like a glamorous world filled with an awesome new job, an awesome new city, and a bright, successful future. You see all those people who graduated before you living it up and enjoying their new place in the real world.

The reality, though, isn’t quite so bright and cheery. The truth: that first year out of college isn’t always so easy. In fact, it’s pretty sh*tty. Read More »

I don’t know what it is about MTV, but I am addicted. Those crafty little sons of b*tches in Times Square know their target audience. They have me – and everyone else in the 12-30 age bracket – convinced that what we should really want to watch on TV are really attractive, dumb people saying really dumb (and totally unscripted) things. There’s really nothing quite like a mind-numbing “Next” marathon when you feel like death on Sunday afternoon and they know this.

However, I’m able to cut MTV some slack because they aren’t always the network that shows hot people doing dumb things 24/7. Every once in awhile they cook up an awesome little nugget of TV goodness with some real substance. For example, they devote a decent amount of airtime to True Life. I’m pretty sure the only way you’d not know about True Life is if you had been living under a rock (or without basic cable) for the last ten years, but just in case you don’t know, every ep of True Life tells the entirely true story of 2 or 3 young people who are dealing with a particular issue. Sometimes its personal (“I’m Afraid of Intimacy”), other time it’s situational (“I Have A Summer Share ”), but either way it’s always AWESOME.

The only problem with True Life? There are just so.many.amazing.episodes – and equally as many that never air more than once. Actually this story ended up taking me a lot longer to write than originally planned because I spent more time watching the episodes online than writing about them. (Which reminds me – thank you MTV for putting these all online!) However, I was eventually able to peel my eyeballs away from the episodes and back to my open Word document to write up this list of my faves: Read More »

I love ice-cream and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.  Summer is indeed the time for slurping up all those delicious treats, from refreshing frozen yogurt to decadent Cold Stone creations.  Luckily, if it’s hot enough to eat ice cream (although, let’s be honest, I’ll eat ice cream in the dead of winter, too), it’s also probably hot enough to find some gorgeous men in swim trunks strolling around.

But, one must ask, how can I combine these wonderful things?  I used to think it was only a distant dream, but no!  Here, direct from the UK (in fact, that is the only place you can find it), is the Daniel Craig popsicle.  Oh yes, that is a half-naked James Bond you are licking, lady (I wonder if it is martini flavored…).  These days, it’s all about time management and if we can combine hot men and delicious frozen treats, all the better.

Seeing this makes the future look bright and the summer (well, this week, anyway) hotter.  What else could these geniuses at Del Monte do?  The possibilities are endless (although my vote is going for another hot guy popsicle).

Who is the next hot guy you would like to see as a frozen treat?

While the actual carpet isn’t as glamorous as we once thought, the people walkin’ it were mighty fine.