I can’t tell if this is something I really want to know, but I kind of think I do.

But not about myself, of course; my mom tells me I’m pretty/I may cry if my cell phone tells me I’m ugly.  But this app could come in handy in so many other instances. For example, my sister always boasts that she is the beauty of the family. Oh yeah, Kimberly? Fibonacci says differently. In your ugly face, lil’ sis!

Or maybe you’ve donned your not-so-trusty beer goggles for the night and you’re just about ready to take home that stunning piece of man-meat you’ve been eyeing up all night. The “Fit or Fugly” app may just save you from making the worst mistake of your college career. Without it, you might have been waking up next to Alf tomorrow morning. The iPhone saves the day again.

So instead of putting your picture up on “Hot or Not” and letting strangers judge your overall attractiveness, let technology and math give you the empirical evidence you need to know that you (or your unsuspecting victim) are beautiful…. or not.

Want to know what song is playing on the radio? There’s an app for that.
Want to mix some fruity cocktails by the pool? There’s an app for that.
Wanna get your rocks off with the same electronic you use for making phone calls? There’s an app for that.

The iPhone has an application for everything, and getting fat is no exception. Because Americans weren’t doing a good enough job of porking up on their own, tons of companies are developing programs making it even easier to access the fat. Ironic, considering all the obese people complaining that their pudgy fingers were too big for the keyboard.

You looking to pack on some poundage? Looks like you need an iFat iPhone.

BURGER KING NOW
Drunk Hungry for a juicy burger? Use Burger King Now to find out how far away you are from one of those Whoppers. Because “fast food” isn’t fast enough for your fat ass, you can create your fatty fried meal right from your phone! (Extra fat, hold the veg!)  Pay for it from the palm of your hand, skip the line and get your grub on.

Dunkin Run
Doing a coffee run for you and your friends before class? Too tired to actually speak your order to the hair-netted lady behind the counter? With this handy app, you can invite your friends, making you “the runner.” You can select your order (one giant coffee and a few Boston Cremes) and your friends will be contacted to do the same (and make you feel guilty because they only ordered a non-fat latte). Then you “run” to get the goods without waiting behind the 20 caffeine-hungry bitches already in line.

PIZZA NOW
This app was definitely created with my 3am drunk ass in mind. I am constantly stumbling home screaming, “PIZZA. NOWWW.” Only I have to wait until I get home to put in my order and then wait another 30 minutes for that greasy deliciousness to arrive. That is not now. This app allows you to find the nearest pizza places (in case you are partying in someone else’s part of town) so you can call and order delivery, or map the directions to walk there and eat that shiz on the way home. Mmmm.

Taco Bell Why Pay More Shaker!
So you’re starving but you only have some loose change on you? Taco Bell is hear to help (and clog your arteries). This app calculates the various $0.79, $.89, and $.99 items on the Taco Bell menu that you can afford. Just type in the amount that you have, and watch the value menu items appear before your eyes so you know your yummy options. (That is, if you consider $.79 meat yummy.)

FastFood Premium
Not sure what you’re craving? Find the closest food places to you and choose from Italian, Chinese, American, Thai food, etc. Call the place for directions and get your fat on.

I will never forget moving into my dorm during my first year orientation week being completely scared out of my mind. However, at Hollins, meeting people came easy. In fact, we were put into groups of six or seven students with a student advisor, who was a grade or two older than us, to spend the week with. We played ice-breaker games, talked about high school, and spent the days getting to know each other in the August heat. My student advisor, known as a Student Success Leader (SSL), was a quiet sophomore, English major (just like me). She helped my fellow group members put together our schedules, get to our seminars on time, and learn all about Hollins and its academics.

Although orientation went quickly, I never forgot how amazing my SSL was. She went out of her way to stay in contact with all of us first years, even leaving us goodie bags of finger puppets and Hello Kitty stickers. She always made herself available, and I couldn’t have thanked her more.

At the end of my first year, applications for the new program called Orientation Leaders were released. The application was simple, asking for information on my campus activities, my schedule, and ideas about community building. I then signed up for an interview with two or three other girls. During the interview, the Dean of Students asked questions to the other girls, snubbing me from the conversation.

Dean of Students, Patty O’Toole, and I have gone way back since the very beginning of my academic career at Hollins. She came to Hollins my first year, and I remember her telling my mom how excited she was to be at Hollins and to help all the students during a Parents event at Orientation. When she started to ignore me from the conversation, I knew immediately that I would be rejected from being an O-Team participant because of our run-ins in the past. And my gut instinct ended up being correct!

While other girls found out they made the O-Team program, I received nothing in my e-mail or through the mail. I was told that I would receive a message regardless if I made it or not, but I didn’t get anything. Everyone who applied for O-Team made it (or at least that I knew of, and keep in mind – Hollins is so small, word travels fast), except my friends and me. I didn’t understand why I would be passed upon. Here I was – an eager student ready to I repay the favor of my student advisor the year before with no Honor Court violations, and an active participant in my community – being turned down.

Obviously, since the Dean was responsible for handling (and fumbling through) many issues I had at the school, it was apparent that she kept me off so I wouldn’t share my story with the first years. Better to keep me away from them so as not to ruin the Hollins image. In fact, whenever Hollins and its image of being this sanctuary of sisterly love comes into perspective for what it really is, I have found that the university will do nearly anything to try and keep their image clean, even if they have to hide things and lie through their teeth to do so.

When my mom and I met with the President, we brought this up at as well. After reviewing my credentials with President Gray, she seemed to think it was a little strange that I wasn’t put on O-Team. Home for the summer, about a month after meeting with the President, I received a phone call from the Dean asking me if I was willing to put our differences aside to work as a team during orientation. If I was asked questions about being an O-Team leader to begin with, maybe the Dean would have known why (besides looking at my application) being a part of freshman orientation was important for me.

Although this story ended up having a somewhat happy ending – I got to participate as an O-Team leader and thoroughly enjoyed the orientation process – it was a hassle to go through. All of these unnecessary steps could have been prevented from the get-go. No one should have to go to the President for something as simple as being rightfully placed on a leadership team.

I may strongly dislike Hollins, but it doesn’t mean I have nothing positive to share or give. In fact, after all the things I experienced first year, I came back and became one of the most involved students on campus. I sat on the Student Life council, I was the Guest Speakers Bureau chair for the Activity Board and brought four amazing speakers to campus, and I was an active member in the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. With those activities as part of my schedule, there was no reason to ignore me for a role as an O-Team leader. The Dean made a subjective decision, which was unprofessional and wrong when looking at the facts of what kind of student I am.

Just because I can’t stand the university, doesn’t mean I am unable of participating as a contributing community member. No one, not even the administration, is going to hold me back from being a part of the community. I refuse to let them because Hollins is my community too, even if the administration and the bulk of students like to make it feel as if it’s not.

Last night, my friend and I were GChatting while doing our homework, and she told me about a new feature that Google is adding to Gmail.  Somehow, those folks out in Silicon Valley figured out a way to curb inebriated emailing. The new feature, called Mail Goggles, is an application that can be enabled in your Gmail settings which asks you to perform a few math equations before sending out a message. The equations are simple multiplication, addition, and subtraction problems (never fear, no calculus here) that are just meant to verify if you’re of sound judgment.

When you activate the application, you can set the time of day it will be enabled; for instance, if you know you’re likely to send messages you may later regret after nights out with the girls, you can program Mail Goggles to activate between 1 and 5 am the Friday morning after Thirsty Thursdays.

Is that genius or what?

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. They didn’t cut their $500 million budget to, say, $250 million. They exed the loans altogether.

MEFA secures loans for 40,000 students who live in Massachusetts, or who attend school there. Unfortunately, this year, the financing authority could not secure the money. Executive director Tom Graff blames “disruptions in capital markets.” So, just like that, 40,000 students are sh*t out of luck.

MEFA is the first to make headlines, but any financing authority could also be treading on thin ice. Which means that students across the country could be forced to drop out of college, or sell their souls to finance a degree that can cost upwards of FORTY GRAND per year at top-notch schools like Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, NYU, and Notre Dame.

When I was in college, I played my cards right, and managed to get through my degree with almost no debt, and decided to pursue a Master’s, rather than join the work force right away. With our declining economy, I am currently paying dearly for that decision. Sure, I have a MA, but with hundreds of thousands of workers being laid off across the country, I don’t have the experience to compete. I’ve been applying for job after job, to no avail. Even the number of job openings in dwindling, because companies are being forced to cut corners left and right.

So, MEFA has set up a hotline for students to call, but I’m not sure how much good that can do. It’s a scary time to be a college student in America. Bernie Pekala, director of student financial strategies at Boston College, spoke out about the current MEFA crisis: “[Students and families] have less obvious choices right now. They’re going to have to look at circumstances and try to come up with alternative financing options if they have utilized this as their main option or only option in the past.”

Many students are going to have to put their education on hold. Many others will complete their plans of study, and come out with a deep debt and fewer job opportunities available. I’d like to know if anyone out there is being effected by crises such as lack of financial aid, student loans, or the job market. Of course, there will be a lot of changes for the country soon (e.g. the upcoming election). Hopefully, things will take a turn for the better…asap.

Last week, I warned you that the grad school application process is quite a time consuming effort. Well guess what folks? You’re going to need to put ample time into choosing your prospective grad schools too! Sure, this might seem a bit obvious, but this columnist doesn’t always think things through.

For me, grad school was a roll of the dice, and six possible schools came up for me: Georgetown, Rutgers, Ohio State, North Carolina State, San Francisco State, and the school I eventually chose, hereafter refered to as X University.I chose these schools on a whim. Georgetown was my “reach,” and the closest I could get to Ivy League while maintaining a glimmer of hope for acceptance. Rutgers was relatively close to my hometown (by close I mean a 5 hour drive); Ohio State is a party school notorious for it’s tailgating parties (I swear, that’s why I applied- don’t judge); North Carolina State was an hour from my only other friend attending grad school; and San Francisco just seemed like a cool city to live in, as did the location of X University.

Rule number one in choosing grad school? Don’t be superficial when planning your future!

Take your time to research graduate programs across the country. If you want to focus on a particular location, check out as many schools in that region as you can. Take notes. Google the faculty. Check out some of the courses being offered, and find out what the plan of study entails. Many grad schools have student ambassadors that you can email to get a current students’ point of view on the program. Seriously, folks, exhaust the freaking websites. Scour them like you scour Perez Hilton.

In college, you have a lot of room to change your mind. Changed your major? No biggie. Transfer student? Piece of cake. On the five- or six-year plan? Join the club. Masters programs, on the other hand, are only two years long. Stretching out the plan of study can raise flags when you are applying for jobs or PhD programs, and not only is transferring schools relatively rare, you’re likely to lose the credits you’ve already earned. Having transferred schools and changed majors in undergrad, I can appreciate the trial-and-error aspect of college. In graduate school however, you’re in it for the long haul.

In the end, my final decision was between Georgetown and X University. Georgetown= awesome school. X University= tuition waiver. I reasoned that completing a M.A. in itself would be an accomplishment. Where I got the degree wasn’t that important right? Let’s just say I plan on framing my Georgetown acceptance letter and hanging it above my X University diploma. Oh, what could have been.

I realized I was at the wrong school during my first semester, when the homework for a required course consisted of blogging about our experience as graduate students each week. That’s what Myspace bulletins are for! Though my friends and I drank away our frustrations that fall, it wasn’t until the following semester that I realized I would give anything to transfer to Northeastern University, a school that hadn’t been picked up on my original radar, but that I thought was pretty much the perfect school for me. I was shit out of luck.

Make a list of you want to get out of your education. Trust me, you’re going to be working your butt off in grad school, so it might as well be worth it. Take your time looking at schools, my friends. A few extra hours of your time now is much more efficient than two years of your life at a school that isn’t right for you.

Then my dreams are dashed when I realize that I do, in fact, have responsibilities that need to be attended to…and even if I didn’t, I don’t have thousands to throw away on a trip around the world. So, what is this 20-something to do? Well, realistically…I go on Facebook and check out the pictures my friends took back in 2005 when they went abroad.

Then I stumbled on an application that looked a bit curious…Trip Up CouchSwap!

It’s perfect! It merges reality and fantasy and wraps them up into one attainable goal for us travel-loving college kids. Poor college kids sleeping on other poor college kid’s couches…for cheap (or free)? Sounds like a typical Saturday! What more could we need?

I’ll tell you: CouchSurfing.com

Here the idea branches out even further into it’s own little social network where people around the world document and rate the travel accommodation they’ve received by traveling backpacker-style.

Now, I’m the first to admit to a little too much trust in my fellow man (or woman, whatever) and the idea of getting murdered while taking a nap on some person’s futon doesn’t really cross my mind…while you may be thinking there’s no way you’ll ever allow some random to take you in. Well, I’m officially calling you out.

Sure, you gotta be careful, but loosen up!

I think it’s high time those of us too stressed out to think about anything but getting away take full advantage of sites like these. We deserve a vacation…even if it means sleeping on a sofa.

As you push your cart up and down the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target stocking up on the necessities, your bank account is slowly draining (unless your parents plan on footing the entire bill-in which case you can stop reading now).

The money you’ve saved up at your menial summer job may be non-existent by the time you hit the mall to pick up some new kicks and a few back to school outfits.

So what happens when you land on campus broke as a joke in need of food and fun? You begin the job hunt.

As a seasoned veteran of the work study program, I would not recommend this line of work. My freshman year was spent slaving away between classes in an office with no windows. Fetching sandwiches for a hostile man whose job it was to make photocopies for 7 dollars an hour wasn’t my idea of a worthwhile part-time job.

When I ventured out to find legitimate employment during my sophomore year, I applied to every store, restaurant, and office within a 20 block radius of my school.

To be blunt, I went crazy, spreading my resume like wildfire to anyone who would take it. You would think my phone would have been ringing off the hook.

Well, think again. Turns out thousands of kids from my school and surrounding colleges were applying for those very same jobs. I didn’t receive so much as one call back for at least a month.

Eventually, I got a call from a restaurant less than a block away from my school. I wound up with a well-paying convenient part-time job. More importantly, I walked away from the situation with a better understanding on how to land a job in a competitive environment. I pass these tips on to you, our loyal readers:

1. ALWAYS have a copy of your resume with you- Nine times out of ten a manager will request a copy of your resume when you apply for a job. Don’t let them down. You’ll look silly and unprepared, qualities that are not highly valued by management.

2. Dress the part- Even if you’re applying to the crappiest hot dog stand, show up in a respectable outfit and you’re a hundred percent more likely to land the gig. Never, under ANY circumstances, wear jeans. Many establishments will politely take your resume and shred it to pieces the second you’re out the door if you look unprofessional.

3. Be Confident- Look the interviewer in the eye when you speak. Don’t be afraid to talk about your achievements and useful qualities. Remember, many others will be applying for this very same job. You need to sell yourself and convince the company that you are the best person for the job.

4. Be Available- Most part-time jobs will need you on nights and weekends. Obviously, it sucks working on Friday and Saturday night. However, most restaurants (or stores!) won’t hire you if you aren’t willing to make this sacrifice. If you’re desperate to salvage your weekends, request every other weekend off, or ask to only work on one weekend day.

5. Network- Sometimes the easiest way to get a job is through a friend. Ask around- someone you know is bound to be employed at a place that is looking for help. With their recommendation, you may have a simple “in” at the company.

A part time job can (surprisingly) be a key part of your college experience. As you’re required to spend time with your co-workers, a job offers you the opportunity to make new friends. You will always have extra spending money to buy that new shirt you REALLY want or to go out on the nights you’re available. It’s not all fun and games- but it beats sitting home because you’re penniless or grubbing money from your aggravated friends.