So that time of year is creeping up on us. The time when we must throw some clothes into duffel, fill the rest of the bag with dirty laundry, kiss our roommate and our bottle of vodka goodbye, and head home for fall break.

Yes, there are many up-sides to this little trip: we get a break from all the homework, we get to eat something other then cafeteria mystery meat for a change, and we get to curl up with Scruffy on the couch for a couple of days.

But with the comfort of being home comes a few downers as well. And I’m not talking about being woken up at 9am on a Saturday or having to empty the dishwasher. It’s those little comments from mom and dad that really get under your skin. And no matter how hard you try to be nice, you just can’t help but snap, say something mean and beeline to the car/airport (clean clothes and leftovers in hand, obvi) as soon as humanly possible.

Here are a few of the worst offenders:

“Honey, your pants look a little tight”
Yes mom, I realize that drinking 5 days out of the week and eating delivery pizza has done a number on my waistline. Am I happy about it? No. Do I know it is there? Yes. Is it helping that you pinch the muffin top and poke the underarm flab? Absolutely not!

“Have you found a nice boy yet?”
If by “nice” you mean “a tall pre-med student who considers hanging out in the library fun,” then no, dad, I have not found your ideal son-in-law quite yet. But I have hooked up with a couple of the guys on the football team who can barely form coherent sentences but have 8-pack stomachs you can bounce a quarter off of, if that counts for anything. Read More »

"Ok, so I'll do all the work and you'll take all the credit. Sound good?"

Your midterm is assigned and not only is it a group project, but you can’t even choose who you’ll work with. Your T.A. reads off your group of four then gives you the last half of the class to discuss your ideas. You pull your desks together in a mini circle and start the introductions.

It only takes you five minutes to realize that this group is not going to work.  Between the kid who’s only showed up to class twice and the girl who speaks maybe three words of English, it’s going to be a disaster.

With only two weeks to complete both a four-page paper and a 5-minute presentation, you need to get to work quickly. The group spends ten minutes coming up with a topic and the next twenty trying to find a time to meet that works for all of you. Unsuccessfully. One kid holds an on-campus job at the library, one girl is heading out of town for the weekend and you all have 3 other midterms that you need to somehow complete.

The rest of the class starts packing up and – seeing a giant D in your near future – you decide to take charge.

“Ok, we’re going to break up the work. We’ll each take a portion of the paper and we’ll put it together at the end. Then we’ll use class time next week to write up our presentation. Good?”

The group agrees – most likely because they don’t want to spend another second in this classroom. You get everyone’s email address, divvy up the sections of the essay and go on your way. Read More »

I’m a total college girl. I love wearing college sweatshirts, cheering at basketball (so much so that I cheer for the school I transferred from and the one I currently attend) or hockey games, partying at all times, supporting student government, loving the gym and dining halls, repping NU right here on CollegeCandy, playing on intramurals and familiarizing myself with all the fun trivia about my school. Example: Did you know that Northeastern University is really the first place that the Red Sox played? Yep, the Red Sox didn’t always play at Fenway. Back when they were the Pilgrims/Americans, they played at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, which is now part of our campus. The area is immortalized with a bronze statue of Cy Young.

Yes, I love college. Probably more than Asher Roth. The experience of being at a University is incredible, my social life is banging, my sister goes to school right around the corner at BU, and I live in the “big city” version of a college town. The Boston area is home to over twelve major universities and I’m familiar with all of them. Or at least their frat houses. Read More »

Goals are a part of life, whether you are the type of person who keeps them taped to your mirror or stored in the back of your mind. There are big goals, small goals, important goals, “wishful-thinking” goals (Chris Pine will be mine…), etc. Regardless of the type, all require a certain amount of thought, effort, and organization. Goal-setting is not only a blueprint for your own success but also a powerful tool in motivation–who doesn’t need that?

Everyone struggles with motivational issues at some point. With so many stressors and distractions constantly vying for our mind’s attention (alcohol, TV, alcohol again), feeling motivated to complete tasks can be REALLY difficult. However, it is important that goal-setting be a regularly-used skill in our daily lives. Being a serious procrastinator myself (hey, America’s Next Top Model reruns can be a little distracting, OK?), I have found that setting goals have made my thoughts and actions more organized, efficient, and clear-cut.

So how do you maximize the ability of your goals to motivate you?

Dr. Edwin Locke, a pioneer in the research of motivation and goal-setting (and probably a guest star in one of your PSY101 lectures), provides five characteristics of goals that each contribute to the goal’s effectiveness of promoting motivation. You wanna be successful (uh, duh!), take these into consideration:

Clarity
Goals that are clear are ones that are straightforward, able to be measured, and cause you to take action! Being specific is key—adopting a definite time set for a goal and an detailed description of what you want to achieve allows for a better understanding of potential rewards. Vague goals such as “Lose weight” or “Get ahead on schoolwork” are unlikely to motivate. However, goals such as “Lose 30 pounds by September 1st,” or  “Finish 3 assignments for next week before going out to the keg race,” are more likely to create a more tangible ending, therefore boosting motivation.

Read More »

So midterms have come and gone. Whether your calling home boasting to mom and dad about how well you’re doing on their $40,000 a year, or crying your eyes out at the thought of failing out of freshman math, everyone is glad to be out of those couple weeks of hell.

For those of us who haven’t aced all of our tests, we have no calm after the storm. We are just hit by another what-if-I-fail-out-of-school-what-will-everyone-think whirlwind.

Our friends at CollegeNews gave some suggestions on what to do to overcome a midterm crisis, which includes talking to your professor and your advisor and re-evaluating your study habits. But what if that’s not enough? What if striking up a convo with your prof during office hours doesn’t change anything? And what does it mean to re-evaluate your study habits?!

Your GPA is the most important thing you’ll take with you when you leave college (well, that and a box full of free t-shirts), so it’s imperative you pick that up and pick it up fast. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of important things you can (and need to) do now to turn double up that 2.0 and turn it into something worth boasting about.

You know, so your family doesn’t disown you come Christmas. Read More »

As college students, we are constantly inundated with new knowledge. It can be useful, thought-provoking, or crammed into our head on a Starbucks-fueled binge several hours before an exam. However, very rarely do we question the validity of all this new knowledge (unless you take philosophy classes, then you’ll question away).

That’s where College Candy comes in. We’re not going to debate whether or not the Theory of Relativity actually exists (a disappointment, I know, but I’m a communications major and stopped taking science classes after Baby Bio fresh year). However, we are here to thoroughly investigate the most widespread college knowledge (no, not rhyming)—the myth.

So we’ve all heard this particularly morbid myth (no, not any of the ones from Urban Legends—although Brenda was a bad-ass scary killer) about one surefire, if not tragic, way to snag a 4.0. The general myth goes a little something like this: If your roommate dies, you automatically achieve a 4.0 average for the semester.

There are a ton of variations to this myth; if you weren’t in the room at the time of death, you only get a 3.5 (sorry, not traumatized enough!). Or if you have more than one roommate, you’re not all going to get the golden 4.0 (they don’t want to run out of perfect GPA’s, I guess?). And, of course—you can’t kill your roomie for the express purposes of getting a 4.0 (killing her for ruining the suede clutch you lent her, now that’s another story). Read More »

Between homework, studying, group projects and partying, I really had a tough time managing my time in college. I was always looking for ways to make my life easier, and it always backfired on me. No matter what anyone says, Sparknotes is not an acceptable substitute for reading the book. You’re still not going to know the main character’s sister’s dog’s name. And your professor is always going to ask you for it.

But the good people at Microsoft must have heard my cries of pain and despair when they took it upon themselves to create their new program, Office Live Workspace. Not only does it let me store my documents and information online and let met access them anywhere from the Internet, but also, it’s FREE. So, when you’ve got a paper due in 12 minutes and your printer is out of ink, all you have to do is save that puppy to your personal online space, haul ass to the ‘brary, print it out and turn it in. Phew.

Even more amazing, Workspace takes the headache out of group projects because it has simplified the sharing process. Everyone in a group can access the latest edition of the document in a glorified, virtual “workspace” where they can collaborate, comment on and edit the same document. Without coordinating their super busy (or super “I don’t want to go to the library in the dead of winter to meet up with these losers”) schedules. Lord knows that’s the most annoying part of any group assignment (besides the a-hole who does nothing and gets the good grade…) Read More »

Why waste four years of an awesome social scene biting your fingernails over academic probation?  In between juggling friends, lecture notes, beer, exams, and boys, watch out for these GPA pitfalls:

1) The Internet: Essential to keeping up with friends from home (and that kid you haven’t seen since  pre-kindergarden), essential to keeping up with world news (gawker.com, anyone?), and very, very excellent at wasting your time (during class, during your chem final cramming session, at four am in the morning when you just have to broadcast your insomnia on Twitter…).  Leave your laptop in your dorm room when you attend lectures if you want to save your grades. If you must bring it to take notes, turn off the wireless.  And if you really don’t trust yourself, install a self-control application to help set a daily time limit on time-wasting websites.

2) Ass-crack of dawn classes. Try as you might to schedule classes around your personal body rhythms (the preferred way to avoid this), there comes a time in every girl’s college career when she realizes that the only available section of a mandatory course meets early in the morning.  Combat the potential damage to your batting average by buying a new alarm clock, an extra cup of coffee, rewarding yourself for waking up with five minutes on your favorite blog before you dash off to class, or finding a classmate on your hallway to share in your pain….and notes, if one of you ever oversleeps.

3) Ovulation. For all intents and purposes: that time of the month when you really need to get some.  Do not go out to a bar and accept drinks from a cute stranger/stick your tongue down his throat if it’s Tuesday night you know you should be working on the key slides for your history power-point presentation.  Save your grades, buy a vibrator. You’ll also cut out the make-up application time, the cab fare, the hangover, and the heartbreak. Read More »

The royal GPA f*ck up.

We’ve all done it. Whether it was “I’m too hungover to go to class” semester, or the easy freshman mistake of loving the lack of attendance policy way too much, at one time our GPA has clicked down point-by-point faster than the funds in our checking account after drunkenly opening a tab at the bar.

I may be only a freshman, but I’ve pretty much already declared my major in GPA Sabotage, with a concentration on Accidental Stupidity. Having been such an idiot my first semester of college, I speak from partial experience on the five unfailing ways to destroy your GPA like a Category 5 earthquake.

1. Racking up a big streak of absences for your class. It’s pretty obvi, almost to the point where it seems ridiculous to bring up, but it’s the most effective method for watching your GPA drop like an axe. Keeping up the good fight in your classes is all about resisting the incredibly tempting ability to skip class. Even if there is no attendance policy, chances are extremely good that you don’t want to miss what’s going on. Plus, catching up after a missed class is a massive headache for anyone with a decent course load.

2. Not participating in class. This is kind of a gray area, but for the most part it can be really destructive to your grade in a class if you just waste your time there. Classes are only worth the money they cost if you’re retaining the information presented, and the professor is there to make sure you do just that. Communicating with your professor and participating in class is definitely the way to get the most out of it, and it can make even a 9 AM lecture more enjoyable. Plus, if you make a big mistake in your class, your professor will likely be extremely helpful in getting you back on track knowing that you are invested in the course.

3. Sleeping through class sessions. This is a biggie. It can be actually painful to try and stay awake in class, especially when it’s one of the soulless 8 AM courses. It risks being mind-numbingly dull to stay awake, but if you sleep through class, you’re wasting your time even being there at all. I have definitely used classtime to catch up on some Zs and learned pretty quickly that it’s one mistake you absolutely don’t want to to make.

4. Blowing off studying for exams, or just the exams in general. The best saying I’ve heard about exams is the Murphy’s Law of College Exams: they are always based on the one class session you didn’t attend, and the chapter in the textbook you didn’t read. There is nothing like a screwed college exam to sink you about two letter grades, if not more. Studying is all-important, as is keeping track of your exam schedule so you don’t accidentally miss one. These two things can mean the difference between doing well in a class and scraping to pass.

5. Cheating/ Plagiarizing. It may be incredibly tempting, but as is largely well-known, either of those offenses are automatic one-way streets to being blacklisted from every college, and having your future resume incredibly tainted. Not only will your test or paper be an automatic zero if you’re caught, but your entire college career will be seriously affected by a brief lack of judgment. No test grade is worth the colossal slap on the hand resulting from cheating, and a paper that’s written with someone else’s words isn’t worth the ink you print it with. If you’re tempted to make either of these serious mistakes, resist them. Academic Dishonesty is one phrase you never, ever want associated with your transcripts.

Everyone has learning experiences freshman year of college. We learn to stay away from the Jungle Juice if we want to keep our heads out of toilets and trash cans, we learn that skipping class can only lead to slipping GPAs, and most importantly, we hope to learn what we want to do with our lives. Some of us go into college with our careers already laid out, and every step of the way planned. Those lucky few dash through advisor meetings in less than five minutes, their transcript following their 4 year plan to a tee.

And then there is me.

My transcript veers through the course catalog like a tiny geriatric attempting to ferry her car through a Wal-Mart parking lot. My long-suffering advisor looks at my transcript and schedules another thirty minutes for our meeting. My major first changed at Orientation after I took one look at the sample Political Science schedule and saw “Microeconomics” shamelessly emblazoned upon it. I’m a flake when it comes to big decisions like this, and it shows in my spotty track record with trying to pick a major. If there was a Indecisive Majors Anonymous, I’d be a repeat attender. Read More »