Well, their great advice has inspired me to give a little advice of my own. Less about choosing a college, and more about the things you should remember once you get there, about how to bridge that gap between college and the real world, and how to make the most of your opportunities while you still have them.

I mean it’s not all boys, beer, and parties (even though those are important too), so here are a few things I wish I knew when I was a mere freshman.

1. You’ll change your major at least once. Everyone always told me this, but I would just shake my head at them and laugh. Not me, I knew what I wanted to major in. I loved to read and to write. I was going to be an English major. But even I eventually had a moment of doubt. The entire second semester of my freshman year into the summer before my sophomore I was convinced I would be changing my major to information systems. That seemed like a far more practical choice with better options for post-grad jobs. Granted I eventually realized I was not made to be an information systems major and found my way back to English (and later, Philosophy) but I was so concerned with trying to pick a major that I didn’t even realize that…

2. What you get your degree in may not necessarily be the field you work in. It’s the truth. Your major does not necessarily have to dictate what you do with your life so much as it explains what you enjoy and what skill sets you will have post graduation.  Granted, pre-med students more often than not will probably go on to become doctors and psychology majors will probably continue their research in graduate schools, but history majors can become politicians or writers or lawyers. I mean, philosophy majors don’t necessarily become…philosophers, right? No, trust me, they don’t. 

3. The humanities are actually pretty applicable to real life. The humanities (English, Philosophy, History) tend to get a bad reputation these days. Because there’s no set post-college career path humanities majors are accused of being lazy, impractical, and unwilling to grow up. Sure, we spend our time reading and discussing and analyzing and researching about things that have already happened, things that have only happened in books, and thinks that will never happen, but all that reading and discussing, all those skills we develop actually come in handy later on in life. It took me a while, but eventually I learned how to spin the skills of an English and Philosophy major to work for just about any job. I mean, what job description these days doesn’t ask for excellent analytical skills, great communication skills, and the ability to work well with others, right?

4. Your advisor can help you. This one may seem like a no brainer, but not nearly enough people utilize their college advisors, and I certainly didn’t during my first few years. These people are there to do more than tell you what classes you need to take in order to graduate on time. They’re there to help you figure out what you want to do with your life. Have something in mind? Ask for their opinions? If they can’t help you, they’ll probably be able to tell you who can, and tell you what you need to do to make it happen. They have connections, and they want to use them to help you, so let them.

5. Get as many internships as possible. The best way to determine whether or not a certain job is right for you is to do that job, and an internship is the perfect way to try it out while you’re still in college. Internships are great because they give you some real life experience, allow you to put all those skills (directly related or not) to good use, and sometimes (if you’re lucky enough to intern for CollegeCandy) they’re actually a lot of fun. Internships allow you to further develop your skills, build up your resume, and test drive a few post-grad options. So do one, do four, do forty, and make the most of all the options available to you as a college girl.

OK, now it’s your turn: Looking back on your college experience, what are some things you wish you knew way back when?

With school pressures up the wazoo paired with the changing of the seasons, it’s understandable that my peers and I might not be as happy as we could be.  So, the fact that my school is so demanding and does have such a high rate of suicide brings me to the topic of this article: how to obtain a whopping dose of happiness the natural way.

1)   Light in the morning and darkness in the evening is just the best for saying sayonara to the blues. Make sure to get some rays of sunshiny goodness in the morning (as close to dawn as possible) to prevent depression and to treat depression if you’ve got it.  It is now known that light therapy is wondrous for treating all types of mood disorders, not just Seasonal Affective Disorder.  A 2005 metanalysis (a study which combines the results of multiple independent studies) of bright light therapy for depression found that “bright light treatments are efficacious, with effects equivalent to those in most antidepressant pharmacotherapy trials.”  Woot! That means bright morning light works just as well as antidepressant medications, but with no side effects!

On the same note, don’t go all Edward Cullen on yourself  (sorry Twilight haters) and not get any sleep.  Staying up late or pulling an all-nighter is pretty much equivalent to just asking moodiness to come find you.   Not only this, but studies show that staying up late makes you more inclined to eat late at night, thus increasing the odds of gaining weight, thus making you more inclined to dislike the way you look, thus making you more likely to become unhappy.

2)   Socialize, socialize, socialize. Being around friends is so important for well-being (and maybe even your GPA!).  If you are feeling extra stressed, put down that textbook and take a coffee break with a friend.  You will be surprised how good it feels to have a therapeutic venting session with your girls (or guys) and you will be able to get back to studying in a good mood, which can improve concentration and might just increase your test score.

3)   Eat foods that are naturally bright and colorful. For your brain to adapt and respond to stress, you need to fuel it with foods high in antioxidants, like the always awesome vegetables and fruits.  Without enough antioxidants, our brains literally become “toxic or rancid.”  Ewwww. I am not kidding.  Our brains are made up of fat and lipid peroxidation is a chemical reaction that occurs as fats become rancid.  Free radicals are highly reactive particles that accumulate in the cells of our brain and when that happens, byproducts of peroxidation build up and our brains really do begin to decay.  These byproducts have been linked to depression, heart disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s and more. So, arm yourself with antioxidants and fight those free radical bitches.

4)   Move those limbs. Run. Walk. Climb a tree.  Put on some music and dance around your room in your underwear a la Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s Angels (a personal favorite). Just move. It is simply not healthy to study for hours on end in a chair.  When you exercise, your body releases feel good endorphins, which are opiate-like substances, secreted by the brain.  They have the same painkilling mechanism as morphine, so they can produce a sense of euphoria when the endorphins bind with the brain’s receptor sites.  Better yet, exercise with a friend and get a double dose of happiness.

5)  Ingest some fatty-acids.  Scientific research overwhelmingly supports the notion that fatty acid balance plays a role in mental well-being.  Scientists who study diet and its relationship to depression have consistently found that patients with mood disorders have reduced levels of omega-3 fatty acids.   Omega-3 fats are found in fish, but fish on the market can be highly polluted. Take a DHA supplement or purified fish oil to get a clean, non-polluted helping of those omega-3s.

6)   Put things in perspective! This one might be the most important thing you can do.  When you are old and your hair is a lovely shade of gray (gasp!), are you going to give a Twinkie what your score was on a silly little biology exam? Or even the GPA you graduated college with? I don’t know about you, but my answer to this question is hell no.  While I am an advocate of trying your hardest, don’t freak if your best isn’t the score you had hoped for.  And don’t judge yourself, attempt to analyze your overall intelligence level or compare your test scores to classmates. Just work hard, do your best, and say C’est la vie to that exam.

7)   If all else fails, just Google pictures of cute puppies and kittens. Works every time.

Need more tips health tips? We got you covered...and toned…and healthy.

I know I’ll make some people angry out there, but I’ve noticed a few things about the many pre-meds I’ve come across in my time at college. This surely isn’t true of every doctor wannabe out there, but it is a lifestyle and mindset that ensares many a good student.

1. A pre-med is always the one asking “Will this be on the test?” Yup, the pre-med is always the really annoying kid in a class, ignoring the intellectual meat of any discussion. Pre-meds are fixated on performing well by the numbers, of doing well on the test and getting the A, regardless of what they get out of the course. A pre-med’s moves are often calculated just to get the grade rather than stimulate discussion.

2. A pre-med can’t stop talking about grades. “What did you get on the exam?” “What do you think the curve will be like?” “Man, I was studying ALL last night.” “I’ve got to get an A in this course if I want to go to so-and-so med school.” It can rapidly get exhausting to chat with a pre-med. They can’t stop talking about doing well on exams and actually getting into med school — their singular obsession. They don’t want to talk about literature, art, or culture. They only want to talk about themselves and that big exam coming up.

3. A pre-med is endlessly competitive. If you’re friends with pre-meds, I’ve discovered it’s best to keep your grades to yourself. They thrive on competition and they’re determined to be better than anyone else in terms of academics. GPA’s are thrown around like currency, and they’ll stop at nothing to keep that GPA high, from shamelessly sucking up to professors, to wheedling them for grade bumps. I’m just glad the majority of my classes are arty and not swarmed with these guys and gals.

4. A pre-med can’t relax and enjoy themselves. This isn’t the pre-meds’ fault. Colleges expect a tremendous amount from their pre-meds, and the competition is so fierce that I can understand why students think they have to live this obnoxiously hardcore lifestyle in order to survive. Plenty of people start out thinking they’ll be doctors and find out early on that they just can’t hack it. However, the way the system stands now, the universities reward this bad behavior with success. Rather than valuing learning for learning’s sake and really getting something out of their classes, pre-meds know that what counts is the grade, and not the content of the class. It’s a terrible cycle of competitiveness increasing obnoxiousness, which only increases the competition.

I know some pre-meds who find time to party hard and end up wasted on the weekends, but again, there’s an air of desperation and competition to their partying, as if they feel compelled to do everything just to get the requisite college experience in. Get the grades, do the bodyshots, wear the right pants, and you’ll end up getting into the right med school. When college is only a means to an end, though, it wastes four years of what could be the best time of your life.

So to pre-meds, I say relax, try and enjoy yourselves and enjoy learning a little bit more. And to friends of pre-meds, I say, try and be patient, but make sure you have other friends as well, so you won’t be constantly surrounded by that wearying talk.

Orgo was my wake-up call. There was one exam where I literally laughed the entire two hours (crying wouldn’t help and there was no way I was passing). When the curve was being set by less than 30% scored on a test, and no matter how many hours I kept my head dutifully in my books, I decided to bow out gracefully. It wasn’t worth feeling like a moron and beating myself up anymore. At the end of the day, I was happiest reading, analyzing, writing, as opposed to drawing benzene rings. And I was pretty damn good at it. (In college. Judge as you deem fit at present.)

This is NOT to say that people who stick through courses like these, no matter how much they hate them, are wrong in doing so. Au contraire, dear readers. If you can see the big picture and are content knowing that your hard work will make for a better, happier future, stick with it by all means. Ultimately, no one but you knows what’s going to be best for your future, not your parents, your friends, or your advisor.

Sadly, no one hands you a roadmap saying how your life is going. It’s not like high school, where your biggest decision is what college you’re attending after four years. It’s the rest of your life, and at 18-22, we’re ill-equipped to decide what we want to do forever. My belief, after having gone through this nerve-wracking process, is that you shouldn’t close off options just because it’s not part of your initial plan. If you do change your mind and have regrets, you can always go back to school.

College is definitely a 4-year course in hedonism—you have to be a little selfish so you can figure yourself out, and this is especially true in the case of determining your career path. For me, the hard part wasn’t deciding to change my major. I knew I needed to make a change, but explaining this to my parents was tough. They saw me as their future Doctor Daughter, after all. Sometimes you just feel trapped, almost as though since your parents have raised you and are (possibly) footing the bill, you owe them their dreams, even if it kills you. At the end of the day, a miserable child is not exactly a reward, especially if you blame them for your stress.

Am I saying give up if you’re unhappy in a class? Not at all. A lot more goes into it than that. My decision was based on many other factors (namely a general wave of nausea at the thought of veins/hunting for them in order to administer anesthetic of any sort, and a general distaste for lab work). Just don’t be afraid to go for something you love.

Any other major-changers out there? What’s your take on the process?

[photo courtesy of corbis]

Now imagine knowing that if you lived anywhere other than Africa, you could probably be cured.

Imagine being 14 years old and knowing this.

Meet Felix Yeboah, a Ghanaian teenager with chronic kidney failure.

On Sunday, March 3, in a life-saving emergency operation, Felix received his father’s kidney at the University Hospital in Birmingham, UK, care of Transplant Links, an organization of experienced kidney transplant doctors who volunteer their time and abilities in countries like Ghana.

According to an article in a Ghanian newspaper from August 2006, kidney failure in Ghana forms 35% of medical admissions. Out of the 5000-8000 patients in Ghana, only 35 received haemodialysis (a nessary procedure to prevent total kidney failure) per year! As of the time of that article, there were 17 haemodialysis machines in the entire country.

According to the Transplant Links website, in some African countries, HIV/AIDS is more treatable than Kidney Failure.

This past November, Felix addressed the crowd at the first meeting of the Kidney Transplant Foundation. In the crowd was surgeon Andrew Ready of the Transplant Links organization. He was deeply moved by Felix:

“Felix emerged from the crowd and came up to the podium to speak. He was so small he had to be held up to be seen […] There are ethical issues around selecting people to help in these circumstances but we were so taken by Felix’s speech that we thought we must try to do something. It was as if he had found us rather than we had found him.”

What will Felix Yeboah do now?

“ I want this operation so I can play football again and go to school so I can train to become a doctor and help other people.”

His is a tale of being in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, this is not the case for millions of suffers from chronic kidney failure in Africa.

Kidney disease is an awful experience but with modern day medicine it can be survived and overcome.

The story of Felix demonstrates the importance of organizations such as Transplant Links. Yearly checkups, vaccinations, and treatments, all things you and I probably take for granted, can save lives in countries such as Ghana.

To learn more about organizations like Transplant Links and volunteer opportunities check out these links:

Check out the official website of Transplant Links.

Spread the word about the importance of treating Kidney Disease:

World Kidney Day is March 13th

Use your medical experience to make an impact with Doctors Without Borders

Not Pre-Med? No problem! Join the Global Health Corps and volunteer overseas in the area of Public Health