Aside from the night after you’ve taken your last final, the first week of school is generally the best time of the whole semester. The weather is great, you’re reunited with all of your friends, and the school year has returned just when you were starting to feel like you had too much free time.

The campus is buzzing with returning students, eager to see what the new year has in store. Even if you anticipate your hardest semester to date, there’s still a feeling of excitement in the air during the very first week.

1. You Get to Scope Out Your New Classes

Maybe I’m a dork, but I was always excited to see what my new classes would be like. In certain classes–the must-take courses taught by the professors with the best reputations– it was great to see what all the buzz was about. Other classes might have sounded intriguing in the course catalog; reading through the syllabus on the first day, I’d think the class sounded interesting, and hadn’t been assigned 500 pages of reading to prove me otherwise. I would also look through the syllabus and see what the course requirements looked like, so I could estimate how little effort I could put into the class, and still walk away with an “A.”

Of course, it’s also fun to see who else has signed up for the class. Whether you walk through the door and see five of the girls from your freshman dorm, or right into the eyes of your new insta-crush, it’s fun to find out who you’ll be taking the class with. Read More »

Life after college…it can be hard to fathom actually getting to the diploma, no matter how many years you’ve been in school. But what happens after graduation? Most of your peers will be joining the work force, but a decent percentage will move on to even higher education and pursue master’s degrees, PhDs, or professional certifications. While the job application process is hard, getting into and completing a post-graduate degree is even harder. Having experienced the trials and tribulations firsthand, I’m here to share some tips so you can decide whether moving on to even MORE school is the right choice for you.

Towards the end of my junior year of undergrad, I realized that I had to start thinking of a post-college plan. I was finishing a Bachelor’s in English, had no clue what career path I wanted to pursue, and was having way too much fun on Thirsty Thursdays to want to give up my laid-back student lifestyle. So, I decided to elongate my college experience by going to grad school. Boy, did I get a rude awakening.

Once you’ve finished your Bachelor’s degree, choosing a path for the future should be taken very seriously. If you are considering moving on to graduate or doctorate work, don’t make the same mistakes I made.

The first thing you need before you begin applying to graduate schools is TIME. I decided to get a masters on a whim a few weeks into the fall semester of my senior year. I found myself trying to balance fifteen credit hours, two part-time jobs, and an active social life with preparing for the application process. I didn’t anticipate simply applying to schools to be so much work, so in my mind, I had plenty of time to apply to and choose a school, while fighting a major case of senioritis (in the form of an unyielding craving for margaritas).

Before you even decide to start looking at schools, you need to ask yourself: Am I willing to set aside the time? Read More »

Say, have you heard of Camille Paglia? If not, good news: it turns out that you are not old. You’ve also, apparently, managed to avoid the massive headaches that she’s been inflicting on thinking people for the better part of the last two decades. Now, for the bad news: she’s back, and she’s aiming to annoy the world once more.

Here’s the deal: Camille Paglia was the Ann Coulter of the ‘90s. She wrote a book, Sexual Personae, which dealt “shockingly” with issues of sex and gender, in that it basically re-iterated the talking points of idiot wife-beaters across the nation. (Here’s a sample quote: “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”) This book turned her into a popular media personality, and spawned countless essays and TV appearances; she was the go-to girl when conservatives needed to call upon some random crazy to bash women.

The peak of her career, of course, came when she took it upon herself to defend rapists, by saying that women who got drunk or wore skimpy clothes in the presence of men deserved to be sexually assaulted, because men simply could not be expected to contain their awesome sexual power. In her words, “woman’s flirtatious arts of self-concealment mean man’s approach must take the form of rape.” Read More »

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it can take me a while to get into the academic-paper-writing mood of zen. A long while. Like…several months.

Since I don’t usually have that kind of luxury to juggle around class deadlines, I do fun writing exercises to help me get in the mood. They’re easy, short, and they really will help your writing skills get better, so you can snag the high grades you need. Try these, or make up your own.

• Journaling. I don’t mean the kind of journaling that your sixth-grade teacher made you do about your summer vacation. I mean real journaling about what you really care about. Write a page about how much of a douchebag your ex is, or a few paragraphs about your favorite kind of chocolate and why exactly you love it so much. Loosening your writing muscles will help you get better starts on your papers.

• Songwriting. Come on. We’ve all listened to a Backstreet Boys song or two and thought to ourselves, “My four-year-old cousin could write better lyrics than those.” So why not prove it? Rather than calling up your baby cousin, do it yourself. A quick exercise like scribbling down a song will give you more creative, open ideas about the content and outlets of your academic writing. Read More »

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas at home is wonderful. The big bed, the stocked fridge, the friends from high school you haven’t seen…it’s all amazing.

But then comes the fateful day. The day. When all of your immediate and extended family gather ’round and gang up on you, their little college student, and bombard you with questions you never, ever want to answer.

From experience, most dinners tend to play out the same way with the same questions getting thrown around for almost anyone who considers themselves an undergrad, so let College Candy help out this year with a few questions you may be asked (with the answers included)!

1) So, how’d you do this semester?

The old grades question. Here’s the deal: if you didn’t spice up the week with Wednesday night study sessions at the local pub, and therefore have good news to report, then you’re in the clear!

Not so lucky this time? Deny. Deny. Deny. Obviously, you’re not denying the fact that this semester happened, but make sure your parents know you’re looking for your grades, they’re just not available yet. Blame the computer, blame your campus’s network, blame crappy professors. Anything to hold off reporting that C- you got in Bio.

Because nothing ruins Christmas faster than pissed off parents. Read More »

I think we’ve had this conversation before. But it’s worth having again, especially since Freshmen year is so crucial to the development of this addiction.

This messy, painful, powerful addiction.

The addiction to wearing pajamas to class.

Some of you had to get up as early as 5:30 AM to get to high school, and while wearing pj’s may have been a slight temptation, you never actually went and did it.

No, you pulled on some jeans, found a shirt somewhere, made sure your face wasn’t frightening, and then hopped into the car while the sun was still coming up.

But then college happens, and for some reason, everything changes. Almost no one has class earlier than 8:30 (a whole hour later than 12th grade), school is usually no more than a 10-15 minute walk from your bed, and breakfast is already made for you. It should be easier to resist the urge to wear those dancing dog pj’s your grandma got you to class…right?

Nope.

Just doing it once, just one taste of the sweet, sweet laziness that is literally throwing a jacket over pajamas is enough to turn some people in pajajay junkies for life (or at least the duration of the college career). Read More »

There’s nothing better than possessing college pride. No matter where we go, from sporting events to keg parties to our grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, us college students revel in screaming out the names of our mascots, singing our alma maters, and making it known, loud and clear, exactly where we go to school, whether we’re shiny new freshmen or forty-year-old alumni.

Unfortunately for some students, there just aren’t enough bragging rights to go around.

Radaronline.com has compiled the nine worst accredited four-year colleges in the country. If you attend one of these colleges, we’re very sorry to do this to you. But for every college that’s known for its superior eliteness or exclusivity, or its hell-of-a-good time, or its drop-dead beautiful men and women, there has to be one that is….well….lack luster. Read More »