The end of the semester is the worst for papers, especially in the spring. All you want to do is lay out by the pool with your friends and sip on something fruity, not sit inside on your computer typing out some analysis about something that you didn’t actually read. And even if you did read whatever it is you’re writing about, sometimes you just don’t have the energy to make more of an argument. Sometimes you run out of things to say. So what should you do when you need another half page or so, and you can’t.get.any.more.out? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered!

Here are some easy tricks (and subtle) to make your final paper longer… Read More »

Whether you just graduated or you’ve had another year of college under your belt, the post-school slump is about to hit. It’s that period of time after the first few weeks of summer where you become gloomy because you miss your friends, your parents are getting on your nerves, and you don’t really have much to do except watch Netflix. The first couple of weeks are great. You’ve caught up on your shows (um Vampire Diaries, yes please!), you’ve been Skyping and Hey-Telling your friends in far places, and you’ve been sleeping in a lot and going to the pool.

But now the novelty of summer is starting to wear off. You’ve watched all of the episodes of current seasons so you resort to watching strange movies, you and your friends aren’t busy but talking proves to be more difficult, and you’re super tired and bored. Welcome to the post-school slump. I’m starting to experience it right now, although mine is paired with the anxiety and terror of the post-grad world. Don’t worry though, we can get through this together!

Here are some fun ways to get over it…

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I used to be a college tour guide, in which I told prospective students that they could choose from over 150 different majors at my school. Apparently, 13 or so of them are completely useless — including mine. How about yours? Is your entire collegiate career a sham of actual productivity?

Earlier this week, The Daily Beast had the nerve to publish a list that finally identifies the thirteen most useless majors that college students call their own too often. The lucky thirteen was based on the undoubtedly truthful practices of science and statistics:

“This year we started with new research (PDF) from Georgetown University — which drew from two years of census data to determine the prospects for myriad majors — to narrow down our list to more than three dozen popular college majors. We also used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, equally weighing the following categories to determine current and future employment and earnings potential for our final ranking: Recent graduate employment, experienced graduate employment, recent graduate earnings, experienced graduate earnings, [and] projected growth in total number of jobs, 2010–2020.”

So basically, these were selected from the most popular majors in college, and then deemed “useless” when measuring how much money they haven’t earned past graduates and how many of them are still looking for jobs altogether. More importantly, these supposedly breakthrough findings are based on data collected over the past two years — you know, two of the bleakest years that our country has seen for quite a long time now.

And of course, which industries take a heavy blow throughout an economic recession? Without even looking at the list of overwhelming university uselessness just yet, it’s easy to guess that the liberal arts are, once again, deemed unfit for the blessed brains of science, math, engineering, etc.

I once defended all liberal arts majors on CollegeCandy, and I’ll do it again if I have to. I could continue my rant about how careers in the liberal arts aren’t as clear-cut as those in science-related fields, and I’d reiterate how so many people — more people than we think — don’t necessarily pursue careers in the fields they initially chose when they were 18-year-old freshmen in college. Because 18-year-olds don’t always make good decisions, and neither do 22-year-old graduates who are still somewhat confused by the direction of the rest of their lives, as well as 50-year-olds who undergo a career change after they’re flat-out disappointed in whatever they eventually chose to pursue.

However, I think it’s more important here to see how inaccurate the definitions of “useful” and “useless” are in this list’s context. These majors’ “uselessness” doesn’t matter at all because the definition of “usefulness” does not capture personal happiness, worldwide impact or cultural contribution — it only measures how fast YOU can pay off YOUR student loans by getting a high-paying job after graduation. But honestly, getting your money’s worth from a major and actually doing something useful with it are two different things. The nurse who majored in biology and spent a decade weighing patients on scales and measuring people’s blood pressure may not be as useful as the filmmaker who exposed an injustice through a documentary. Who has a bigger impact on the world? Who can be called more useful?

Even more so, “useful” majors would be nothing without the “useless” ones — what industry can function without artists to create advertising or language majors to publicize it…or even write a manual for that fancy scientific invention? And what will all those useful people do with their free time, if not veg out in front of the television, watch movies, listen to music, read the news, or enjoy some other product from a liberal arts major? Sure, science may save lives, but art makes life worth living.

See for yourself how “useless” the following 13 majors are, and how messed up our world would be if bright minds like us stopped majoring in them:

initiating the gallery...

Are there certain college majors that are more useless than others? Or does its “usefulness” really depend on what is done with it after graduation?

Ashley is a UC San Diego grad who is holding on way too tightly to a potential career in magazines and goes to Vegas all too often. She’s fascinated with celebrities and strawberry beer and doubles as a pathological texter/emailer/blogger. Feed the addiction with tweets @cashleelee. Thanks in advance.

Ah, kids these days. Apparently, high schools across the country are setting strict dress codes for dances because girls are choosing dresses that are too “sexy.” Naturally, we had to do some investigation into this subject. We combed the internet, looking at the most risque prom dresses out there. After careful analysis, we’ve come to a conclusion. These dresses aren’t sexy. They’re just ugly.

Click through the gallery to see what we mean.

Garnet is a student at Columbia University in New York City. She is “that person” who starts dancing at a party when everyone else is standing around, and if there were a Facebook stalking Olympics, she would be a gold medalist. She also loves cheesy 90s music, and almost died of happiness when Vanilla Ice retweeted her. Once. Follow her on Twitter @garnethenderson.

[Lead image via Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock]

I’m going through a particularly angsty period of my college career right now, so if you were to ask me what the worst subject in school is, I would probably say ALL OF THEM. But of course, the Twitterverse has some much more creative ideas than that.

This was one of my favorite trending topics lately, so here it is: the best of #WorstSubjectInSchool. Read More »

Here at the University of Alabama, I’ve been really fortunate with my class experiences. I graduated with a class of 102 students, so coming to a large SEC school was definitely culture shock. My first class had 300 students in it, and I felt like a number. As I finished my gen-eds and started on courses for my major, the class sizes shrank significantly. From my sophomore year on, I didn’t have a class with more than thirty students. It felt more like a normal experience once I got through the large lectures of Biology and Philosophy 101, but it seems that a lot of students actually like being in super-sized seminars.

I can’t help but think why. Sure lectures can be great if you don’t really need to pay attention or you’re feeling the effects of a Thursday night out. You can sit in the back and play Angry Birds without worrying that you’ll get called on to participate. But for me, I didn’t learn anything in my lecture classes. I felt awkward speaking up because there were so many people and most of the time, the professors spoke for so long you couldn’t even get a word in. We had clickers to check in for attendance and take quizzes and to me, that’s just not learning. Read More »

During the school year, eating well and exercising can feel like a real challenge. Going out with friends or sleeping in late is often so much more appealing than dragging yourself to the gym, and at 2:00 a.m. after hours of reading, that bag of chocolate chip cookies is just…so…tempting!

We’ve all heard that we should try to avoid the dreaded “Freshman Fifteen” (which is actually more like the “Freshman Seven”), but there are other important benefits to maintaining a good nutrition and exercise routine. The better you treat your body, the better you will feel. The better you feel, the more successful you’ll be in school and the more energy you’ll have for the really fun stuff. Read on to learn how you can use the latest discoveries in health and fitness to stay healthy, happy, and motivated this school year.

1.     Cut down on time at the gym with interval workouts.

Intervals have long been an important part of many exercise routines. But a new study has shown that intense interval workouts may be just as effective as time-consuming endurance training. The study divided its subjects, healthy college students, into two groups. One group rode a stationary bike at a sustained pace for 90 to 120 minutes three times per week. The other group pedaled as hard as they could for 20 to 30 seconds, with short breaks in between, for a total of about six minutes of intense riding per day. The result? The students who rode intervals showed just a much of an increase in their endurance as the students who did sustained training, and showed the same molecular indicators of increased fitness in their muscles. Read More »

Since it’s that time of year, the time for choosing colleges (and for some, leaving college) Jezebel has decided to depart some wisdom on all the high school senior hopefuls out here, asking them to really think about what they want out of there college experience, about why they’re choosing the schools they’re choosing, and the effects those choices will have on their college careers.

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… Read More »

Question?! Answer!! (…Maybe.) TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com

Dear Tuffy Luv,
I’m pretty sure you already answered a question like mine but I couldn’t find the answer, so here goes. I’m a high school senior applying to college and I’m having a bit of a problem with my safety school. It’s brilliant: great nightlife, safe area, amazing dorms and has a course that I love. One bad thing though: it’s my hometown. The dorms are down the road. The campus is a 10 minute drive from home. Not that I don’t love my hometown and my folks, but isn’t college my one chance to become independent and get a little space? When it comes down to it, I want to be able to stumble home drunk at 2 a.m and not have to worry about seeing people I know on every street corner.

Would staying in town for college be a waste of an experience? [Ed. Note: No! Just ask our commuter student!]

Should I apply to a worse school just because I don’t want to stay in my town? I mean, my folks think I should stay in dorms (and I will) but still. Any advice would be lovely

- Confused about College

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This is boring.

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like soul mates!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Schools all over have been experimenting with social media lately – some of them getting into it and some of them encouraging their students to stay out of it. Now Harrisburg University of Science and Tech are blocking all social media from the school’s network including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and AIM for a week. They’re not the first school to try a move like this, but my question is, is it right?

I think we’re all willing to admit that we’re maybe a little over-connected, maybe a little obsessed with our social media and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world not to check our Twitter feeds every two minutes. I’m not striking out against the school not supporting social media – it’s their network and if they don’t want students using it that way, it’s their prerogative to block those sites. My problem is that this is an experiment. That’s right, a guy at Harrisburg saw his teen daughter juggling a lot of social media and decided to see what would happen if he took it away. Except, instead of conducting this little experiment in his home, he chose to use his position at the college to pull a social media blackout for a week. And then proceeded to tell virtually no one about it. My qualms about the experiment’s ethics aside (hello, consent?) the bigger question is, is this something the school should really be policing?

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