Randy Jackson next to hop on the designer bandwagon.

Well hello, perfect floral dress for summer!

Your student ID is useful…even after college.

We hope Carrie Underwood is OK…

OMG. Someone loves Adam Lambert a bit too much.

Being a poor college student sucks…except when other people notice and begin to cater directly to us and our needs. Like the student rate at the movie theater, or Apple’s sweet discount for college students.

Now take the excitement you feel when you get your movie ticket for $10 instead of $12 (wooohoooo!) and multiply that by the thousands of discounts you can get by joining my new favorite discount site just for students, StudentRate.com.

Did you pee your pants yet? (I’m sure they can get you a deal on some new ones!)

This fab new site allows college students to take full advantage of their school ID – all from the coziness of their own dorm rooms.  Even better? The user-friendly layout lets us search deals by category, location, “What’s Hot,” and by browsing keywords to see what pops up.  Of course, the site is free to join (what’s the point in saving money if you have to pay to do so?), so there’s really no reason NOT to take advantage.

Here are some of the best money-savers that I came across in my latest visit to the site:

For Class:

-Microsoft Office for only $59.95? (Where was this site when I was a freshman?) If, for whatever reason, you don’t have Office yet, now’s the time to buy.  True, many of us already have Word and Excel, but if your younger siblings are gearing up for high school graduation, you can wow your family buy buying him or her the package to go with the new laptop SOMEONE in your family is bound to give them.

-50% off E-Textbooks.   Not only does StudentRate have deals onsite, they provide links to other fabulous money saving URLs.  Take CourseSmart.com.  I stumbled upon it via SR, and discovered that you can browse textbook titles and save 50% by buy E-Text.  Pros? You save money, you save trees, and you don’t have to grow a hunchback from lugging 100 pounds of textbooks to each class.

For Health:

-EyeBuyDirect.com is offering a 10% off coupon for SR’s visitors.  Hey, with the price of contact lenses and glasses these days, that 10% can really make a difference.  AND you won’t have to squint to read your professor’s notes on the whiteboard.

-Dick’s Sporting Goods.  50% off select items when you print the coupon on StudentRate.com.  Buy yourself a new pair of running shoes, or a baseball mitt and make a game out of shaping up for the summer!

For Gifts:

-1-800-Flowers.  10% off your total order.  Hey, Mother’s Day is just around the corner!

-BlueFly.com.  There are a variety of discounts available to members only.  Bluefly is a great online shopping source for tons of designer labels.  So whether it’s your BFF’s 21st birthday, or you’ve decided to give yourself an early end-of-semester present, thank StudentRate for hooking you up!

StudentRate is still a fairly new site, so there’s no telling how far its prospects will reach.  They are currently set up to start offering entertainment, travel, and medical discounts to students, as well as regular shopping deals.  It can’t hurt to sign up – after all, if we all ban together, many more companies across the country will take note and start to offer us all discounted merchandise and services. Bring on the deals!

College offers so many opportunities and I regret not taking advantage of more of them. I’m not referring to visiting lectures from world renowned microbiologists or Teach For America open houses. I’m talking about opportunities to get things for free.

Club meetings that offer pizza just for coming, computer labs that leave out boxes of paper, and psych professors paying money for you to undergo semi-legal clinical trials. Even though I hate using the countdown, I have to admit that I only have a little over a month to accomplish as much as possible by spending as little as possible. I’ve included the following on my list.

BUY ONLY BOOKSTORE APPAREL
There is nothing more mind boggling in the world to me than a student ID card. It’s unlimited money (my parents disagree). The only downside is that it can’t be used everywhere. However it can be used to buy anything I want as long as I don’t mind the Syracuse logo. So I’m going to take full advantage of my last month of free money by wearing Syracuse clothing, writing with Syracuse pencils (who is still buying authentic pencils?), and drinking coffee out of Syracuse mugs.

TAKE ALL THE NY TIMES
We’re lucky at Syracuse to get free New York Times. It’s not that I’m anywhere near cultured enough to actually read them everyday, but I think it would be a waste of my tuition if I didn’t start stockpiling them in the corner of my room. I’m never going to spend any of my real money to buy a newspaper so it’s my last chance to actually hold one in my hand. And I’ll have plenty of time to sit down and to catch up on all the world’s news after graduation in between my Craigslist job surfing and updating my E-harmony profile.

GET A FREE MASSAGE
Syracuse is very into de-stressing activities. Unfortunately they’re all always offered in stressful places. Free yoga classes in an all glass room gave me a month-long case of angina. Every Monday they offer free massages…right in the middle of the student center. I’ve always been too embarrassed to plop down before but there’s not enough time left for me to worry about my pride. From now on I’m taking my shirt off and getting the Monday massages.

DRINK HEALTH CENTER TEA
The last place a normal person would want to take food from is the health center. I, however, am on my new quest to “take advantage by taking” so I’m throwing all caution to the wind. There’s always an ample supply of tea at the Health Center. It’s right between the tissues and garbage can, so there’s no doubt germ-infested students have been all over it. But what’s the harm? It’s free!

If the worst happens and I get sick I’ll just sit in bed under my new Syracuse blanket, read the times, and drink my tea.

So, in an attempt to avoid an ulcer or an unfortuante road rage incident, I vent to you, dear reader. Please feel free to join in and comment about anything–really, anything–that pissed. you. off. this week. Let it all hang out. I feel you.]

People who talk in the library:

Within the stacks, there is always a pretty clear-cut volume hierarchy. You know the second floor computer lounge is bound to be buzzing with group discussions and Facebook revelers taking a break from the books. You also are well aware that the most hidden recesses with “QUIET ZONE” flyers plastered everywhere are meant to be serenely silent. This means that you— Pencil Tap to the Baseline of “Heartless” Guy —are not welcome. You, Girl Who Answers Her Super Effing Loud Ring Tone and Proceeds to Discuss Last Night’s Exploits Loudly, should excuse yourself (and forget your student ID so you can’t get back into the library). “I will listen to my iPod at ear shattering treble and, yes I know you can hear it across the room” Man, I will gladly drop your Nano in my Starbucks if you don’t crank it down. And especially you two, Pretentious Indie D-Bags Discussing Kafka Loudly Enough So We All Know How Devastatingly Brilliant You Are—I might be impressed if I were not attempting to study for my OWN final, not yours.

Chicken Littles.

Everyone has encountered at least one individual with the gift to spread anxiety like a pandemic. It’s hard to tell if their jittery twitching is nerve, coffee, or crack induced as they rattle off dates mentioned in your European History class. Your study group becomes hazardous to your health with this study buddy around—their catastrophic what-if scenarios about the final are ulcer inducing, and your confidence level will plummet as they convince themselves (and you) that achieving anything above a 69 % in this course is utterly ridiculous and completely impossible. If they can’t convince you that the sky is falling, they’ll get you to believe your GPA is.

Mr. and Ms. “I Can Get a C – on the Final and Still Keep My A.”

They already aced the first exams, the midterm and the term paper. While their scholastic planning ahead is most definitely admirable, how are you not ITALS going to let jealousy get the best of you and be irritated as hell by them? Yes, in theory, you could have spent a little more time studying for that first test, but it was the Monday after the first home game weekend! So now you’re stuck busting your ass for a test that’s 45% of your grade while your totally prepared friends skim their notes before heading out to enjoy the end of semester “SH**-SHOW BLOWOUT” your favorite bar is having. Just hope they don’t turn into…

People Apparently Without Finals or Respect for Others.

College is the land of the forgiving. Here, and only here, can you get away with having a living room rave until 4 am…on a Tuesday. While not exactly courteous, it is still excusable to pound on your neighbor’s door after bar crawls and ask them if you can squeeze through their window, onto their roof and into your window after you locked yourself out. And relying upon the kindness of strangers (to take you to the nearest fast food restaurant) is pretty run of the mill, if not advisable for your safety. Hell, you can even throw enormous keggers that flood out of your dorm/ apartment and into the parking lot and your neighbors won’t call the cops! Unless it’s finals week. This means you, a**holes with the amplifiers that live two doors down from me. This means you, beer pong team who live beneath me and evidently needed a practice tournament the night before my Classical Myth exam. This most definitely means you, drunk girls stumbling/ screeching around directly beneath my balcony. Count your blessings that my level- headed roommate was too enveloped in Business Calc to aid me in emptying a bucket of ice water over the railing to help you sober up.

Whew. Ok, now I’ve taken my last sip swig of RedBull, I’m selling back my books and burning my notes, then I am headed home for a month of sheer, decidedly un-educational bliss. What had you almost ripping out your hair (or the pages of your Stats book) this week?

Alright, you’ve just arrived in a new city, eager to explore all it has to offer and excited for classes to begin. Making friends should be easy, right? Well, maybe not…

As I mentioned before, I arrived in Dublin well before my classes started, so I had to wait a few weeks to meet the people in my program. I assumed I’d meet people in my dorm, but I soon realized that a) my dorm only had 12 single rooms and b) no one had moved in yet. Damn. One morning I heard signs on life on my floor, so I went into the communal kitchen to have a look. There I met Colin, who immediately informed me that he knew everything about our school because he went there for undergrad and his masters and now his PhD, and his dad was some important dean. He talked my ear off for an hour, including as many details as possible (including the fact that he had JUST moved out of his parents house…shocking!), until I finally managed to excuse myself. Good lord.

When I finally got my student ID card, I tried meeting new people at the computer lab. Strike two! I was baffled by the amount of students in the labs typing away at a furious pace, as if studying for exams or writing papers—turns out masters theses are due in October, so the labs were crammed with people knee-deep in research. No one seemed open to socializing.

Finally I figured I’d wait it out until classes started, so I could meet all the interesting people in my program. Even that, however, proved difficult. Turns out most of the people in my program had come straight from undergrad, so they already had friends on campus. I found myself naturally gravitating towards the handful of other Americans, which is what I had wanted to avoid—I’m in Ireland, I should be making friends with Irish people! It all seemed rather hopeless—I envisioned myself mostly friendless, sitting alone in pubs and wishing I could call my parents without outrageous international fees.

I eventually realized that I was missing the key element to meeting new people in a new place: patience! You aren’t going to make a ton of best friends right away, and you may find that natives to your country-of-choice already have their social cliques, which can be hard to break into. The best thing I did was participate in as many events as possible. The grad student union had a few social nights at the local pub (where I met my future boyfriend), and some walking tours of campus. I also got a part-time job (more on that later), which helped me make friends (nothing like slave labor for creating bonds!).

Have any hobbies or other extracurricular interests? Pursue them! As an avid yogi, I joined a yoga studio soon after I arrived, so I was able to meet people with a common interest. I also hit up the school’s Fall club fair—it was a bit weird walking around the club tables with all the freshmen (I was 23!), but I sought out the popular tables and ended up joining a society that hosted debates and other interesting lectures, perfect for meeting all sorts of people.

Be outgoing, seek out social opportunities of all sorts, and don’t forget to have fun! In no time you’ll go from new-kid loner to social butterfly.