College

            Living in propinquity with another person can be difficult. As much as I love my former roommate (and I do), there were times that we had to compromise our old habits to accommodate each other. What you have to realize when you enter a new living situation is that everyone has different lifestyles. Living together isn’t about combining everyone’s lifestyles, it’s about creating new ones that suit all of you. To help you all live in peace and harmony, here’s a few tips: 

·         Talk. Really. Talk about your homes, your families, your friends. It will give you all a better understanding of how each person is used to living.

·         Collaborate. Make your room/suite/apartment be an expression of each of you. Allow everyone to contribute to the decoration of your space.·         Set some ground rules. If you are having trouble compromising on a daily basis, write up a contract. ·         Make a chore wheel. I know of very few people who enjoy cleaning. And when you live in a small space, the littlest mess can seem a lot bigger. Make a chore wheel with all of your names and all of the chores that need to get done. Spin it every week so everyone trades off.·         Get lost together. No joke. You’ll learn a lot about your roommates and your new surroundings by wandering the campus/city together. Find cool places that you like to hang out at. Make it a mission to go out some place new each week, or go out for lunch every Sunday. It will create traditions within your new family.·         Give it time. Don’t expect to hit it off immediately with your roommates. If you do, that’s great! But if you don’t, give it a while. You’ll grow on each other.  

I’m so sorry for being MIA for the past month or so. It’s ridiculous! I moved back to Boston three weeks before school started to go through RA training which kept me busy for literally every waking moment, and then school started last Monday, so I’ve been swamped!

Anyway, I hope you all are well and have successfully started another school year. To kick things off, I’ve just got a few random tips to help make this year great!

 ·         Organize – If you don’t already, keep a daily planner with all of your assignments and appointments. Also keep a weekly schedule that visually blocks out periods of time that you regularly have scheduled, like classes and weekly meetings. Keep it up on a wall or bulletin board; some place where you can easily see it. Also keep a monthly schedule. This will give you a big picture look at things so you know what obligations you have coming up. That way you won’t all of a sudden realize you have way too many things to do in one week.·         Get involved – Trust me on this: life is better when you’re leading a full one. Find organizations that pique your interests. It will keep you active and give you a chance to meet new people.·         Nip it in the bud – whether it’s homework, relationships, or the dishing, get it taken care of before it all piles up.·         Sit up front – If you find yourself missing things in class, not following, or just falling asleep, sit in the front row. You have a better chance of hearing and seeing everything.·         Keep in touch – It’s easy to get caught up in your own busy schedule, but remember to keep in touch with your friends on and off-campus. Even the littlest of things will help to keep you close. Text someone you haven’t seen in a while and ask if they’d like to join you for lunch, or watch your favorite TV show (i.e. Gossip Girl Mondays in Sara’s room!)·         Ask questions – If you don’t understand that passage in The Iliad, ask your instructor. If you wonder if that toaster is allowed in your dorm room, ask your RA (it probably isn’t), and if you want to know how you’re friend’s relationship is going, ask him/her about it. It’s always good to stay informed! 

I hope this year goes great for everyone!

As always, words of wisdom:

“The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.” – Ben Stein

First off, sorry that these posts are fewer and farther between. Working full time will do that to ya.

As I may have mentioned before, my mother is a high school counselor. I’ve gotten used to being her guinea pig for various surveys, programs, and presentations. Her latest is a presentation to be given to students in ROP (Regional Occupation Program) classes to inform them of the long run benefits of an education, which she had me proofread and edit. And I think some of this info will be very helpful to some of you.

As I hope all of you aware, a college education will earn you money. That is to say that you make more with a degree than you do without. Now I know plenty of people will think, “yeah yeah yeah, but I can do just fine without one!” Can you? Can you, really?

The following data refer to annual costs in Santa Cruz, California (my hometown)

· Housing (2bd 1 ½ bath) - $1,202
· Utilities (cell, electricity, DSL, cable) - $235
· Food (Eat in some and Eat out) - $350
· Transportation (Gas, insurance, car payments, basic maintenance) - $721
· Clothes (A few basic clothes) - $75
· Health Care (Basic Health Insurance) - $58
· Entertainment (Have fun, go out a little) - $100
· Personal (Basic needs) - $25
· Miscellaneous (Travel, other expenses) - $100
· Savings (average 5% of income) - $143
Total: $36,108

Before we even add these up, think about how accurate these numbers are. I don’t know about you, but I spend way more money on clothes than $75 per year. I just spent $50 last week! $25 for personal needs? I think not. And with gas prices skyrocketing, $721 probably doesn’t cut it. But, if we assume these cost estimates are correct, that brings annual expenses to $36,108. If you work full time for a full year, that’s 2000 hours. 36,108 divided by 2000 = $18 an hour. This means that in order to get by, even in a thrifty manner, you need to be making $18 an hour and working full time. (Oh, and by the way, these estimates don’t included taxes. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Instead, subtract 25%.) As you are hopefully aware, minimum wage is not $18/hour. More like $8/hour. This means that it is impossible to get by on minimum wage.

So how do you make more than minimum wage (and therefore survive?) Education!

The following are estimates of the hourly and yearly wages per each education level.

· No High School Diploma - $10.70/hour - $21,400/year
· High School Grad - $15.10/hour - $30,200/year
· Associate Degree - $18.50/hour - $37,000/year
· Bachelor’s Degree - $24.60/hour - $49,350/year
· Professional Degree - $35.60/hour - $71,350/year

According to this data, you need at least an associate degree in order to support yourself. Really, given that even $36,108 a year is cutting it close, you need to be making more, which means a BA is in order, and the only way you can get a BA, and therefore survive in this world is to go to college.

“These days an income is something you can’t live without – or within.” – Tom Wilson

Community colleges tend to have a certain stigma associated with them: they’re not good schools, nobody who’s anybody goes to them, essentially, they’re a joke. Many of the people who graduate from my high school go to the local community college, Cabrillo College, which has been coloquially dubbed “Cabrehab.” I’ve heard students say that they feel like Cabrillo isn’t “real school.” The biggest problem with this kind of thinking is that, if someone feels like they are not attending real school, they won’t work  real hard, and what I’ve noticed is that sometimes, my community college friends work harder than I do at a private school.

Community colleges have so many qualities that make them perfect for some people: they’re local, so students can live at home and commute, they’re cheaper than most 4-year universities, and they’re flexible. Community colleges understand that their students may want to transfer, so they let you know exactly what you have to do to get the most out of your community college education and then transfer to another university. And that’s where it gets hard. My friends in community college have more general education requirements than I do because their school specializes in provided such a wide range of academics, whereas mine is more focused in particular areas of study. Also, because many of my friends are looking to transfer, they have to work their butts off to get the credits they need to do that as soon as possible. It’s hard! And I admire them so much for doing what it takes.

But not all people realize just how much work community college can be. If they see their school as a joke, they will treat it as such. People may think that they’ll really start working once they transfer to a four-year school, so they slack off in community college. What they don’t realize is that they only way the can transfer in the time they’d like is to pay attention, ask questions, and create a plan for acheiving their dreams. This can’t happen if they’re slacking.

My advice for those of you looking into community college is to take it seriously. It is real school. Maybe you’d like to spend four years at a community college, maybe just two and then transfer. Either way, it will only be worth it if you get as much as you can out of the experience. (That goes true for any other school in the country.) And if you think only “nobodys” go to community college, take a look at these people who did (provided by collegeboard.com)

• Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer prize-winning poet
• Eileen Collins, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut
• Joyce Luther Kennard, California Supreme Court justice
• Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former United Nations (UN) ambassador
• Jim Lehrer, news anchor
• Robert Moses, choreographer and dance company founder
• Sam Shepard, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright
• James Sinegal, CEO of Costco
• Maxwell Taylor, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

If they can do it, so can you!

“I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” - Jim Carrey

I’m going to take a moment to break with tradition (or at least, the tradition I’ve followed for the past few weeks) and not write about college myths. As I was browsing the TeenInk site today, I noticed TeenInk Raw, the unedited version of the regular website, and it got me thinking. I think it’s safe to assume that all students entering college wonder how it’s going to be different from high school. Of course, most people first think of the difficulty of classes and the big change in living situations. And yes, these are undoubtedly major differences. I’d like to discuss another one, though; something that I particularly noticed as being a difference between high school and college, and that is content.

As TeenInk Raw stands testament to, teenagers are brimming with ideas that cannot and should not always be edited for the general public or younger audiences. High school is edited. College is not. High school students certainly talked to each other about “unedited” subjects, like drugs and sex, and in an “unedited” vernacular language involving many of the words discussed by the late great George Carlin. However, a high school teacher would probably not talk to their students about unedited subjects in an unedited language. But a college professor would.

In a single year of college courses, I think every single one of my professors used “the F word” at least once, and one of my required reading book was called “The History of Shit” (an pretty interesting read, should you feel up to it.) My professors were also perfectly fine with discussing drugs or sex, including their students’ personal habits in both areas. As one professor put it “We’re all adults here.” He was right. In college, you are an adult, as are your professors, so the age difference doesn’t matter as much. In high school, I had many teachers whom I felt like I could speak with as equals. I respected them, they respected me, no problem. In which case, I never felt like there was a distinct student/teacher authority line that was shattered upon reaching college. No, nothing that dramatic. But the difference was still noticeable.

As always, words of wisdom: “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.” - Clare Booth Luce