Tips for First Time College Chefs

I have no idea what these ingredients would make, but I bet it would be delicious. Photo courtesy of frenkieb. Licensed under CC BY-2.0. The experience I have in the realm of cooking is negligible. As of right now, my best dishes are cereal, macaroni and cheese, and eggs. Since I am moving into an apartment next school year (SUCK IT, DORMS), I was planning on spending my entire summer accumulating a wide range of cooking knowledge under the tutelage of my parents back in my hometown of Dallas, Texas.

However, my plan of learning how to cook was sidetracked when I moved to Austin for an internship. So now I have been thrown into a situation where I need to learn to fix food for myself right now. Not going to lie, I definitely panicked a little bit. I’ve been eating dorm food for the past three school years and never had the need to cook for myself.

If you are finding yourself in a situation where you need to cook for yourself and you’ve never really cooked before, don’t panic. You won’t starve. It’s just a new skill that you’ll have to learn. I’m not going to give you some spectacular recipes for the college student (although I’ll show you some websites that help!), but I will help ease the panic of learning how to become self-sufficient when it comes to food.

Keep it Simple

Let’s be real. You’re not going to be fixing a five course meal every single night. You probably don’t have the skills, money, or time to take on something so ambitious. Don’t get overwhelmed with trying to fix something big; just keep it simple. You just need a basic main dish and maybe a vegetable as a side dish.

This may not be true for everyone, but my comfort foods are usually simple meals. Spaghetti and meatballs, baked potatoes, meatloaf, etc, are all relatively easy dishes to fix. Just ask your parents for the recipes and you’ll be on your way to creating a collection of easy recipes that you’ll love.

Click through to read on!

Click to read more ...

Decorate Your Room on the Cheap

Postcards are a cheap, interesting way to decorate a dorm. Image courtesy of Flickr user Arlette. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

It's hard to make a new apartment or dorm (whether for the summer or the rest of the year) feel like a home. Even worse, art is frequently expensive and photos taped to the wall can look collegiate in a bad way. With that in mind, here are some ways to decorate your dorm or apartment on the cheap.

Postcards: Postcards, whether purchased while traveling or through Etsy, are cheap and easy to arrange. Buy a set of five or six (I'm a fan of woodcut-style art) and tape them to your wall in an organized fashion. Because the financial investment is so small, postcards allow you to go beyond Klimt posters and put up art from lesser-known (or at least less-cliché) artists.

Thrift Store Art: If you are looking for an actual framed painting, hit up the nearest Goodwill or estate sale. You can usually find something not-terrible, and even if you can't thrift store canvases can provide a base for you to make your own art. If your own thrift stores aren't turning up anything interesting, try the Goodwill auction site. So long as the painting isn't too large, you're probably safe hanging the canvas from a Command hook.

Read more...

Click to read more ...

Dr. Smartphone or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Data Plan

My precious. Image courtesy of Flickr user liewcf. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.The day had come. I'd maintained employment for a semester and I was about to go full-time for the summer. Of course, my expenses skyrocketed - summer housing, money for food, and the cost of living away from home would make it hard to make ends meet. I couldn't help myself though - as much as I had tried to follow Emily's advice about succeeding with a dumbphone, I just couldn't see myself living for much longer without a smartphone.

I told myself the rational decision was to wait - the iPhone 5 would be out in a few months, maybe a year - at that time, I'd have the money saved up and I'd become a full-fledged Apple fanboy. But as I logged into my Google Voice account that one Tuesday, Sprint had made it too hard to say no. Below the jump, I'll described the steps I took on the road to my smartphone and why I believe a college student is one of the ideal customers for a smartphone today.

Click to read more ...

Google to Announce Chrome Laptop Rental Plan

Could this be your new laptop? Image courtesy of Rachel Wente-Chaney. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA/

Remember the Chrome laptops that were released for testing a few months ago? Well, now we know what's become of them: Google's planning to announce today a $20/month package for students which would allow them to rent a Chrome laptop and the OS that goes along with it. The laptops aren't super-powered, but they don't have to be for most of what students do (watching Netflix, writing papers, and watching Netflix while writing papers).

Read more...

Click to read more ...

How to Build a Hanging Desk in Your Dorm

You could be the envy of your dorm with this awesome hanging desk. Photo by Thomas Frank.Our good friend Thomas Frank just put up a great tutorial on building a dorm-friendly hanging desk over at College Info Geek. Combined with a loft bed, this is a great way to free up space in your inhumanely-sized living quarters.

[How to Build a Hanging Desk in 15 Minutes]

Create a Summer Bucket List to Bust Boredom

Bucket lists: more fun than an actual bucket. Image courtesy of Flickr user marco. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.

For most of us, finals have finished or are about to, and summer is starting. For those of us with interesting internships or study abroad opportunities, this is exciting. However, for those of us (me) who are living at home and attending summer school, summer is looking like it might be a little--dare I say it--boring.

However, it doesn't have to be. Part of the reason summers at home can be kind of dull is that there isn't a whole lot of scheduled activity to occupy your time like there is during the school year with homework and classes. To add insult to injury, your high school friends may not be returning to town, isolating you with your family. As much as you may love your family, everyone involved in the situation gets really tired, really quickly when you feel confined and bored.

Read more...

Click to read more ...

Discussion: Could Open Courseware be the New Campus?

Could class go on if you kept the computers and took away the classroom? Image courtesy of Flickr user Chris.Corwin and licensed under CC by SA 2.0

I know everybody's busy with finals right now, but if you get the chance I encourage you to check out this recent article at Ars Technica. The Gates Foundation is in the process of funding a number of innovative and open higher education projects which could eventually disrupt the entire concept of college as we know it. 

Most of us already use software on campus, either on our own or provided by our schools, that augment education and provide a layer of interactivity and collaboration that didn't exist before. Many of the upcoming projects, notably The Open University, intend to take actual instruction online. 

So what do you think? Is the internet destined to make physical campuses a relic of the past? What aspects of in-person instruction can't be replicated? Go join the debate in the comments!

Mindhacking Your Way Through Finals

Self-control. I has it. Photo courtesy of meave. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.Finals are upon us, and whether you've got a light schedule or one that makes you feel like your books are slowly choking you to death, sometimes the hardest part of the exam period is motivating yourself to get to the end. We've already been through hell this semester, and when classes have finally ended, we're supposed to keep going? I, for one, do not want to. I am enjoying this whole no-classes-all-day thing and would rather just keep pushing that literature review to the back of my mind.

However, we've all got to muster up some self-control this week in order to survive and get all of our studying and paper writing done. So here are some great articles that give you some insights about how you can wrangle up some self-control and get your shit done.

7 Essential Steps to Mastering Temptation

This Psychology Daily article has some very good points that college students can apply to their behavior during finals time. For instance, the article suggests that you choose your willpower battles because as humans we only have a limited amount of willpower. If you force yourself to do one unpleasant thing, you will have less willpower to force yourself to do a larger, more unpleasant thing. For example, if you force yourself to go run seven miles today, it is going to be a lot tougher to force yourself to study for five hours for biochemistry. Pick your battles, especially around finals, because your willpower should be focused almost exclusively on your studies. It's just one big push to the end, so don't trip up when you're so close to the finish lane.

Click here to read on!

Click to read more ...