Getting Your Brain Ready for School Again

Time flies so fast... Photo courtesy of Flickr user redstamp.com and licensed under CC 2.0It is now officially August, which means that we have to shift our brains from thinking, “Summer is barely halfway over, I’ve got tons of time left before school starts,” to “Oh, damn, it’s August and my classes start in like three weeks.” Realizing that your summer is almost over isn’t the most fun thing to come to terms with, especially if you’re having hard time switching from summer mode back to school mode. There are a few things you can do in the dwindling weeks of summer to help make that transition from summer to fall a little easier.

Start Getting Up Earlier

For those of you who have been going to work everyday, this may not be such a big deal. But for those who have been lounging about all summer without any real preset time to get up for the day, this is definitely a good idea for you. It’s a rude awakening when you have to start getting up for your early morning classes when you’ve been sleeping in until noon everyday. Help yourself out by easing into waking up early while you have the chance. Every few days, wake up an hour earlier until you’re able to wake up at the time you’ll have to when you’re back at school. Obviously, you’re going to need to adjust what time you go to bed accordingly. Hopefully doing this will get your body used to your class schedule faster and make you less cranky and grouchy.

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Practicing Safe Texting

Don't be like this guy. Image courtesy of Flickr user mrjasonweaver and licensed under CC by SA 2.0So you're driving home from work and you hear that familiar buzz coming from your pocket, purse, cupholder, passenger seat, etc, etc. It's your phone announcing that it has a brand new, juicy text for you to read. You look from your phone back to the road. To your phone. To the road. Do you pick it up? Do you leave it? Do you wait for a stop light? Do you have the self-control to resist reaching over and grabbing it? You might say, "It's just a peek at the message. Oh, well, actually, I need to reply to that, but it'll just take a second, and we're going down a straight street. No big deal." 

Unfortunately it is a big deal. According to statistics released by the Washington Post in January of this year, 28% of car accidents occur when people are talking on their phones or texting. 200,000 crashes every year are blamed solely on text messaging. So for text-addicted people who can't seem to resist sneaking a peek at that oh-so-urgent text, here are some tips to keep you and the rest of the drivers a little safer on the road.

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New Federal Rules Attempt to Limit Textbook Costs

 New federal provisions will help lower the costs of these bad boys. Image courtesy of Flickr user plutor and licensed under CC by SA 2.0Here's good news to look forward to as we start getting closer to the school year. According to an article that was published in Fort Worth's Star-Telegram this morning, a new set of federal provisions went into effect earlier this month that will help students with the extravagant costs of textbooks. Here is a list of changes that these rules discuss:

• Textbook publishers are required to provide professors with information about book prices, revision history, and alternative formats of the textbooks.

• You know those stupid CDs publishers include in your books that you never end up using? Well, publishers are now required to sell additional material, like CDs, DVDs, or workbooks, separately from textbooks so that you aren't charged for the material you never use.

• Colleges must give students required texts' price and International Standard Book Number (ISBN), an incredibly helpful identifying tool which students can use to search for the book elsewhere at a cheaper price.

These new federal rules are part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 and are aimed at helping lessen student debt. The article estimates that textbooks can cost college students $800 to $1200 a year. At HackCollege, we know how expensive textbooks can be and we've written up an awesome guide on how to help you get your textbooks for free. So with our textbook guide and this great news about these new federal rules, buying your textbooks this year will hopefully leave you a little more money in your bank account.

Organize Your Social Networks with HootSuite

HootSuite can make life easier for busy internet bees. Image courtesy of Flickr user cambodia4kidsorg and licensed under CC by SA 2.0The internet has turned us all from little shriveled technology caterpillars into beautiful, hyperactive social butterflies with our Facebooks, Twitters, Tumblrs, Foursquares, etc, etc. For those who are particularly chatty, keeping up with it all can be a chore. And then there's the matter of reading what everyone else is saying. Man, oh man, sometimes flipping back and forth between your RSS reader to catch up on everything, Twitter to update everyone, or Facebook to add pictures can really just zap all of the energy out of you. Luckily for you crazy updating fiends, HootSuite is here to save you.

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Three Tips to Making the Best of Your Boring Internship

We've all felt this way at work at one time or another. Image courtesy of Flickr user sunshinecity and licensed under CC by SA 2.0Internships are pretty rad. Here at HackCollege, we've got advice to help you choose the best internship, make the most of it, and turn it into a job. However, as some of you might have figured out by now, not every internship is super awesome. Some are actually rather boring. And by "rather boring," I mean that you can feel your brain turning to mush faster than if you watched all of the Twilight movies in a row.

Thankfully I have a sweet internship this summer, but I've definitely been in this situation a couple times before. Even if you feel like gouging your eyes out rather than sitting in that damn cubicle for another five minutes, there are still ways to make the best of your unfortunate internship circumstances.

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The Art of Waking Up

Clocky is just one way to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. Image courtesy of Flickr user Mahalie and licensed under CC by SA 2.0All of us have our own style of waking up and getting ourselves out of bed. Some people are early birds, popping out of bed like pieces of toast out of a toaster. Others can sleep through the apocalypse. People like me have no problem waking up but fail miserably at motivating our sleepy bodies to crawl out from underneath our cozy blankets. But no matter what your sleeping style is, we've all got to get out of bed in time to make it to our classes or, in the case of summer, jobs and internships. If you're particularly sleep-gifted, there are a few things you can do to make sure that you'll make it to all of your early morning destinations.

Set multiple alarms

I've been using this method recently to make sure I'm not late to my summer internship and have found it very effective. There's nothing wrong with snoozing a little bit after your alarm. It's just not possible for me to get out of bed immediately after my alarm goes off. I have to come to terms with the morning, if you will. Snooze is a fabulous invention, but I have been known to hit "off" instead of "snooze" when my alarm goes off. Whoops. In order to avoid this mishap, I set at least two alarms every morning, about ten or fifteen minutes apart. If I accidentally dismiss the first alarm, I have a back up alarm that will still wake me up on time.

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