DrinkOwl is a Poor 21+ College Student's Best Friend

DrinkOwl: Great deals + adorable mascot = awesome.Finding a spare night to go out and let loose is a cornerstone of your college experience. You work hard all week, power through all your classes, read all those chapters, take pages of pages of notes, all so you can find at least one night to relax and spend some time with your friends.

DrinkOwl can help you have the best night possible for less. Downloading the app for iOS, Android, or BlackBerry or using it on the web opens a whole world of inexpensive drink opportunities. DrinkOwl locates you within your city, and then presents you, either on a map or on a list, with several options where there are reduced prices on drinks.

The app also categorizes (and with colored tabs, no less!) what kind of drinks are being served, whether mixed drinks, liquor, or beer so you don't end up at a place that isn't actully serving the kind of dinrk you were hoping for.

DrinkOwl lists over 50,000 drink specials and coupons in over 75 cities. San Antonio is one of those cities, though DrinkOwl is still working on providing the city with "Events" and "Coupons." However, if all it does is provide me with which places have the cheapest drinks in town clostest to me, I am sold. The app also features liquor stores if you'd rather just go buy something and bring it back for a party at your own place.

The app is free to download and should be on the phone of any college student over 21.

Have you ever used DrinkOwl? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]

Laundry Hack: Use Pepper to Keep Your Colors Bright

Want your colors to stay bright and not fade? Just add pepper. Photo courtesy of FeatheredTar. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

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Laundry is an on-going battle in college. You're either trying to find spare quarters for the wash, cursing the non-working washers and dryers, or battling out with other students for that last free washer on Sunday night at 11:00. We've got to separate our colors, remember not to dry that already tight shirt or else it'll shrink, and deal with the colors in our clothes fading after washing them too many times.

Well, thankfully, Reader's Digest has come up with a tip to help prevent that last laundry woe. If you add just a teapoon of pepper to your load of colors, your clothes will keep their bright colors. Adding pepper also helps prevent the colors running with colors on other pieces of clothing. In addition to setting your washer to cold, pepper seems like a great, inexpensive way to keep your clothes looking their best, no matter what kind of hell you put them through during your college adventures.

[via Reader's Digest and Lifehacker]

How to Jump Start Your Week

Need to jump start your week? Photo courtesy of CrazySphinx. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Need a laptop? We've teamed up with Intel to bring you the HackCollege Laptop Chooser. If you share the Laptop Chooser, you'll be entered to win a Samsung Series 9 Notebook!

Lazy weekends are awesome. Somehow you've managed to have little or no homework. All you've done is lounge around in your PJs, watch TV, and eat leftovers. Or you've taken advantage of your free time and gone out with your friends for a well-deserved break. Whatever you did with your awesome free weekend, the reality of Monday is about to set in. 

Getting your week started after a long break or a lazy weekend with no work is hard to do. You've become accustomed to doing absolutely whatever you want, be it drink all weekend or sit on your couch in your PJs for ten hours. So how do you kick yourself back into high gear for the week to come? Here are a few tips for getting yourself started.

Be Well Rested and Eat Breakfast

Sleep gets more and more elusive as the semester goes on. So as you find yourself with some free time, use it to catch up on your Z's. Go to bed a little earlier than normal to ensure you get your recommended eight hours of sleep. Being tired after a long weekend is not going to help you get your week started off right. Instead of being productive, you'll just be looking for another nap.

I know a lot of college kids say "to hell with breakfast." Who wants to spend the money or time eating breakfast? Well, forgive me for sounding like your mother, but breakfast is actually worth it. It gives you a burst of energy in the morning to help get you through your first classes. Without my breakfast, I am extraordinarily cranky and moody-- hangry, if you will. With my tummy full of cereal or a bagel, I can actually concentrate on my professor's lectures instead of thinking of when I can bolt to the dining hall to grab something to eat.

Additionally, eating breakfast is actually healthier for you. If you don't eat breakfast, even just a light one, there is a very good chance that you will be starving by the time lunch rolls around. Instead of eating a nice, moderate lunch, you will be eating anything you can get your hands on, whether it's cookies, donuts, or something else that might not be so healthy for you, like a sandwich with veggies, some sushi, or a salad.

Give Yourself Some Cushion Time

When you get back to work on your homework after a long weekend, you might be inclined to think, "I must give myself no breaks; I've got to go, go, go." And while that is very admirable, you're going to burn yourself out really fast. Once you've gotten done with your classes and start to work on your homework for the night, give yourself a little "you" time. This gives your brain a nice little break between classes and homework. You can't go 100 miles per hour all the time, so cut yourself a little slack. Work it into your schedule.

Use this time to browse your favorite website, pick up your room a little bit, empty the dishwasher, or just watch a mindless TV show that can take yourself off the academic intensity of the day. Having a break between your intense brain activites will help you power through the large amount of work you have to do after your long weekend.

Start With the Small Stuff

Just motivating yourself to start your homework can be a battle. Your gaming consol is calling your name, urging you to play just one more level, your TV wants you to watch just one more episode. Jumping into a huge, labor-intensive project then can be quite daunting after you've just had a homework-free weekend.

So to break the ice, so to speak, of getting back into the groove, start with the little tasks you need to do. Send that email to your professor, read that ten page assignment, write down the due dates of your big projects. These little things are important but can sometimes slip through the cracks because they're so small. Do them to help push you into the mindset of work, and soon you'll just be chugging along again.

What do you do to help you get started on your week? Let us know in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]

What You Should Be Doing to Prepare for Graduate School Right Now

Ready to immerse yourself into the academia world of grad school? Make sure you're prepared to get in first. Photo courtesy of cheri lucas.. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.At the beginning of the summer, I wrote a short series about what college seniors should be doing to get ready for the real world after college. As I myself enter my senior year, I'm trying to keep all of those things in mind to make myself a more marketable choice for either employers or those in admissions offices. However, as I am leaning towards going to graduate school soon after graduating from my undergraduate program, I am realizing that there are more concrete things that I should be doing to prepare for the grad school process.

As I began to think about graduate school, I started to panic. Some of my friends have already set their date on their GRE, have narrowed down their grad school choices, and are already filling out applications. I mean, wow. I feel so far behind. I hope that those who are going through the same thing that I am can learn from what I'm doing to prepare myself and not feel so overwhelmed by the whole process, because it is extremely terrifying.

Narrow Down Your Interests

Clearly as a senior, you've already been immersed in your major for a few years. You've taken all the classes, met all the professors, and feel comfortable in your own field. However, when you apply for graduate school,  you're usually applying for a very specific niche within that field. For instance, I'm not just going to go to grad school for Communication. I'll be going to study something very specific, like media law or TV production or fan cultures. If you know what your specific niche is within your field, that is awesome. Some people (ahem, me) aren't quite so sure yet.

Before you can go much further, you should start evaluating what your particular interests are in your major. What is it that really inspires you? What academic articles do you really love reading? Once you realize what that is, then you should start doing extracurricular work in that subsection. Start a blog about it, communicate with others who talk about. Start an independent research class with a professor about the subject. This is the route that I am taking. My independent study will be focused on something extremely specific within the field of Communication and will help narrow the kinds of programs I look for in graduate schools. Go all out in this specific area and become an undergraduate expert on it. It will make you really stand out to the programs you apply to.

Prepare for the GRE

If you have not already signed up for the GRE, do so immediately. I'm signed up to take the test in October, on a weekend that I don't have anything major due. Check your calendar to make sure you can take the test on a date that you're not too stressed out with school already.

It also helps to buy a preparation book or two. You can take a course if you wish, but I'm self-teaching myself the methods of how to answer GRE questions and don't seem to be having much of a problem with it. Applications for grad schools are usually due between December and January, so make sure you take the test sooner rather than later so that your scores can be sent to your desired schools in time.

Start Researching Programs

Now that you've narrowed down what you want to focus on in grad school, you can use that to decide which program you'd like to actually study in. This itself is a daunting task because there are so many options. It's like choosing a college all over again. There are two really great ways to start narrowing your focus if you literally have no idea where to start. First, think of the academic figures whom you admire. For me, it's the "father of fandom" Henry Jenkins. Dr. Jenkins has taught at MIT and currently teaches at USC. Thus, my attention of graduate schools was immediately drawn there. Look back on articles you've read in the past and figure out who keeps recurring. Who is the current authority in your field of interest? Where do they teach?

A second way of choosing grad schools is to look at where your favorite professors went to school. Two of my favorite professors went to the University of Washington in Seattle, and so that immediately goes on my list of schools to check out. Clearly, you should also look at the schools that have the best programs that focus on what you're interested in specifically, but if you have no idea where to start, those are good places to start.

Ask for Help

About three weeks ago, I felt completely overwhelmed to the point where I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. How am I even supposed to figure all this stuff out by myself? The answer is that you don't have to. There are reasons we have professors and advisors at school; they're here to help. Set up a meeting with your advisor or a professor you trust the most and who has known your work for quite sometime. Ask them questions-- what do I need to be doing? Where should I apply? What do I need to do between now and the next three months? The next three months?

There's no shame in asking for help, and having someone to help you guide you through the steps is incredibly helpful. It helps take a bit of the stress off so at least you have a general guideline of what you need to do instead of having absolutely nothing to go on. Applying for grad school is an extremely exhausting process, so make sure you're prepared as we enter application season.

What are you doing to prepare for graduate school? Let us know in the comments!

[via USAToday College]

How To Deal with Stress as a Student

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodstressyousuck. Photo courtesy of Sara. Nel. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.The semester has barely started and I am already starting to really feel the pressure of this school year weighing down on me. I'm a senior, which means in about nine months, I am going to be kicked lovingly out of the doors of my college into the beautiful harshness of reality. Needless to say, I'm scared shitless. I'm thinking about graduate school, the GRE, applications, job opportunities, what I'm going to do with, you know, the rest of my entire life. I've got classes and readings and papers and literature reviews and scripts to annotate. I've got my future basically resting on my shoulders.

Who wouldn't be stressed out?

I've already been seeing how stress is affecting me, and it's barely even September. The entirety of last week I hardly slept. I'm hungry all the time. I'm  extraordinarily cranky. I pick fights. I am not a pleasant person to be around. And even though I understand that it's all just the stress talking, I have no idea what to do about it. I lie awake at night for several hours, thinking about all of the things I have yet to do, before falling into an uneasy night's sleep.

Luckily, last Friday, I stumbled onto this Lifehacker article-- "What Stress Actually Does to You and What You Can Do About It." I mean, hello. Thank you God for timing. The article is actually a really great read, and helps you understand what exactly stress is and how it can affect your daily life. I'd encourage anyone who is stressed (aka everyone) to give it a quick read.

Here are some tips that I have found useful in my journey to a less stressed life.

Relax Before you Sleep

Sleeping is the main thing that stress affects for me, and it just all snowballs downhill from there. If I'm tired, I'm cranky and I don't feel like doing anything productive, which just gets me more and more stressed. I realized that I needed to figure out a way to really relax before I got in bed so that I could get to sleep more easily and not be wound up about everything. Several things that I have tried include taking a bath or shower right before bed (being clean and warm makes me sleepy), watching a mindless, happy TV show, and reading a book. For just those few minutes, you're taken away from the stressful situation your school work puts you in. Your mind relaxes, and so does your body, and you're ready for bed.

Eat Healthily and Exercise

You'll actually feel a lot better about yourself if you eat healthy meals. Your body will feel more energized and therefore be able to deal with stress better. And secondly, it will be one less thing you have to stress about. Instead of worrying about how you probably shouldn't have eaten three pieces of pizza, you can focus your energy on what really matters

Exercising is a fantastic way to deal with your stress. You can channel your feelings of anxiety into your work out and get them out of your body. And just like eating healthy, you'll be less worried about your body and health and more focused on your school work.

Create Goals

Part of stress is the unexpected. I don't know what I'm going to be doing after graduation; I don't know how I'm going to tackle my thesis; I don't know when I'm going to have time to write that paper due in two weeks. Therefore, part of dealing with stress is to combat the unexpected.  You can't always know, but you can be prepared. Create goals list for yourself to help you deal with what you can. If you know you want to go to grad school, figure out when to take the GRE and just focus on that for right now. If you know you need to write that paper, look at your calendar and figure out a good chunk of time when you can sit down and write it.

Making goals and to do lists is a way to organize your life into manageable blocks that you can deal with one day at a time. It's too much to think about those huge projects all in one day. Take them in small bites, and you'll accomplish them step by step. Your progressive accomplishments in those projects will be able to be seen, and as you continue to check things off your to do list, you'll feel less and less stressed.

How do you deal with stress? Let us know in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]

Shy People Can Make Friends in College Too

Don't worry, doggie. You can make friends too. Photo courtesy of ♡Blackangelツ. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.I've always been a fairly shy person. I don't speak out unless I have something to say that I actually think will contribute to the conversation. I spend more time thinking of what I'm going to say than I do talking. I hesitate because I'd rather be quiet and ignored than given the "did you really just say that" look. 

As a consequence, it was a little hard for me to find friends in college. A lot of people feel like this once they enter their freshman year. We're not super weird, we're not stupid, we're not mute-- we're just shy. However, college is about getting outside of your box. So if you're shy, it's time to prepare to shake off that protective layer and put yourself out there. If you don't, you'll miss out on the best things that college has to offer.

Smile

People will naturally gravitate towards you if you appear open and friendly. If you cross your arms all the time, scowl, and never look people in the eyes, people are going to assume you don't have any friends because you're a bitch. That might or might not be the case, but if you do want to make some friends in college, open up a little bit. All you have to do is smile. Smile at people walking by you on campus, at the people serving you lunch, at a funny joke someone tells in class. If you present yourself as someone who people might want to talk to, you're already halfway there.

Smiling will also help increase your confidence as well. It just brightens your face and by a secondary affect, it makes you feel better inside. Additionally, if you smile at someone, chances are, they're going to smile back. Seeing this reaction will help you realize that you can connect with someone positively with something as simple as a smile.

Carry Gum and Mints

"Hey, do you have any gum?" is an ever-present phrase pretty much anywhere you go. Carry some with you so that you can have a reason to talk to someone. Better yet, practice taking the initiative in a conversation by offering gum to those in class around you. Most of the time, people will take you up on your offer and thank you. It's a great way just to form a very simple connection. It can lead to a conversation or it can just let you know that you have a friendly face in the classroom.

Talk to People in Class

If you've exhausted your gum routine, take the next step to making friends. The people you're in class with are going to be the people that you're going to be with for the next four years for the most part. This is especially true once you get into classes of your major. The best part about the people you're in class with is that you already know you have something in common with them-- this class. Strike up a conversation about how stupid last night's homework was. As depressing as it can sound, misery loves company. Complaining about how hard classes are is a cornerstone of college life. If you had trouble understanding something from last night's reading, ask someone sitting next to you. You already have a foundation base to take to the people sitting around you-- use it.

Get Involved

This is the number one way I've met people on my college campus. Yes, it's a little daunting and terrifying at first, but joining a club is a great way to meet people and form friendships. You can join something as general as a community service club or something as wild as a dancing group (which I most definitely did my freshman year). Go to your school's involvement fair at the beginning of each semester to see what activities and clubs your university offers. There is often a niche that you will love and fit right in. Right now, I'm part of Trinity's TV station and I love it. I meet new people and friends every semester. So branch out and try something new. Break out of your shell and you'll forget you were ever shy in the first place.

How do you help yourself get out of your box to make friends? Let us know in the comments!

[via College Cures]

Best Note Taking Apps for Students

What is your favorite way of taking notes? Photo courtesy of Marco Arment. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.Last week, Lifehacker rounded up the five best note taking apps. As students, we are constantly taking notes, both in and out of the classroom. When did that emperor die again and who succeeded him? What's that equation? When am I supposed to be at that meeting? There is not an hour in the day when I'm not constantly taking down notes on all of the stuff I have to remember.

That's why Lifehacker is super awesome in providing this roundup of the best note taking apps. Some of them you will have clearly heard of before, and some of them might be new to you. For their full review, check out their article here.

Evernote

Duh. Come on. HackCollege freaking loves Evernote. Perhaps one of the most awesome things about Evernote is that you can get to it on just about any piece of technology you have. It has a webapp, desktop app for both Windows and iOS, mobile apps for iOs, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7. I mean, there is no escaping Evernote. It's a great organizing tool to tag and collect notes, whether it's lecture notes or just a quick jot to remind you to do something. It also lets you capture pictures and save them too, which is really helpful for when you get an assignment sheet. Take a picture of it, save it with Evernote, and now you don't have to carry the sheet around with you wherever you go.

Shep would probably marry Evernote if he could. Here's his great review of the service for students. that was featured on Evernote's blog.

Springpad

According to Lifehacker, Springpad is the best at automatically guessing what you've just uploaded. After you've uploaded something from online, a picture, or a note, it organizes it into your folders without needing prompting from you. Now that is organizing. Just like Evernote, Springpad also has a webapp plus mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Microsoft OneNote

Functioning like a word processor, OneNote takes Word to the next level. It saves automatically, gives you much more freedom on the type of information you enter and where you put it, and also lets you create specific notebooks for different projects or classes for greater organization. You can download OneNote with MS Office for both your computer and with your phone. This option is definitely more expensive than free services like Evernote, but if you are gung-ho on MS applications, OneNote may work better for you.

Simplenote

Another free application (yay free!), Simplenote is an up and coming note taking service. It has a great developer community that keeps coming up with new add-ins to make the service more functional and easy to use. One of the most interesting features of this service is that it allows you to search through revision history for your notes. If you're looking for a fresh new way to take your notes, you should check out Simplenote.

Google Docs

Although this didn't make it onto Lifehacker's list, Shep and I have proved that Google Docs is a really awesome note taking tool. Google Docs is especially useful when you're in class with someone you know. Check out how to use Google Docs for collaborative note taking.

Paper

This revolutionary way of taking notes has been around since, well, okay it's been around for basically forever. As Lifehacker did their roundup, they found that a lot of people actually prefer to take notes with your basic pen and paper. In fact, in a follow up survey, 35% of people said that they use pen and paper, following just behind Evernote with 36% of people. I actually find this really interesting and wonder if this percentage stays true when the demographic is younger and in college.

Personally I am actually a big fan of handwriting notes, of certain kinds. My to do list is invariably in a little fat notebook that fits perfectly in my pencil pouch. I don't have to take out my phone or computer to just jot down something quick I need to remember to do or buy that day. For class notes, I take faster (and actually legible) notes on a computer, but for day to day notes, I prefer handwritten notes.

What is your preferred style of note taking? Have you tried any of the above applications? Let us know in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]

What First Amendment Rights Mean for Students

Do you know your rights? Photo courtesy of euthman. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.Last week, I received a mass email from a group called The Fire. According to their website, their mission is "to defend and sustain individual rights at America's colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience-- the Essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity." I took a law class two semesters ago, and so the article that The Fire had sent to me intrigued me, and I wanted to take a closer look at it.

The article stated that 67% of the nation's largest and most prestigious campuses currently have speech codes that violate the First Amendment. This statistic is quite alarming, and so after reading the article (which you can find here), I had a look at their full PDF study where they came to this conclusion of the violation of students' right to free speech, which you can also look at here.

What I came away with from reading and understanding this report and article was less on what The Fire had to say, and more of what I felt as a student myself. Firstly, it's important to understand that a college cannot violate your First Amendment rights if it is a private institution. The First Amendment says that the government cannot infringe on your rights; a private institution can do essentially whatever it pleases. At least half of the universities that The Fire "investigated" were private colleges. So before you think that your rights are being violated because your dean is censoring your newspaper, realize that that only applies at state-funded schools.

Secondly, even if you do attend a private university, it is important to understand what your rights as a student are and how to cope with the administration and the freedom of speech. Does your newspaper have to be submitted for review by the administration before it can be printed? How does this affect its content? How do you as a student feel about it? How can you have a dialogue between the administration and students about this censorship?

Some universities have good reasons for their censorship. Universities are a place of diverse thoughts and backgrounds, and it would be extremely tense if there were groups who promoted hateful ideas against other groups of people, whether the ideas were racist, religiously intolerant, sexist, etc. On the other hand, these types of speech are (usually) defended by the Constitution. So are universities censoring senselessly or are they doing it with purpose? Are they doing it to maintain power and control or to try to protect their students?

Far from telling you what you should think about colleges and student rights, I simply want to encourage other college students to be aware of what kind of rights you have on your campus. If you attend a government-funded school, your rights are featured in the picture above. If you attend a private school, your rights are listed a document that your school has. If you are concerned about the freedoms your university provides or lacks to provide, ask to see it. Gather a group of other concerned students to discuss what you think should be allowable on a campus. Create a form, a dialogue of some sorts. Just be aware. Understand and protect your rights as a college student.

What are your views on student freedoms on campus? Are you even concerned with your rights as a student on a college campus? Let us know in the comments.

[via The Fire]