Build a Better To Do List

There is only one way that I survive life as a college student: Lists. I’m in five different classes, I’m the associate producer for one of Trinity’s TV shows, I write for this site, and just like every other college kid, I have to occasionally buy toothpaste and face wash. My life would be a hot mess if I didn’t make lists of all of things that I needed to get done. If an assignment doesn’t make it onto my list because I forget to write it down, it will not get done.

 

As a list-aficionado, I am always looking for new tricks to make my list-making skills even more efficient, so when I came across these two great articles about lists, I was eager to try out the tips. Here are some of the tips that I found the most helpful and some that I myself use every day to keep my life in order.

 

Plan Ahead

At the end or beginning of each day, I take about 10-15 minutes to sit at my desk and make a list of things that I need to get done that day. Doing this mentally prepares me for the day ahead and gives me an idea of how much work I’m going to have to do that day. This way I’m not surprised by any assignments that may have slipped to the back of my mind. It’s a good habit to get into and it will generally make you a more organized person.

 

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How To Sync Facebook Events with your Google Calendar

Shockingly simple.

Moving For Cheap: How to Score Cardboard Boxes

A collegiate treasure chest! Image courtesy of Flickr user Charley Lhasa. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.As Shep's article last week brought to our attention, moving season is upon us. However, as I discovered while packing last year, moving can be annoyingly expensive--particularly when it comes to finding enough cardboard boxes to pack up your things.

This Passionate Homemaking piece on moving, along with its Lifehacker writeup (the comments of which are worth a look), suggest searching for cardboard boxes on Craigslist or at liquor/grocery stores. However, if you live on a rural campus, Craigslist may be unhelpful and liquor stores unavailable. With that in mind, here are some more campus-specific resources for cardboard boxes.

Mail Services - My campus's mail services department has a huge pile of boxes by the trashcan from students receiving packages. The employees are glad to let you have them for free either to repurpose for shipping or--for larger care packages--to pack. These won't take care of your largest items, but they're useful for books or small collections of things. At my school, mail services is also helpful in providing tape and bubble wrap (and larger boxes) for a fee--not ideal, but useful in a pinch.

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Get a Head Start on Packing by Donating and Digitizing

 Everything on this shelf (except the animal figurines) could be digitized and stored on a tiny hard drive. If you're moving out soon, it's a no-brainer. Image courtesy of Flickr user OctopusHat

You probably don't have to move out of your dorm room or apartment until the summer, but that doesn't mean you can't get some of the grunt work out of the way now. I've already written about preparing a "go box" in April for stuff you know you don't need in the final weeks of school, but this is also a great opportunity to streamline your possesions.

I'm not saying you have to go all Kelly Sutton on your room and get rid of everything under the sun, but I guarantee you that you'll find plenty of stuff after a quick inventory that you would never miss. Start with the obvious: your closet. You're bound to have a pile of t-shirts from campus events and old high school functions that you never wear, so throw them in a bag and take them to Goodwill. If you're lucky, your school will even park some big donation bins in and around the dorms. 

Most of us own a lot of media; books, movies, music, etc. With a little work, all of these can be converted to a digital format, saving you tons of space (and valuable time) when you have to pack up your room in the midst of finals.

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How to Make a Difference This Earth Day

Hug a tree this Earth Day. Photo courtesy of snre. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Friday is Earth Day! It comes around every year on April 22nd and in order to celebrate great mother earth, I’m going to give you a few easy tips to be ecofriendly on campus. Sometimes you might find it a little challenging to stay green while at school. You’ve got too much stuff to worry about, and plus, it’s not like you really have any control over the energy use of your entire dorm building. You can’t go replacing all of the dorm light bulbs with more energy efficient ones. However, you can start building ecofriendly habits that will help the environment, even when it’s not Earth Day.

Recycling

This is a no brainer. You should make a habit of recycling anything that can be recycled. Old notes and tests, water bottles, and the now-empty boxes that your mother sent you stuffed of goodies. If your university doesn’t provide you with a recycling bin for your room, either request one or spend a couple bucks and get a separate bin for your recyclable stuff. It’s a small thing for you to remember to do that can make a difference.

My sophomore year of college, a group of students was concerned that the university didn’t offer glass recycling. So they got together and organized a new glass recycling program that was entirely student-run. If your school doesn’t offer certain types of recycling, take the initiative at your school to make the planet just a little bit better.

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Leading Through Action (or, Not Everything is for Your Resume)

Leadership is more than standing at a podium. Image courtesy of Flickr user Young Fabians. Licensed under CC BY NC SA 2.0.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of campus leadership. It’s the sort of phrase that my school likes to print on admissions brochures as a way to distract people from our lack of a football team. We even offer a leadership certificate (it is as ridiculous as you would imagine), and there are awards for leaders, and we talk a lot about how the liberal arts Train People to Lead.

The longer I’m at school, though, the more that it’s becoming irritatingly clear to me that there is a difference between being a campus leader--getting certificates and learning the psychology of leadership and racking up the most volunteer hours--and actually leading people on campus in creating something. The idea of hacking college, for me, has always been about the latter far more than the former. Talking to my friends at school, it’s become more and more clear that I’m not the only one who feels like this.

Being a campus leader is exclusive--there are only so many club spots to fill or awards to earn. Leading on campus is inclusive--literally anyone can make something neat, whether it’s a website about how to hide your beer cans, or an app that helps students, or a video that Ashton Kutcher tweeted about. Anyone who works and who has an idea can do something useful and interesting--you can have an entire campus of leaders because the world is full of things that need to be fixed and the world is so, so much bigger than just your campus.

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The Best Cities (and The Worst) for Unpaid Internships

Peachtree Street's a fine place to get your interning on. Photo courtesy of Flickr user k1ng. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it - New York, New York.

You certainly were hearing this after the Yankees started their season on Opening Day this year, but it's not what you want to be singing if you want an internship this summer. Or Chicago, L.A., D.C., San Fran, or Minneapolis.

What you would want to be singing is more like Alabama's Song of the South. Richmond, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Atlanta offer some of the best values for cost-of-living and some nice Fortune 500 companies. Don't forget the Midwest though - St. Louis, Englewood, CO, and Omaha also top the list, with the rare Northeast example being the Steel City - Pittsburgh, PA.

Why the South and Midwest? Lower costs of living make your unpaid internship means getting more bang for your intellectual buck. As much as I'd love to intern for my favorite baseball team - the OTHER New York baseball team, my beloved Mets - the cost of living in NYC is worlds above the cost of living in Gainesville or the rest of Florida for that matter. If there's a comparable option somewhere closer or somewhere cheaper, it might be worth it for you to seek that out rather than to get starry-eyed by L.A., NYC, or D.C.

For more information, check out Money.Bundle's article here.

Peter Thiel and the Higher Education "Bubble"

Pst...Peter Thiel thinks we're all wasting our time on this college thing. Image courtesy of Techcrunch and licensed under CC 2.0

By now, many of you have read Peter Thiel's thoughts on higher education that have been making the rounds on the internet all week. Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook is certainly an intelligent man, but let's remember that his specialty is in entrepreneurship, so it's not surprising that he'd evangelize the concept of dropping out of school to start a business.  That being said, let's deconstruct the two main points his argument.

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