This Week's Best Questions on Discuss Campus - Week of March 19, 2010

Study, study, study. People on the quarter system: done with finals yet? Photo by flickr user xb3 and licensed under CC BY 2.0.

We are back from South by Southwest and slowly recovering. (If you want my recap, you can read my post on my personal blog.) Just because we were in Austin for the week didn't mean there wasn't plenty of action over at Discuss Campus. Here are this week's best questions.

Easy lunches that can be made in a dorm

Next quarter, my roommate and I both have classes that go straight through lunch. We don't have time to go to the dining commons or buy food on campus. What are some easy lunches that can be made in a dorm room? We only have a microwave and a mini fridge. It has to be something we can throw in our backpack and eat cold.

Mac/Web application for taking econ notes

What's a good app to take economics notes in?

For some reason my professor insists on making everything in every class relate to T-Accounts and there just is no easy way to handle that in evernote which is my notetaking application of choice.

I really dislike using pen and paper since I can type faster then the professor speaks on my laptop.. (Kinda nice way of slacking off btw, just type every word spoken and read it later)

What are some good student-centric conferences?

I just got back from SXSW (which was amazing). It's not a student-centric conference, but it's fun nonetheless. That got me thinking, what student conferences are out there?

Have a good weekend!

Top 10 Drinking Games for College

The description for this photo on flickr is "This is a beer pong table at a frat party." How appropriate. Photo by flickr user English106 and licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As my college career winds down, I am finding myself beginning to write more big-picture posts. We're pretty good at getting into the nitty-gritty, but you can't exactly impress the majority of people out there with your knowledge of the iPad (unfortunately). Enter drinking games. We've written about the top 3 drinking games before, but I want a list even more definitive. And what better authority than yours truly? My blip.tv team has, after all, defeated College Humor at beer pong.

Now before we get started, I know we won't be able to address all drinking games out there. We will probably miss that one drinking game that you and your friends really like to play. I'm sorry. I've played plenty of drinking games and these are my faves. This is how I win. Every time. Hopefully you'll be able to find some uncoventional hacks in the standard games and bring them over to your own.

Your future of poorly constructed cardboard trophies after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Find the Best Meeting Time with Doodle

Looks like Shep will just have to deal on Thursday night at 10.The hardest thing about college isn't writing papers or passing your tests...it's organizing your friends and classmates and getting a group on the same page.  Call it apathy. Call it packed schedules.  Call it whatever you want, but trying to organize a group of more than three or four people in college can make you pull your hair out.  Anybody who's ever had a group project with people you don't know outside of class knows what I'm talking about.  Luckily, Doodle is here to help you find the time slot that works best for everybody.

Just head to Doodle.com to get started with your free account.  Let's say you have a group project coming up soon, and you need to get your group together in the library to work on it.  All you need to do is create a new event, and list all of the times that you could meet with the group.  Once your poll is set up, Doodle will generate a web link for you to sned out to your classmates.  All of the recipients then just enter their names (no registration required!) and specify whether they are available, unavailable, or could make it in an emergency for each time slot.  Before long, you should have a good sense of what time will work best for your group, and you can set about scheduling a meeting time.  You'll still be responsible for actually getting everybody to show up, but having this almost-too-easy scheduling system should help keep the freeloaders accountable.

You don't need to limit Doodle to just group projects either.  It would be great for setting up a group outing with your friends, scheduling IM sports practices, planning a small party... you get the idea.

Have any other cool uses for Doodle?  How do you organize groups of friends and classmates in college?  Let us know in the comments.

HackCollege Study Fuel

Coffee, RedBull, Monster... the pre-med’s study fuel. Unfortunately these caffeine dense, sugar loaded energy drinks typically give you a high spike in energy followed by a strong crash and a case of the jitters. Not to mention a hole in your wallet. Why not fill up your water bottle with an inexpensive home made concoction which will give you with a steady stream of energy over the course of the whole day. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s recipe time!

HackCollege Study Fuel

Ingredients

• 2L of cold water
• 4 teabags green tea or 4 scoops loose leaf tea
• 2-4 tbsp of sugar
• 1 dose of Liquid Vitamin B Complex 

Method

1. Infuse water and green to taste and strength. I prefer a strong tea and will often let my tea infuse between 4-6 hours. Hot water is not used to ensure that tannins aren’t released from the tea. Tannins are the same molecules that give wine drinkers headaches.
2. Strain tea to remove all leaves.
3. Add sugar to taste. The sugar is optional but depending on how sensitive you are to carbohydrates this sugar can provide a solid pick me up while you’re hitting the books.
4. Add dose of Liquid Vitamin B Complex. B vitamins are used in almost every function in the body and are essential in energy production. I usually drink 2L of study fuel over 2 days, so I add 2 doses when preparing.
5. Stir and chill.
6.  Enjoy.

HackCollege Study Fuel may not be as tasty as that Rockstar energy drink, but at least you’ll have money for the bar at the end of the week!

The Importance of Reading Your School Newspaper

Like this, also found in paper form. Photo via Flickr user misterbisson. Licensed via CC V2.0Universities tend to vary how often then put out a newspaper, but they all share the same purpose. There's the Daily Pennsylvanian, out of the University of (you guessed it) Pennsylvania, come out daily and there's my school's  paper, The Quad, which is out once a week. Regardless of how often they publish, they're there to keep you abreast of critical and not-so-critical information about what's going on at your school. 

The reason I'm writing this post is, at least at my school students don't read the newspaper. It's really unfortunate because there are a lot of good people who put in hard work to put out an awesome product. So, without further adieu, here are some reasons you should be reading your schools newspaper. 

Events

Odds are you'll see fliers for Career Fairs, Concerts, Club Meetings and everything else within the confines of your campus on bulletin boards, mailboxes and emails. The newspaper will make you sit down and look at the ads organizations take out to promote events, but there are probably articles about that give a better background on things you might like to do. 

Announcements

Some schools use the newspaper as an avenue to put out important financial information like budgets, plans for renovations and the like. Reading the newspaper is a good way to stay abreast of how your money is being spent, whether by the student government or by the university itself. 

Relevancy

This one is sort of shaky, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. When you are on a coffee date with a potential girlfriend/boyfriend, you could talk about what you read in the newspaper that day or week. If they have heard about it, then they will have some intelligent to add to the conversation and if not, you could just fill up the void in conversation by explaining to him or her what the event/situation/plan is for your campus. 

Student Deals

Lastly, local businesses tend to take out ads in school newspapers. In these ads, there tend to be deals. Deals tend to help save you money. This is nice. It could be $10 off a hair cut on Tuesdays or a special combo deal on pizza and wings only available in the paper. It's like when your mom clipped coupons, except your doing it with your money. Solid.

Does your campus read the school newspaper? Do you? Comment below to share your thoughts!

PadNotes Paves the Way for iPad Use in the Lecture Hall

You best be excited about this one. When the iPad was first released, we gave you our opinion on what this "revolutionary" device was going to mean to students. Just a few days ago Tipirneni Software released a YouTube video demoing their first application for the iPad, PadNotes. This is the app I've been dreaming about. Sure, it still needs to be approved by Apple for sale in the App Store, but the ability to type and draw on top of PDF formatted lecture slides is just awesome. Until we give PadNotes a go on a real iPad it's impossible to say if this is going to live up to the hype, and no doubt in 2-6 months there is going to be 100 copy cat applications in the store with smoother and more natural interactivity. But I digress, PadNotes is paving the way for lecture recording on the iPad. Have a look.

[Video from 9to5Mac]

Unlock Your Dryer Sheet's Full Potential

Making you smell good is just the beginning. Photo by Flickr user admiller licensed under CC BY 2.0 If you prefer your clothes to smell nice and feel soft, then odds are you have a box of dryer sheets sitting around.  They are plentiful, cheap, and have a lot of surprising uses outside of the laundry room. 

Insect Repellant

You can rub yourself down with a dryer sheet, or just keep them nearby if you're going to lounge outside for a prolonged period.  You could use this in combination with Hackcollege's tanning tips.

Air Freshener

Stick them in your car, at the bottom of your trashcans, in your drawers. Dryer sheets can make just about anything smell good.  Especially useful if you're bringing that special someone back to your dorm.  On that note, hide one in your pillow case and thank me later.

Cleaning Agent

If you've designated yourself the neat freak of the dorm room, a few dryer sheets can make your job easier. Dust on your TV and soap scum in the shower are no match for them.

Hair Clinger

Cutting your own hair to save beer money, but hate that noise your roommate makes when they see the remains on the bathroom floor?  The leftover hair will cling to a dryer sheet, making cleanup a breeze.  If you really like the smell I suppose you could rub the hair that's still on your head too. 

Static Discharger

Anybody who's ever tinkered with the internals of a computer before know that you want your body to be free of static electricity.  If you're adding more RAM or popping in a new hard drive, rubbing your hands on a dryer sheet is a lot cheaper than buying a pair of anti-static gloves.

Shoe Deodorizer

My personal favorite.  Nothing can make a whole room smell quite like old shoes.  If you're not going to throw them out, do everybody a favor and put dryer sheets in the toes.

Have any other great uses for dryer sheets? Let us know in the comments.

We're Going to SXSW!

Hate to say it, but no episode this week. We're busy packing and getting everything ready for the annual HackCollege outing to the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Last year was nuts and we're looking to do it again.

Unfortunately, we won't be throwing a party this year. Big thanks to everyone for coming out last year.

If you want to meet up, just tweet those of us that will be there!

• @KellySutton
• @lesinski
• @shep979
• @hackcollege