Guest Post: In Trouble with the Administration? Be Prepared.

Found yourself afoul of campus police? Stay calm and be prepared for your appeal. Image courtesy of Flickr user Mskogley and licensed under CC by 2.0

Today's guest post comes from Stephanie Buscema, a recent graduate of Wagner College who will be attending NYU in the Fall to pursue a Master's in publishing. At Wagner, she was a part of the Community Standards Review Board, where she heard cases from fellow students who found themselves on the wrong side of school policy.

College is the environment where students are trying to find themselves, as well as trying to fit in with their new peers.  However, oftentimes students don’t know their limits and find themselves in trouble with administration.  While no longer living under their parents’ roofs, students have the freedom to explore all possibilities, even it means disregarding school policy. 

After attending college for four years, I have seen many of my peers fall in and out of trouble.  While serving on a disciplinary board, I have seen and heard many cases involving drug and alcohol abuse and violations of school conduct codes.  However, what I have noticed, is that without the guidance of a parent or mentor, some students fall through the cracks and find themselves not knowing what to do and how to prepare to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Students should have the opportunity to review helpful tips in preparation of an appeal.  The question that arises is, “How can I prepare?”  To be honest, it’s quite simple.  Here are some helpful tips to prepare for your appeal.

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Win a Free Copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5

Adobe has provided us with a full box set of the Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection to give away to one of you! The suite includes Photoshop (now with really awesome iPad integration), Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere, and approximately 4,000 other programs befitting a creative professional.

The contest is simple. Go to the comments of this post, tell us what school you go to, and how you would use CS 5.5. Make sure you give us a good way to get in touch with you as well. Here's a hint: you're allowed to link out to videos and whatnot, and creativity counts, so get cracking. Contest ends May 31.

We wish we could give all of you a copy, but if you don't win, you should definitely take advantage of Adobe's student discount program before you graduate. You can buy the whole suite or an a la carte program for up to 80% off, just because you're in school and broke off your ass. Not a bad deal. Good luck everyone!

How to Make Packing and Moving A Little Less Painful

Oh packing. What a pain in the ass you are. Photo courtesy of bfhoyt. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Whether you’re moving somewhere new this summer or you’re slowly preparing yourself to move somewhere new next semester, you’ll know that moving is just a pain in the ass and can be completely overwhelming. Thankfully, Lifehacker has a fantastic comprehensive packing list that should give you some great tips whenever your moving day comes around. You can check out the whole list here, but I’ve listed some of the tips I found the most helpful here.

Use the Opportunity to Declutter

As I was packing up after the semester had ended, I realized how much shit I had accumulated. Seriously, where did this stuff come from? It’s like it just spontaneously grew up from the floor of my dorm. So as I was packing up, I really took packing up as an opportunity to get rid of a lot of unnecessary and excess stuff that I never used. I threw away old notebooks, decorative stuff I never used, and clothes I didn’t use anymore. Not only did this make it a lot easier to pack everything since there was less to pack, but it just felt good to declutter my life and get rid of unnecessary stuff.

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Create Instant Flashcards with StudyBlue and Evernote

We all know that Evernote is a great, free application for organizing your college life. We've also talked highly of StudyBlue, an online flashcard-creation service with some cool sharing features and great mobile apps. Recently, StudyBlue made it easy to integrate with your Evernote account, and easily generate flashcards from new or existing Evernote notes. Not too many college students I know are still using flash cards, but this could be a great time saver if you do.

You can find out all the details of the integration at the Evernote Blog, but basically StudyBlue will create a notebook stack in Evernote that will be viewable in their online dashboard. Any notes you add to the stack can be easily transformed into interactive flashcards. Both services are freemium, but their free versions are more than adequate for the average college student, so go check it out!

[Evernote and StudyBlue via Evernote Noteworthy Blog]

Liven Up Your Summer Party with FratMusic Radio

Partying, partying, yeah. Photo used via fair use doctrine and courtesy of FratMusic.comI know what you're thinking. The Greek (not ethnically) on the HackCollege staff is at it again, trying to pollute our minds with Natty cans, empty tins of chewable tobacco, and loud, bumping hit music. And you're thinking right - at least on that last one.

As the chief frat star on the HackCollege staff - one area of college is definitely my expertise - partying. Now I haven't gotten down like Kelly, Shep, Emily, Laura or Luke at those SXSW parties - though my sources tell me they're nuts - but I do know a thing or two about how to entertain guests at a college party and next to interesting people and enough alcohol, it's good music.

Since my experiment with the guitar ended in high school and playing the first few bars of Linkin Park's "In The End" only draws praise from my mother, I need to have someone else playing the music. And in the spirit of productivity and automation, why not have someone else compile the playlist? In that vein, FratMusic Radio was born.*

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Tappped Offers Student Discounts By Email

Tappped (note the triple "p") offers exclusive student discounts via email. It was even founded by a rising college freshman!Friend of the site Jeff Bajayo recently took some time between studying for his senior year AP tests to start Tappped, an email-based student deal site. You simply visit the site, sign up with your .edu or .ac.uk email address, and you'll be signed up to receive weekly emails with the latest student discounts. The cool thing is that the emails both aggregate the best on the web, and also offer some exclusive deals just for Tappped subscribers.

It remains to be seen how many deals Tappped can negotiate; a lot depends on how many students sign up. With that in mind, do us all a favor and go subscribe. It's a really convenient way to stay passively informed of some exclusive deals. 

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.

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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.

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