New Beginnings

Hello! Welcome to Talk of the Campus. Thanks for stopping by!

This is a blog that I wrote while working for the Bates College Admissions Office in my junior and senior years. I have since graduated (Class of 2012, baby!), but I’m keeping the blog up because people still visit and hopefully find it helpful as they navigate life at Bates or college in general.

I’m now living in New York City where, aside from my day job in retail pricing software, I am dancing and writing. If you’re interested in finding out what one Batesie is doing after graduation, please come check out my current blog, People I Met In My Twenties, and let me know you came from here!

If you are a current or prospective college student and have any questions, please contact me at sphene@gmail.com. I am always happy to help out!

Best Wishes,

Shachi

 

Snapshot of a New Year

Hey guys,

Just wanted to share this quick pic I took at Bates to mark the beginning of a new year. I wish a very warm welcome to the Class of 2015 and hope everyone has a great year ahead of them!

 

Cool Landmark – World’s Largest Globe

Hey everyone! I’m packing up to go back to Bates for the last time (such a strange thought…) and it’s making me think a lot about my very first days at college.

One memory that stands out is from a pre-orientation event. I visited a local landmark with the Preview group and the International Orientation program. Unfortunately, unless you’re part of one of these groups, this trip won’t be part of your orientation. However, I highly recommend checking it out on your own or with your family, especially since Maine/ Lewiston/ Bates often is stuck with the reputation of being “in the middle of nowhere with nothing going on”.

The landmark is the World’s Largest Globe! Kinda neat, right? Who would have thought that something like that exists in Maine?

Here’s a picture of me and my friend Leena on our trip there:

Me & Leena at the World's Largest Globe

This was also where I met Leena for the first time, so it makes the whole trip even more memorable!  I recommend taking a few of your new Bates friends and taking a trip down to Yarmouth to check it out!

Here’s another fun fact: Lewiston is where Muhammed Ali (at that point, still known as Cassius Clay) knocked out Sonny Liston in the first minute of the match. Clay picked up the name “Muhammed Ali” the following week. You’ll see this poster in a lot of Batesie’s rooms:

 

Move-in Day Tips

The end of August is here which means that some of you may already have moved into college! For those of you who haven’t moved into your dorm rooms yet, here are some quick tips:

1. Clean: The first thing you want to do is get a damp cloth and wipe all the furniture down in the room. The room has been sitting empty most, if not all, of the summer and it probably has collected some dust. Be sure to sweep/vaccum the floor and wipe the insides of drawers as well!

(2. Re-arrange the furniture:) This one is in parentheses because you might not need it. Check out where the electrical outlets are and make sure they are in convenient places. Also make sure your dresser is in a place where you can open all the drawers. You want to make sure everything is in a location you are comfortable with before you unload all your gear.

2. Make your bed: An empty dorm, especially your first time at college can feel very stark and cold. I suggest making your bed as soon as you’ve cleaned to bring some warmth, color, and coziness into the place. This way, you also have  good place to put down your clothes, etc. as you move them into their places.

3. Put away your clothes: Clothes are usually what take up most of your luggage space, so I suggest putting those away next. It will be easy since they’ll probably already have been folded in your suitcase. If you have closet space, make use of it and hang what you’ll need regularly like jackets, coats.

4. Organize your desk: This is what will probably take longer than you anticipated. Set up all your school supplies so that they are easily accessible. If there does not seem to be space, don’t just unload it all into the 3 tiny drawers you have. Wait until you’ve gone to the nearest Wal-mart or Staples and gotten some organizational supplies. This will be your work-station all year, so you want to make sure it’s all neat and your materials are easy to get to.

5. Decorate!: Time to decorate! Make your dorm room fun and comfortable. Get creative because this is going to be your personal space! Hang up your pictures, posters, and anything else you have. (Make sure you are following whatever rules your college has about adhesive materials and nails on the walls.) If you still have additional things to unpack, see how you can use them in a unique way. For example, I have a lot of scarves that I use regularly in the winter. I didn’t have any more closet space to hang them. So, instead of getting another set of curtains, I hung my scarves from the curtain rod to create a really cozy-feeling room!

Good luck with your moving! There will generally be other students and families around who can help you, so don’t worry. Also, as a first-year in most schools (including Bates), you’ll be meeting your roommate(s) and his/her family. Have fun, and remember that your college friends will quickly feel like family.

To all the first-years at Bates, the upper-classmen can’t wait to meet you!

 

Posting from Cancun! (and Why I Still Miss Commons)

Hello from Cancun, Mexico! My family and I are on vacation south of the border for about a week. While the scenery here is beautiful, the water warm, and the food delicious (honestly probably the best thing about Cancun), I still can’t wait to get back to Bates, particularly Commons. Here’s why:

1. Conversation: So why do I miss Commons? I miss the conversation! Vacation is great but you become isolated from the rest of the world, especially in a different country. It was a long summer and I am dying to get back to Bates and see my friends and meet the newest Batesies from the class of 2015!

2. Meal Plan: I know, I know, I just said the food here is delicious. But, it’s a bliss to have an unlimited meal plan. We have plenty of food here but it’s not cheap! The unlimited plan let’s us get as much food as we want, pretty much whenever we want. Here, we obviously have to pay. Plus, everything is in pesos which they still signal with a dollar sign ($), meaning that a simple meal’s price looks like $250!

3. Variety: I’ve had a good summer in terms of food. My mother is a wonderful cook and I’m definitely a fan of authentic Mexican cuisine. However, I’m ready for some choice! Commons is great because it offers a great variety of food from Pad Thai to a Fisherman’s Platter to Turkey Dinners to good old Mac n’ Cheese. They even do their best attempts at Indian food, which is much appreciated because I miss our spices when I’m at college.

What’s your favorite thing about Commons? Where are you on vacation now? What are you most looking forward to back at college? Post in the commons below!

 

4 Sites College Students Won’t Want to Live Without

It’s the age of the internet! I was reading an article today about the Beloit College Mindset List for the college class of 2015. (If you don’t know what this list is, definitely check it out!)

The list got me thinking about how integral the internet is to our lives. (My mother is certainly always complaining about how I’m constantly glued to my computer screen!) It’s such a constant thing in our lives that there are now articles on the internet about how to get away from the internet or how to stay healthy while using the internet.

However, while the internet-obsession may be slightly problematic, I for one choose to see the positives (probably because I use it so much). In that vein, here are the four websites that I believe every college student should make their best friend:

1. BBC/CNN/etc: Pick one, any one, but be sure to pick one. One of the things I didn’t realize would happen when I got to college was that I would rapidly become trapped in a bubble. It doesn’t matter whether your college is big or small, in a city or in the boonies. Once campus life starts growing, you will become completely wrapped up in it, and it will be all-too-easy to lose sight of the world outside your college. When I realized I was completely unaware of any national or international news from the past 3 months, I quickly changed my home page to BBC world news. That way, I didn’t have to carve out time in my schedule to read the news – it just pops up in front of me every time I open a browser.

2. Linkedin: Yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking – I already spend too much time on Facebook… do I really need another social networking site? The answer is, if it’s Linkedin, then yes. Linkedin has the wonderful quality of not really feeling like any other social networking site. There is zero pressure to communicate with anyone. What Linkedin is, is really more of an online, detailed directory of all the people you know professionally. It will be a helpful tool to have when it comes time to go looking for an interview or a job because you’ll already literally have a connection to people around you. Plus, Linkedin has a handy feature that shows the degrees of separation between you and a person not in your network. (For example, it will say I know A who knows B who knows C, which could be really helpful if I’m trying to land a job at C’s company.) Get a Linkedin and allow your contacts to slowly accumulate. That way when you need them to network, you’re ready.

3. Dictionary.com/Wikipedia/Google: College is full of reading. In fact, I would bet that 80% of your college assignments will be some sort of reading. This reading is generally on topics you will not be familiar with, using unfamiliar words. Probably the best asset and most important asset of the internet is the massive amounts of information it stores. A 5 second search is the perfect way to gain some quick background on what you are reading so that the whole thing makes more sense!

4. Your College Website: This may seem intuitive – you use your college site every day! But I don’t mean just logging into the portal and taking care of whatever business you have there. I mean really exploring the site like you used to when you were applying. It’s funny how fast you forget all the little things you had picked up about your college when you were researching it. Keep up-to-date with the site so you can know what news your college is broadcasting out to the world. Plus, it’s really exciting to find helpful things you didn’t know existed like an article on one of your professors, a tutorial on how to install email onto your phone, or a discount page specially for your college for electronics and software!

 

Special Announcement!

Hey everyone! This is a special announcement for all current Batesies:

IS COMING TO BATES!

For those of you haven’t yet heard of it, Her Campus is an online magazine for college students. Although the national magazine is created by and geared toward college women, Her Campus Bates will be a publication for all Batesies.

I am really excited to bring Her Campus to Bates. I hope that it will serve as an online campus center for students. We will be publishing articles about campus events, spotlights on students, style, health, and career articles and much more!

The official launch of Her Campus Bates will be exactly a month from now on September 20 (with an awesome launch party the following weekend), so spread the word! You can check out where our page will be by clicking on our logo below:

Her Campus Bates

Other info about Her Campus:

Her Campus is a really exciting new company started by 3 Harvard students – Windsor Hanger, Stephanie Kaplan, and Annie Wang. Together the three of them have created a company that now spans more than 150 colleges across the United States. Her Campus has also gained recognition by winning the i3 Innovation Challenge (Harvard College’s business plan competition), becoming a finalist for Mass Challenge (where I was working this summer with a different company), and partnering with other amazing companies such as Seventeen Magazine. Her Campus was also recently featured in an article on CNN called “6 Hot Dorm-Room Startups“. (Be sure to check that article out because another one of the companies was created by 4 Batesies just this past May!!)

How You Can Get Involved: 

If you would like to get involved with the magazine (either as a writer or a photographer), please send me an email at shachiphene@hercampus.com. If you are not a Batesie but would like to start a Her Campus branch at your college, email Stephanie Kaplan at stephanie@hercampus.com and tell her that you heard about it here!
We’ll see you at the launch party!

 

Jobs for the School Year

As you head back to school, you may be wondering about getting a job for the school year. Let me preface, by saying that this is a great idea. You’ll gain new experiences and having a little cash in your pocket is always nice!

http://bit.ly/oryfgz

I didn’t have a steady job in high school but I wish I had. I did do some babysitting and volunteered as a teaching assistant to my piano teacher, but looking back, I wish I had gotten a regular paying job as well. When I got to college, I tried to change this. I worked in Admissions as you know, but also in Dining Services and a little bit for the Psychology Department. It wasn’t easy to find jobs on campus, and it took persistence. As I’m entering my senior year, I’m becoming more aware of jobs that I can do remotely while in school.

If you’re looking for a job for the school year, here are a list of ideas you may not have thought of:

1. Blogger: Many companies these days are looking for people to review their products. Pick an industry you like, set up a blog and explore! Here is an example in the cosmetics industry: www.elleandblair.com

2. Social Media Intern: Check out what internships are available on sites such as www.internships.com or on your school’s career services page. Lots of companies (especially newer ones) are looking for part-time interns to manage their social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

3. Design: If you are artistic, check out local businesses to see if you can make posters, fliers, and/or brochures for them. Start off by doing it for free, and then when you build up a reputation, you can start charging for it! Tools that I love are iWork’s Pages and Microsoft’s Publisher.

4. Tutor: If you did well on the SATs or on an AP exam, contact students who are still at your high school. Offer to tutor them via Skype!

5. Professor’s/ Teacher’s Aide: Professors and teachers are often looking for students to help them do anything from grading papers to stapling packets to researching. Ask some teachers you get along with if they need any help.

6. Town Government: One of my friends at Bates, Shlesma, has a great internship during the school year with the local courthouse. A friend of mine in high school interned at a state representative’s office after school. Another friend of mine who is about to enter her freshman year of college is working at our town clerk’s office this summer. Yet another friend gave tours (in full costume) around out historic town. Find out what positions are available in your town and apply!

 

Back-to-School Shopping for the New College Student

It’s mid-August which means Back-to-School shopping season has begun! This time of year is always busy but if you’re going to college for the first time, you’ve probably realized that your shopping cart is going to be a lot more full than usual.

Here’s a list I compiled of what to get and what not to get for college. (I’ve used Bates as an example, but most of these things should work for other colleges as well!)

Note: Before you buy all these things and haul them all off to school, check around your college town to see what stores are available. It may be easier to just buy some of these items from the local Wal-mart, rather than have them take up space in your car.

School Supplies

1. Notebook(s): Now how many you get is really up to you, but bear in mind that you will be out and about most of your day. Choose what will be most convenient for you. I like to buy 5 subject notebooks from Five Star with pockets for any sheets professors hand out. This way I never forget one subject in my dorm or have to deal with a bunch of different folders.
2. Planner: With the amount of information you will be receiving within just your first few days of college, it is going to be very difficult to keep track of everything. With a planner, life becomes easier! I like to get my planners from Staples. I always make sure that they are weekly/monthly so that I can write down what I need to do each day but can also see what’s coming ahead.
3. Tools: Get a set of mechanical pencils, lead, and a set of pens. Don’t go crazy, because you’ll probably end up losing them anyway. Get a backpack (you know, for that quintessential college look) to haul your stuff around campus. Make sure to bring the things you use– Post-its if your into those, or hi-lighters if you use them a lot.
4. Laptop & Accessories: PC or Mac is up to you, but I highly recommend you get one! If you’re good about emailing important documents to yourself, you probably don’t need an external hard drive, but I would invest in a good case. I also recommend you get things like the latest version of Microsoft Office (because you’ll need it all the time for assignments), a USB stick (for easy file transfers and quick back-up when working on projects), and a set of headphones (really great when there’s too much distraction around you). Don’t forget all your chargers & gadgets (phone, laptop, camera, calculator, alarm clock, extension cords, and surge protector)
5. What to Skip:
– Printer: Unless your campus is so big you can’t easily access the library, dragging a printer back and forth from school to home really isn’t worth it. If you do think you’ll need one, talk to your roommate to figure out if one of you can bring one to share.
– Stapler & Hole-puncher: Again, these are both usually easily accessible in the library. If you feel like you need one once you’re at school, you can always get these at the local Wal-mart or your school’s bookstore.

Dorm Accessories

1. Things to get before you get there:
        – 2 sets of Sheets (usually twin-XL for college dorms, but be sure to check with your school) & comforter
– Pillow (I don’t know why, but I always forget this one…)
– Hamper/laundry basket
– Rug (be sure to talk to your roomie about this one!)
– Desk lamp (college dorms have notoriously bad lighting)
– Keepsakes (pics, stuffed animals, favorite baseball… a touch of home will be very important to you!)
– Small fan and space heater (trust me, in Maine, you’ll need both of these)
2. Things you may want once you’re there:
– A floor lamp (be sure to check what the regulations are for these!)
– A microwave/fridge (again check the rules. I suggest not getting these before you reach campus because a lot of times dorms already have these for students’ use)
– Chair (I like butterfly chairs and ottomans)
– Mirror (check first to see what your room has in place, but if you’re not satisfied, you can get a full length mirror and/or a make-up/shaving mirror)
– Posters (I would bring your pictures from home or print them out off of Facebook once you get to school, but buy your larger posters once you really know how much wall space you have. Bates has an awesome poster sale at the beginning of the year and AllPosters.com is a great site to get all kinds of images!)
– Waste-basket (most dorms have these as well as a recycling bin, so check first)

Toiletries

If you can, buy most of these when you get to college, just to avoid any spills. If your mom can’t make it to drop you off and she wants to help you out (most moms do), I highly recommend starting off the year with a fresh batch of everything you use. Get new…
– Body-wash, shampoo, conditioner
– Shaving cream, razors
– Moisturizer, deodorant
– Toothbrush (bring a spare too), toothpaste,
– Chapstick and anything else you use
Pre-organize them in a shower caddy. If you’re bringing make-up, pre-organize that in a train-case. The more organized you are, the easier your life will be when you’re moving in and out and even during the year.
Don’t forget…
– Towel, bathrobe, and shower sandals
– Hair dryer/straightener/curler
– Combs/brushes
– Q-tips, tissues, nail-cutter
– First-aid kit: It’s really good to have Band-Aids, Tylenol, and Bengay on hand for cuts, colds, and sore muscles!

Clothes

This is obviously different for everyone, but here are my tips for dressing in cold climates:
– The key to dressing in cold climates (especially in New England) is layers. This way, you can can layer up or down depending on the changes in the weather (in Maine it can change multiple times a day) and depending on whether you are outdoors or indoors.
– Invest in scarves, gloves, snow-boots, sweaters, sweatshirts, and jeans. If you’re lucky (and at Bates, we’re lucky) your college will organize shopping trips to places like L.L. Bean where you can get expensive but extremely good quality gear for the winter.
– Bring a few t-shirts but not too many because you’ll get some during orientation and you’ll buy them from the book-store and storage space will be limited.
– Speaking of storage, I love getting large and small plastic drawers and pre-filling them with my winter clothes and under-clothes. I just tape up the sides and put the whole thing in the car. It makes moving in so much easier!

Food

I highly recommend not buying food until you’ve been at college for a little while. Until you settle into your new schedule you won’t know what kind of food you’ll need in your room or if you’ll even need any at all. (Commons at Bates is really pretty amazing.)

I hope this list was helpful! Comment below if you have any specific questions about items to bring or not bring and I’ll answer them for you!

 

Tips for SAT Success

As fall approaches, I know that some of you will be prepping for the SATs. Bates is great because it doesn’t require you to turn in an SAT score with your application package, but most colleges still do, and a great score will always help your case!

http://bit.ly/oGK3ll

Aside from the usual flash cards and paging through review books, here are a few tips to help you ace this necessary evil:

1. Crosswords: Traveling back and forth on the T (Boston’s subway system) for work, I’ve gotten really into doing crosswords. Now I’m no NY-Times-with-a-pen girl (yet!) but I am getting better day by day. What I love about the crosswords is that they A, are partially logic puzzles, B, bring to mind vocabulary I may not generally use, and C, stir up memories based on their clues. All of these are great for SAT/ college app prep, and way more fun than just flipping over flash-cards mindlessly. The benefit is that (unlike those pesky flash-cards), you have experience really thinking about the vocabulary and how it might be used, instead of just memorizing a word and its definition. In the end, I think this is more useful. I have friends who studied hundreds of words only to have none of them show up on the actual exam. When I did the same, only one word showed up – “abet” – which I already knew the meaning of from TV (think ‘aiding and abetting a criminal’). Logical thinking and practice using words in atypical contexts however, proved invaluable on the exam!

2. Tooth and Nail: You’re probably wondering what fighting or random body parts have to do with the SATs, and the fact is, they don’t. Tooth and Nail is a novel by Charles Harrington Elster. When I was younger, my mom used to listen to vocabulary tapes made by this man in the car, and I used to call him “Mr. Word”. Later, we discovered that he had written a book called Tooth and Nail which also helps people learn vocabulary. That may not sound appealing, but it’s a mystery novel that takes place on a college campus and it’s actually pretty good. (I’ve read it a few times.) Words throughout the book are bolded and their definitions are all right in the back of the book for easy reference. It’s great, because if you know the word, you can just keep reading, and if you don’t, the words are complicated enough that you’ll probably be confused and have to go check the meaning. The meanings are right there, and the book is an interesting enough read that you will probably just check the meaning and keep reading. I definitely suggest you check it out whether you’re studying for the SATs or just want a good read and want to boost up your vocab!

3. Have you heard of Kumon?: I’ve always thought of the SATs (especially the newer 4-hour version) as more of an endurance test than anything else. You need to be able to work fast and keep going. Just getting through the exam is sometimes more grueling than the questions themselves. I suggest getting out your old workbooks from elementary school and middle school and timing yourself on the problems. Set yourself a time limit of 5 minutes and see how many basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, etc problems you can do in that time. Keep practicing so you get faster and faster. If any of you did Kumon in your youth, you have experience with this. The benefit to practicing this basic math is that the more you practice it, the more instinctual it becomes, which means you have more time to spend actually thinking about what the question is asking. This means you’ll get less worn out, and you’ll be less likely to make silly mistakes because you’ll have time to check yourself.

4. 25 minute essay conquered: The newest section of the SAT includes a 25 minute essay. How on earth can you write an essay in 25 minutes? Sometimes it can take me 25 minutes (or more) just to think of a topic! A great strategy that I used was to pre-write my essay. Now before you go thinking that I was cheating, I wasn’t. I just had written out a couple very general essays before that I could use to adapt to any topic that was thrown at me during the exam. One was about a book I had read in school and the other was about a trip I had taken to India to study dance. In both cases, I was extremely familiar with the ins and outs of my essay and had practiced adapting the essays to a variety of topics in 25 minutes when I was studying. I had become so in tune with the two essay topics that I probably could have written them out in the original form from memory. This is actually a skill that will help you far after you take your SATs. Think about it– when you give an interview or network with someone, you will have only your own experiences to build a conversation off of. You have to be able to adapt your knowledge, stories, and skills to whatever turn the conversation takes to keep it going. Being able to adapt your words and thoughts to whatever topic is thrown at you on the SAT is a great way to practice this.

I should note that these tips are really only supplements to help you with studying. The most effective thing for me was, and always will be, just doing as many practice exams as possible without burning yourself out. I used to take the exams on Saturday mornings, just as I would be doing on the actual exam day. That way, when it came to the real thing, I was very used to the routine.

Have you taken the SATs (or other standardized exams) yet? What tips do you have? Post them below and “like” this post if you found it helpful!