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Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact?
Mshift2x writes "Like many others, I'm shipping off to college for the first time in a few days. I'm excited, nervous, and a whole array of emotions at the same time. I'm sure many slashdotters have gone through this already, and I'd appreciate any wisdom, suggestions, or thoughts the community could provide." More specifically, phrogeeb writes "Per our earlier Slashdot article on laptop lock insecurity, I've been looking around recently for other options as far as keeping track of my laptop and other semi-expensive and certainly valuable (for a college student) stuff in a dorm room setting. Any ideas? I'm looking for both laptop-specific and comprehensive solutions. Locks? Alarms? Video cameras? Trip wire? (A few serious suggestions would be appreciated.)"
1. Don't let the laptop out of your sight unless you have to, unless it's locked behind a private door (i'm serious).
2. Since you will have to, buy insurance on it. It's about $75 a year for $5k of coverage and that covers everything in the room, including your clothes.
I had someone walk into my room, and steal my camera from me while my roommates weren't looking (I was gone at the time). There isn't much you can do to stop that, except buy a safe.
Second, try something like stuffbak.com (I haven't used it myself, but i hear good things). If you leave it somewhere and a good person happens to find it first, you get it back, and they get a reward.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Living on campus is a money racket for colleges.
Rent housing in a nearby ghetto (there's always one) and get broadband. You'll enjoy yourself much more not living beneath the college administration's thumb, you'll receive a basic instruction in how things work, and you may not even need roommates to pay for your dwelling.
Also, consider downloading scans of textbooks and auditing classes, if you are a college student on a minimal budget (you will not receive credit for audited classes, but some of us value knowledge for its own sake, as opposed to knowledge as a means of obtaining a piece of paper with a seal of approval on it.)
I would also add two things:
1) do NOT for any reason leave anything valuable in your car - unattended - at any time, anywhere, no matter how safe you think it is. I had my car, which at the time was an old POS, broken into twice. Once from what I thought was a very safe lot, and the other time when I happened to pull a late night in a lab. I parked in a crowded lot, only to come out in the middle of the morning and find my lone car with the window smashed out. Thief never got much, a couple speakers from the car, and the two bucks in pennies that I had in the ash tray, but it was a hassle to get the window fixed (I might add there is a special place in hell for the lowlife tards that steal this kind of worthless crap).
2) Avoid things that look visibly valuable and easy to take, no matter how secure the room. If you get a PC tower for your room, put it in the ugliest beige case you can find and hide it in the corner. In fact spray paint some stripes on it so there is no question who it belongs to. If you get the trick case with the cold cathode lights and all that, you might as well hang a sign on the door advertising it. I worked as a TA for a while - shared a room with some other TAs. Room was always locked - I made the mistake of leaving a CD player on my desk. Found it missing one day, but it wasn't the other TAs who took it. Turns out it was a teenage friend of the prof's kid (prof gave his kid a key to the room). If I would have kept it out of sight it never would have happened...
Lock your damn door, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. :p)
Indeed. Not only can your stuff get stolen, but something could happen to you. I've heard stories about guys wandering into girls' rooms at night and hitting on them, or, in my ex-roommate's case, cutting thier hair. (She is my ex-roommate because she moved into another building after that. She also blamed it on me
Also, consider buying a desktop, rather then a laptop. They're a lot harder to steal. And no, it's not worth having a laptop to take notes on in class - unless you're taking English Literature or something, you'll find it a lot easier to take notes the good old-fashioned way, on paper.
8. consider some criminal justice courses, trial techniques are an easy A. 9. be open minded to #1, freaky chicks rock. i speak from experience. 10. consider some of the student organizations, can meet chicks for #1 there 11. consider a hands off policy for people who want to borrow things, if you do not want a hands off policy, consider sever penalties for non-return. 12. concealed carry permits are something nice to have. 13. tripwires, booby traps and high explosives for those times when you are not in your room can be a must if the situation warrants it 14. getting into a light bondage thing for #1 can be fun, as long as the chick is into it
a wise man once said "two wrongs dont make a right, but three rights do make a left" and that wise man was gallagher
Amen. The quintessential college experience summed up in 7 easy steps. I'd like to add a couple very important points. Women love Jagermeister. Always keep some in your room so you can offer it to that hot girl you just met in the quad. Also, the hot chicks are all taking Psych or Sociology.
Also, most schools use packet shapers and otehr tools to prevent P2P apps from forming connections. If your school is part of the Internet2 project, you can try this. It operates outside of the internet, is uber-fast, and the RIAA spies don't have access to spy on you.
I had a sword... not a dull good looking one, but a sharp-ass ugly one. I never said a word about it, but it was visible and everyone took note. If you aren't willing to spend the money, all you really need is a sheath and a handle glued together.
Not that my school was hardcore or anything, it was a very peaceful one. But I had my fantasies of "needing it for safety".
I'm white!
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
The biggest problem with using a computer to take notes is duplicating diagrams and equations quickly. In physics classes, these are the entirety of your notes. Equations you can sort of do if you're good with TeX, but the effort involved might distract you from the material. Diagrams are almost impossible to keep up with.
The majority of the time, I take notes with a paper and pencil. If I whip out my laptop in class, it's because I'm not real interested in what the professor is saying. (Going to class and amusing yourself like this is a lot better than not going...you'll at least find out about assignments and tests and whatnot.)
PDAs are wretched for taking notes on.
Agreed. Work bought me one for a project, so I took a few notes while I was playing with my new toy. They're completely indecipherable. It's so awkward to keep your hand off the display while writing with the tiny stylus that my mediocre handwriting became awful. And if I had used the on-screen keyboard or Grafiti, I would have had problems keeping up.
PDAs are more useful for displaying information than entering it. Or if you do enter information, there should be very little of it, in a rigid format.
Tip: if you are taking English lit, make a lot of your notes in the novels and poetry books. This will save you a ton of time during in-class exams and will even help you with term papers. For novels, I used to write topic headers on the blank pages at the front/back of the book, then note the pages with notes on them. This helped me ace my English degree.
-- SYS 64738 --
Amen on that credit card advice!!!
I'll match your Amen and raise you three more. True story:
I was walking around in downtown Chicago late one night, toward the end of my college years, when a homeless man and woman stopped me and asked for money. I said something to the effect of, "Listen man, I'd like to help you out, really. But I've got $12,000 in debt right now, on top of a $19,000 car loan, $18,000 in school loans, and a few thousand I still owe my dad. I can't spare a dime." The guy turned to the woman and said, "Damn, he's worse off than we are, let's get out of here."
The biggest problem being my overuse of four (4!) credit cards. I was stupid. Extremely stupid. This was four years ago, and I've been doing debt management the whole time on the $12,000 credit card debt. I'm finally just a few months away from paying off the first two of the four cards, but I've got a few years left before I get the rest paid off.
Get one tiny credit card for emergencies, but never use it except emergencies. For all the rest of the bazillion credit card offers you will get in the mail, always, always, always tear them up. Get a checking account with a debit card that can be used as a visa card, and use this whenever you need a credit card.
If only somebody had told me this, or I hadn't been dumbass enough to figure it out on my own....
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
1. Drink. None of that pussy "I don't drink" shit. Learn to suck it up and drink like a real man, that's what college is for. Trust me, soon enough you'll have all sorts of annoying health problems and aging concerns, and you'll have to moderate your drinking. College is your chance to get this out of your system and give your liver a good working out.
2. Have sex. Meet women and fuck them. Seriously. If you followed step 1 above, you will find step 2 much easier. I promise. If you still don't know how to do this, learn. Study the art of fast seduction if you need that sort of thing (Google is your friend), or just be yourself if you have more luck that way. Freshman year is tough, but by the time Junior year rolls around you should have your game on and the Frosh chicks and ready for action. Don't bother with the Junior and Senior chicks, they're getting banged by the grad students, or people with real jobs and incomes. Don't waste your undergraduate years in some long distance relationship or any of that crap, and don't stick with the first girl that gives you some booty. This lesson goes for the rest of life too. And if you are gay, please feel free to replace "chick" with "dude" in the above paragraph. And if you are female, well, go screw some underclassmen and stop hogging all the senior dudes.
3. Make friends and connections. The people you meet in high school and college (if you go to a good high school, maybe more there than college) are the connections you have for the rest of your life. These people are critical for building your career. You will help them out and they will help you out. Join a fraternity if that's your thing (preferably one where people aren't complete morons - my friend's frat at MIT had more multimillionaire entrepreneur alumni than I can count), or get involved in extracurricular activities. In the end, this is as important as your grades - your grades will be useful for grad school if you go that route and to a lesser extent for your first few jobs. Beyond that, the most that will matter is "cum laude", "magna cum laude", etc. People still are impressed when I say I graduated from Harvard in Physics, magna cum laude.
4. Study. Go to your classes. Except when it interferes with 1, 2 or 3. Your parents are paying for an education, get it. And not just in the area you are majoring in, branch out, take some other classes. But don't get obsessed with pulling straight As at the expense of the friend-making and networking. And definitely not at the expense of getting laid and drinking, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Remember, we all end up dead someday, don't forget to enjoy life while you're young.
After you've done all of the above, you are welcome to fit a few hours in of sleeping and securing your damned laptop/bike/whatever (jesus, who has time in college to obsess about their _stuff_? don't bring too much expensive shit to college, just the bare minimum, and expect to lose some stuff or have it "borrowed" out of your dorm room, etc.). Sure, play computer games, unwind, download tons of MP3s, warez, whatever floats your boat, but don't let that stuff get in the way of what really matters (see points 1 through 4 above).
You may think I'm crazy, but I have no regrets. I think I sacrificed a summa cum laude along with a few hundred thousand brain cells to Bachanallian revelry, but I will never for a minute regret it. If anything, I can only say I wish I hadn't taken on such a ridiculous workload junior year when I finished my physics honors requirements a year early, and that I hadn't worked full time at my company senior year instead of partying heartily and pursuing goals 1 and 2 above.
Yeah, there's a long story there.
Ah what the heck, I'll tell it. Not like anyone is going to read this anyway.
So, I went to visit a, um, friend, that lived on campus. I rode my bike up, and like I normally did, I leaned it up against the bike rack outside her dorm. No lock. I'd been leaving it unlocked for a long time, maybe a couple of years and it had never gotten stolen. Why should I worry?
I came out the next morning, went to breakfast, grabbed my books out of my gym locker (I was a boy scout, always prepared and all that), and went to class. Physics always makes more sense after a night of heavy, um, studying. Afterwards, I went back by her dorm to grab my bike to head home for a couple of hours of shut-eye. No bike.
I'm sure my reaction was typical. F*ck. F*ck. F*ck. Storm about a bit. Stamped my feet a good bit. Looked to make sure someone didn't move it to the next door to f*ck with me. Probably pretty funny to watch. Then, shoulders bent, I started to walk home. Thank god the Capitol bar was on the way home, and I had enough cash for a couple of pints.
I'd give you a link to the Capitol, but it couldn't do the place justice. Let's just say it's the best place on earth for a pint after your bike has been stolen. Heck, it might be the best place on earth for a pint regardless of whether your bike has been stolen or not. Thanks Stephanie for rebuilding after the lighting strike.
Anyway, I moved on. I no longer was spending nights with my friend, nor was I mourning my bike.
Losing the bike was the last bit of incentive I needed to finish my other bike project. Pissed as I was, I made my new bike from bits I had laying about the house (okay, back yard, shed, basement, you get the picture), which was twice the bike that I had lost, look like crap. I painted it with a toothbrush, and made the handle bar tape job look like crap. It worked well, though, and it actually made my commute to school easier. So, really, I didn't mind that much that my bike had been stolen.
For a while I locked the new bike up, just because the other one was stolen, but it wasn't long until I got too lazy to lock it up. After all, if this one got stolen, I had another at home waiting to be built out of parts, and that was fun for me.
To put beer on the bartop, I took a job working with the campus food service. I know, I know, you probably hate me and all the other people that forced that crap down your throat. Sorry.
My main job was handling the catering for events on campus. I delivered food, especially breakfast treats like bagels and coffee.
One day I jumped into the catering truck with a tray of (what else) doughnuts and assorted pastries for the campus police and others organizing the yearly auction on campus.
You see, each department would retire things, like computers, decks of punch cards, hydraulic rams, or APCs (yes, APCs, they were used for explosives research) that they no longer needed, and those would be sold at auction. I dropped off the tray of goodies, and took a look around at the swag. I never bought anything at these auctions, because they always sold the stuff I was interested in (like computers) in lots that put them out of my price range, but, like a good geek, I liked to drool over the things I couldn't get, like Linotype machines and welding rigs.
Wandering about, I came across, in a dark corner a bunch of bikes. In case it's not already obvious, I'm a bike scavenger. You have a bike part you don't want, give it to me, I'll figure out something to do with it. I thought, maybe nobody will be interested in these crappy bikes. So, I took a close look.
That's when I saw it. My old bike. Yup, tjere it was. Nothing wrong with it except cobwebs from storage. It was sitting there, ready to be sold to some yahoo that couldn't appreciate all the work I'd put into the damn thing.
Luckily I knew most of the campus cops (don't ask how), and I was on a friendly basis wi
Better than PC Phone Home - automatic MSN signin. ... and recovered my laptop (along with other laptops, other stolen goods and also 150 marijuana plants).
No shit.
I had my laptop stolen from my car about 10 weeks ago, and the person who ended up with it decided to log in as me (automatically logged in as me, since, fuck, if they have the laptop, they can crack my password anyway, and I had nothing of grave importance) onto MSN.
Bad idea. I got signed out, went "hrrrm, who has my laptop". Unfortunately, the latest MSN sends files thru a hotmail server, so initiating a file transfer then netstat -an doesn't give you an IP address.
However, getting the individual to access a website set up specifically for them, logging their IP address worked.
It was a bit of a pain to get the police to believe me, but in the end they did, and raided a house....
Worked a treat, even if they managed to b0rk my WinXP install and delete some of my Uni work (which I've managed to recover).
Compelling post mostly because I am in a similar phase of life. Since I was sitting here deep in self-analysis *anyway*, might as well contribute to the mass confessional (aka group circle wank).
I spent virtually all of my college life nerding out at a highly technical university with very few girls. When not nerding out, I made periodic attempts to socialize (become involved with the rave scene etc) and, for a slashdot poster, I guess I made decent progress. However, I would quickly burn out and lose faith when I was trying to promote a party Friday night or whatever and walking around the dorms just found a bunch of guys playing counterstrike typing "pwn3d j00 m4mm1e b1tchz0r!!!1" or doing sets while all the girls were huddled in the library studying, or leaving for home to be with their parents, etc.
I've heard the vast majority of colleges have active social scenes, but at least one tech school is mostly silent on Saturday night, aside from "Terrorists Win!". No lie.
So eventually I just gave up, moved off campus, found a good part time job that rewarded me for hacking cool stuff 20-40 hours a week (on top of the 40 hour course load), and recently graduated knowing basically only the same five male friends I had freshmen year.
Sometimes I adopt the mindset in your post and worry I just opted out of the best part of my life. The thought is profoundly depressing. No doubt it is difficult to develop the social skills girls/women require if you do not do so along with your peers--the vast majority of women obey a very specific, inelastic, social ruleset and many aspects of that ruleset are challenging for highly technical, introverted males.
All of that aside, the last 10 years really have blown the lid off of some fscking awesome technology. I have deeply enjoyed thousands of hours spent on OSS, coding, etc, and draw spiritual satisfaction from my geek pursuits. As powerful as sex is, there are some people who just get off on technology (insert sticky kb jokes here), music, math, etc, more than on a skank sorroriety girl (which frankly is what most of the boring easy college girls classify as). Telling a technical person to drink/snort up and tag a skank is like telling a bunch of skanks to spend Saturday night optimizing a *BSD kernel (heh theres some fun for the ACs in that quote).
Anyway part of becoming an adult is realizing that pop culture and modern society impose a lot of BS in the name of social conformance. You'll probably have to reject a metric ton of that BS to feel OK about your interests. I know first hand you will not agree from within the depths of depression, however: there are at least a few women who value uniqueness and will pull you into their world assuming you don't write them off as sluts, freaks, etc, or write yourself off as an inadequate social reject. I bet many women are potentially sympathetic but lack the social initiate to break rank with the Animal House hoards.
So to wrap this post up... Modeling highly technical systems is an amazing talent for which you may be highly compensated. However using that talent to model your own mind quickly becomes counter-productive. Socialization demands empathy with another person; if you are stuck deep in self-analysis you will not have mental bandwidth for him or her. Also trying to force yourself into a value system inconsistent with your past is probably not going to work, instead you need to use your rational abilities to address emotional/social concerns, yet without violating the narcissism constraints. College and life are just a case of discovering the right tradeoffs, very similar to the art of hacking.
Further Reading:
"This Side Of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Go grab it on Gutenberg.
Further Discussion:
brane at sdf tod lonestar tod org
- Raise absolute hell and look like some stressed out moron.
- Pick up your laptop and walk to the library.
Guess which one results in more work getting done?Agreed. I'm firmly in the habit of keeping a 2 or 3 subject and a cache of nice pens around. Forget those 10 for $2 Bics and pick yourself up a fountain pen or two, or at least a nice rollerball or gel pen from a fountain pen company. You'll find it a lot easier to take a lot of notes quickly.
On top of that, one of the best methods of study is to regularly type up your handwritten notes, so you have searchable files or nice printed copies come test time. I find I don't need to do this these days, but did when I was an undergrad. Usually reading through my notes and having to give them enough thought to arrange everything logically as I typed it was enough to remember most of the material. I rarely did more studying than just quickly reading through my notes the night before or the day of the test.
In grad classes, there are a lot more assignments due that reinforce the learning, so notes aren't as important. Also, in my major (library and information science) there aren't nearly as many tests as there are papers and other types of projects.
I asked him about it, and was told that he'd had an art-major friend do it using some sort of a thin enamel that wouldn't block small openings (like grills) but dried solid as a rock. The idea was to reduce the resale value to virtually nil while making it painfully easy to recognize, thus presenting a VERY unappealing target to thieves. So, do you know any art majors?