How to Actually Cook Things in College

'Lo GP,

I little while ago I told you all how to season meat. Then I thought. What about the next step. It seems obvious to me that you would simply put the meat in the pan and fry it. But then again, somethings you need to bake in the oven; which is an entirely different process. This video will help you.



Hopefully that's helpful to you all!

Helpful College Tip: If you have to choose between getting a meal plan and cooking for yourself I'd go with the meal plan. With all your studying and partying you likely won't want to bother making yourself each meal. With a meal plan you can pick up something to eat without taking much time. Not to mention it's sometimes expensive to make a good healthy meal. But if you're desperate for cash, cup noodles will always be cheaper, though you may end up gaining the freshman 15.

College Email

'Lo GP,

I received a discounted residence room at my university which cut down my residence fees by 50%, and almost lost it. This was because, despite their original correspondence with me through my hotmail account, they decided to tell me I'd received the room through my university email. An account which I rarely check. In order to secure this room I had to reply by a deadline that I had already missed by at least three hours. Thankfully, the residence section of my university understood my misunderstanding, but not before the woman stated at least five times that it said at the end of every email sent to my hotmail account that I should check my university one.

So let me tell you this. As soon as you recieve your university email it is active. You should be checking it at often as you check your regular email account. While some people may simply have their university email forwarded to their hotmail account, I have been told time and time again by upperclassmen that things get lost in cyberspace. And to be honest, is it really that hard to check it?

That's all for now,
bye bye
- Evinus

Helpful College/University Tip #3: Always check your university email. As soon as you get it, treat it as you would your regular email account.

Mnemonic Devices (How to remember names)

'Sup GP,

In college, and in life, it is very important that you remember names. Many people take personal offense if you fail to remember their name, believing that they were not important or exciting enough to remember. And let's face it, they probably weren't, otherwise you would have remembered their name. But if you want to make friends and try, and try not to offend people, you should get good at remembering their names. And if you can't remember, make sure you have a system so they don't realize you've forgotten their name. This video will show you some techniques.



All joking aside, I actually do sometimes never say someone's name. If they realize it, it never shows. Obviously this is not a perfect system, but it has its uses. And if your conversation is fun and engaging they are even less likely to notice you haven't once said their name.

Helpful College Tip #2: Look up some mnemonic devices and try them out before you go for your first day, especially if you don't attend frosh week. In frosh week you will likely be forced to do endless icebreakers and likely know at least 15 people's names. But wouldn't it kick a$$ if you could blow minds during icebreakers by remembering everyone's name on the first try? Not only does it make you memorable, but you come off as a person who listens and pays attention to others.

Bye bye GP
- Evinus

Timetabling

Hey there GP,

While I, weeks ago, finished doing my timetables for my first year, my friends are still agonizing over theirs. This being because in college you must make your own timetables while before in high school you just picked the courses you had to take and the administration did the rest. However the administration also likely tended to mess up which left to missing classes you wanted or standing in line for hours waiting to tell them what was wrong. In college there is none of this nonsense. You are given a crash course in timetabling and then sent off you use the tools given to you to organize your shite yourself.

The difference is in the schools. My university has a very simple, albeit inflexible system to timetabling. You type in your course on the website and make sure you have to conflicts in your classes (ie. two classes occurring at the same time). If you do happen to have a conflict you simply cannot take one of the classes. Whereas in my friend's school (a very large university) they have endless choices, so many in fact that it becomes difficult to choose. Especially since their particular campus is very spread out. Furthermore their timetable process was mostly on paper causing them to have large charts laid out in front of them while they spent hours pouring over it.

So for all of you I'm going to give you some timetabling advice for when you have to do this job yourself.

1. Make a chart of the days of the week and times. Likely your school will provide this for you.
2. Make a list of all the courses you want to take and their respective course codes
3. On the chart will out all the classes that only have one time slot.
4. Fill out all the classes you MUST or REALLY WANT to take without worrying about the times.
5. fill out the rest of your classes in the chart without worrying about the times BUT make sure you avoid night classes at all costs
6. Once you've filled out all the courses in the timetable look back and see if you have flexibility. And switch times around. You may ask, why not just do this in the first place? Sometimes you may find it very difficult to place classes in a way so you don't have to walk up early or otherwise. By example, the friends originally tried to do their timetabling that way and 4 hours later they no longer cared where the classes went and STILL hadn't even added their electives.
7. Look at the location of each class and make sure that if you have BIO 100 at 9-10am and CHEM 100 at 10-11am that you can get from one class to the other in 10 minutes. Otherwise you may want to switch the order. Though if you are on a close knit campus it usually only takes about that time to get from point A to point B

I can't guarantee these techniques will work for you, but steps 1-5 worked very well for me. And the other steps are recommendations I am making after watching my friends struggle. But like I said, every school is different and some have more flexibility than others. My personal schedule had conflicts and the course I need for my major only had one spot that conflicted with JAPN 100, so suffice to say I won't be taking Japanese this year. Furthermore, my film course ONLY offers labs at night so I had no choice but to take a night course. So take that as you will.

The most important thing is that you get the class you want. Even if you have to wake up at 8:00am (heaven forbid...) to take it. Better than being in class at 10:00pm and coming home tired just when your friends head out to party. Let me tell you, in my opinion, early morning is ALWAYS better than late at night.

Happy timetabling (though that time is past for this year, but good for next year)
Bye bye GP!
- Evinus