Best Resources to Buy and Sell used College Textbooks for students
March 31, 2007
Book Ends : Returning your texts to the bookstore is the least creative way to end a semester.
Exams are finally over and it’s time to unload your used books. If you’re like most students, you’re probably dreading the moment of truth.
You: Hello, good-looking bookstore associate! How are you today? Here are my used books and the receipts.
Clerk: I’ll give you $20 for all of them, except those really heavy ones you lugged over here.
You: But I paid $400 for them four months ago, and I never even opened them up!
Clerk: Next in line, please.
We all know how bad it feels to end up with $20 in your pocket and a pile of heavy books at your feet. What now?
That depends on whether you want to make sure your books don’t go to waste, or whether you’re just concerned about getting your cash back.
Waste Not, Want Not
If you want to make sure your books are put to good use, you have lots of options. Plenty of students would be happy to use your books, no matter what condition they’re in. Professors often assign the same titles year after year and will be happy to pass your tomes on to students who later take the same class. The administrative assistant in your major department can also help you donate books to younger students in your field.
Textbook Tech
Having trouble selling your textbooks? Let the Internet sell them for you.
Some School-operated Sites
Some schools have Web-based book-selling programs which allow students to buy and sell books. Your school may have one you can use. If not, one listed below might come in handy. Check the system before you try another school’s electronic book-selling system, though; some sell only by course. Also remember the rate of mailing the book over long distances may not make a long-distance purchase worth your effort, even if you mail it by book rate.
Texas Tech University
University of Texas
Boston University
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Strategies on How to spend this summer at Home with your Parents
March 29, 2007
The Parent Trap: Spending a summer at home with the parents can be enough to drive anyone nuts.
One of life’s most unsettling (but enlightening) periods is the first month home after your freshman year in college. The pure freedom of school — freedom to make big decisions, stay out all night and make big mistakes — can make returning home a big drag. Especially once you realize home is exactly how you left it.
They say you can’t go home again. It’s true: you’ve changed, and your perspective will never be the same even when you go back to a familiar place. That’s what causes problems with the family.
You’ll realize things have changed the first time you go out with friends. Your mom will ask, “Where are you going?” or your dad will say, “When will you be home?”
I still cringe when I remember the first time my mom asked me those questions after I started college. I was used to setting my own schedule and her innocent queries sounded unbelievably intrusive.
In the old days teenagers just left home and never came back. They either got married or got jobs. But when average young adults started going off to college, a “boomerang” effect was born. Students left their parental nests seeking independence, only to return at the school year’s end.
Your parents will see you returning to their nest for the summer and they’ll plan to protect you and nurture you just like they did for your first 18 years. They don’t mean to squash your newfound independence, they’re just doing what they know.
Help them out. Let them be the best parents they can be — and by making some easy concessions, you’ll get your way in the end.
Always tell them where you are going and when you will be home. (Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but there’s a strategy here.) Tell them you are going to shoot pool, or to see a movie, or something else that’s relatively mundane. The more information you can give them, the better they’ll feel.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Summer Intern Housing: Find a place this summer for your Internship
March 29, 2007
Everyone needs somewhere to call home, even for the summer Intern.
It’s almost April and you’re sitting in your dorm room daydreaming of a perfect summer job far, far away from home. The money is going to be great, there will be so much to see and do, your friends will visit and oh, wait a minute. That’s right, you don’t have a place to stay, yet, do you?
Don’t worry. AskStudent.com can help you find a place to crash this summer, no matter where you’re working. The clock’s ticking, so let’s get started.
City Living: Apartment Surfing
If you’ll be living in a city this summer, there are a number of ways to find an apartment without leaving your dorm room. By turning on your computer and logging on to the Internet, you can find summer rentals anywhere in the country on Web sites like Apartments.com and RentNet, says Manny Clark, assistant director of housing at the University of Minnesota.
If that doesn’t work, Clark suggests checking out local universities and colleges in the area you’ll be working-specifically. Off-campus or commuter student housing is often made available by students who have a yearly lease, but go home for the summer. A lot of Universities, have student forums. So you can email someone working for the university and if you ask nicely, they might be willing to send out an email on your behalf.
Clark says the University of Minnesota is willing to review subleasing contracts for students to make sure they aren’t getting taken. “We try to look at it and make sure they’re not paying more than they should or getting hit with any surprises,” he says.
Clark’s final suggestion is a practical one, depending on where you’ll be working: Try to stay in a college dormitory in the city. He says some schools don’t allow it, but by checking around, you can save hundreds of dollars in rent each month, plus it may come with such amenities as a meal plan. “There’s difficulty in going to a city,” Clark says. “If you’re not familiar with the city and your surroundings, it can be scary, especially if it’s your first time away from home.” As an example, New York University and Columbia University are offering summer housing for students who are not enrolled in their summer program in New York City.
Go Greeks!
If you belong to a Fraternity or Sorority, look for a local chapter in the city of your internship. They might be more than willing to accomodate a brother.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to get a Summer Internship in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney
March 28, 2007
Micky Mouse Job: Work where the magic lives with the Disney College Program.
Each year, the largest and most famous of theme parks imports hundreds of college students to Orlando, FL, to help keep throngs of Disney visitors happy. Disney interns do everything from picking up trash on Pleasure Island to selling tickets at EPCOT in exchange for a competitive salary and an apartment for which rent is deducted from your paycheck. “It’s a great experience. I definitely recommend it,” says Kami Tasndy, who worked as a Disney intern before her senior year at East Stroudsberg University.
Tasndy says just about everyone in her program loved it, which may be why Disney internships are not easy to land. “It’s pretty competitive. There definitely aren’t as many jobs as there are applicants,” she explains. For the privilege selling mouse ears for the summer, you need to fill out an application and go through two rounds of interviews.
To make sure you’re the Mouseketeer chosen, “you need to have a good idea of why you want to work there and what you’ll get out of it,” Tasndy says. Try to find a better reason than unlimited rides on the Teacups. Explain, perhaps, that you’re a marketing or business major and that a summer at Disney will help you better understand customer relations and get close to the inner workings of a major entertainment corporation. Or something like that.
To get a job with the Disney College Program, you must:
�Have completed at least one semester and be in good academic standing at a college or university
�Attend a Walt Disney World College Program presentation to learn about program opportunities and sign up for an interview
�Complete an employment application
�Interview with a Walt Disney World College Program recruiter
�Undergo a criminal background investigation
Disney’s recruiting team visits colleges and universities all over the country to interview students wishing to be considered for the Disney College Program. Visit the College Program homepage for specific information regarding the application and scheduled interview dates at schools near you.
Once You’re In
Work towards getting a Political Internship this Summer
March 28, 2007
Toil away for a candidate who might win. Or lose.
While most first-year college students are preoccupied with battling the Freshman 15 or simply finding their way to class, Mike Woods, a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is busy making a name for himself in the political community. To start forging your own reputation among the political ranks, find yourself a job with a campaign this summer. If you don’t mind low pay, trivial tasks, and a hectic lifestyle, getting and sticking with a campaign internship just takes a little initiative.
Yeah, taking initiative is a little scary, but if you want to climb the ladder to Capitol Hill glory or a White House Intern, nobody is going to hold your hand and take you there.
If being paid is an absolute must, getting a political internship is not the route for you this summer. Saying you worked on a presidential campaign is a cooler story to tell than revealing you were the fry guy at McDonald’s, but a summer political internship probably won’t pay the bills. Most of the paying jobs are already occupied by those who took the non-paying internships earlier and worked their way up, or by those who have really good connections. But if you don’t need a paycheck and all you’re looking for is experience, a political internship this summer may prove to be a wonderful opportunity.
This opportunity, however, may not be as glamorous as you envision. It’s nice to think you’ll be walking side by side with John McCain or Hillary Clinton, aiding your candidate on his way to the White House. The truth of the matter is, on large campaigns like that you’ll probably never even see the candidate for whom you are slaving 18 hours a day, which is why sometimes in political internships, smaller is better.
So you don’t have a cousin who knows everyone inside the Beltway. Start gathering information at from Politics.com, ips.org, the site for the Republican National Committee, and the site for the Democratic National Committee.
On the Web you’ll also find web pages for virtually any candidate, most with links called something like “how to get involved.”
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Kal Penn turns into a Professor. To Teach at University of Pennsylvania
March 27, 2007
Kal Penn, best known for his role as the stoner Kumar Patel in the 2004 cult classic “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” is going to the Ivy League. He will be a guest instructor at the University of Pennsylvania during the spring 2008 semester, school officials announced Monday.
Penn, 29, will teach two undergraduate courses which won’t be Bake 101 and Mix 101. His classes are tentatively titled, “Images of Asian Americans in the Media” and “Contemporary American Teen Films”.
“The Asian American Studies Program is delighted that Kalpen Modi, aka Kal Penn, chose our program to host his teaching engagement at Penn,” program director Grace Kao said. “Mr. Modi is one of the leading Asian American actors of his generation and is particularly aware of how his racial and ethnic identification has affected his professional experiences.”
Students can enroll in the courses as Asian American studies or cinema studies programs in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, Kao said.
He recently finished shooting “Harold & Kumar 2″ with Cho. Kal Penn is also very well known in the American Indian community in the hit movie American Desi. Kal Penn’s other television and film credits include “The NameSake” where he plays the lead as Gogol Ganguli. In this movie, you can definitely see traces of Kumar especially in the pot-smoking scene, but Penn, has definitely matured as an actor. The NameSake could very well turn out to be his breakthrough movie, winning ringing endorsements from most corners. Penn also played the lead in the (awful)movie Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, Epic Movie and also a few episodes of 24 this season.
The university said Penn, a native of Montclair, N.J., received a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a specialization in theater, film and television from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is pursuing a graduate certificate in international security at Stanford University.
Watch “The NameSake” movie trailer featuring Kal Penn below
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to get started on one of the nations hottest jobs: Career as a Dental Hygienist
March 27, 2007
Bleeding Gums School: Part dentist, part dominator, the dental hygienist tends to your teeth. The profession behind the pain.
“You’re going to need to improve your home care,” she said through a blue paper mask. “There’s lots of bleeding.”
Of course there’s bleeding, I think. You’re scraping my gums away with a metal pick.
I cringe and grip the chair’s handles as she continues to scrape, probably encouraged by my feebly muttered, although nearly incompressible, “mmm-hmm.” I feel sharp pain as the tool gouges my gum. Instantly, my eyes well up with tears, and I can feel the warm, salty blood in my mouth. But not for long: she sucks it away. I watch as the straw-shaped vacuum turns crimson with my blood-tainted saliva.
I’m at the dentist’s office. Twice yearly, many of us trudge reluctantly to sterile offices, where we wait for minutes to half-hours after our scheduled appointment times, minding the wait but never saying anything. Then we lie there and pretend to make conversation even though our mouths are wide open and full of sucking, scraping tools that are causing us indescribable pain.
After the hygienist is done pulling at the hardened bits of whatever on my teeth, I’m instructed to rinse. I do, and spit pieces of my shredded gums into the porcelain bowl’s swirling water. Then there’s the polishing of my tender teeth, which is definitely better than the scraping but still uncomfortable. After I leave, new toothbrush and floss in hand, my mouth hurts, but gradually, it feels better. And then good, clean and healthy. How bizarre.
Not as bizarre, however, as our collective willingness to pay people to make us wait, tear our mouth apart and then berate us. In the name of oral health, we turn masochistic. And, maybe unbelievably, we go back, year after year, for more pain and discomfort.
Maybe the healing saltwater rinses have just made me slightly bitter. Maybe I could have avoided all that with an extra minute scrubbing of my teeth, or a little more effort pulling floss between my teeth. It can’t be fun staring into neglected, bleeding mouths all day, so the lecturing is understandable, if sometimes obnoxious and condescending. I know I floss daily — if maybe inadequately — so telling me I don’t isn’t going to do much except make me defensive and bitter.
Dentists use these professionals — hygienists — to clean our mouths before they look at them. Hygienists ostensibly get paid to compensate for our slacking oral care. They get to poke and scrape and polish, converse with people who have their mouths wide open and full of equipment, and then instruct patients about something they should have learned years ago. What a great job, huh? That’s not exactly on my list of things I want to do post-graduation.
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