AskStudent wishes all its readers a lot of luck for upcoming Finals Week
December 4, 2006
Its the final countdown… we have approached the final stretch of the Fall 2006 semester and a lot of the students across the country begin their Finals week either this week or next week.
Two of our own editors Ajit Gaddam and Alex Smith are in this mix too, studying up and finishing their projects and all…
On Behalf of the entire AskStudent team, we wish our readers
Good Luck on your Finals. Study hard and ace em all….
Make sure you read the tips below to prepare for this week
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Dear visitor, Happy New Year to you and thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed reading this post, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Greed is Good: Summer experience of two Wall Street Interns
November 28, 2006
Learn why money never sleeps with a summer job on Wall Street.
Note: This article was submitted by one of our Guest Authors. However, they asked us to withold their name as they are currently employed with one of the companies mentioned in this article.Let us call them Bill and Jane
Undergrads looking to explore the world of high finance flock to Wall Street for summer internships. Post-grad, a job on “The Street” is more lucrative than ever, as firms have raised salaries and lowered time limits for promotions in an attempt to stave off the exodus of talented workers to Internet startups. The improving benefits mean that the competition for Wall Street jobs is fierce. The key to obtaining one is getting a foot in the door early.
The road to a high-powered job starts with internships. Just don’t be disappointed if the closest you get to learning to trade like the big boys is connecting their phone calls. But you never know. You could end up doing some cool stuff, too.
“I was interested in working on Wall Street my whole life. I started investing when I was thirteen. Last summer when I needed an internship and I was unable to get a job on my own, one of my dad’s friends who is a trader on Wall Street, he got me a job working on the New York Stock Exchange,” says Bill of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “Sometimes I’d help answer the phone, take orders from customers, or update them on their orders or when they want to look at a certain stock trading on the floor. I served as a communications link between the broker I worked for and the client. I had to write up reports which wasn’t very complicated.”
Family connections help when it comes to finding jobs on Wall Street, especially with the smaller independent brokers. The most popular way to find an internship at Wharton is through the career services department, which supplied 36% of interns with jobs. The second most popular was through a friend or family member, with 29% of Wharton juniors obtaining internships this way. Since so many students are interested in interning with Manhattan firms, the more people one knows and the more experience one has, the better.
No matter what an intern’s credentials, there is always the possibility of poor treatment by superiors. The Wharton grad told a story about one of the “practical jokes” that was played on him as a naive intern.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Thanks to our guest writers and our editors …
November 28, 2006
Over the last two weeks, we have received an overwhelming number of students asking to be AskStudent’s guest writers. So, here is what we did. We asked them to write about their city, the city in which they live in, talk about it, places to visit and also partay. They include cities down under and also the Queen’s country. We have received over 25 articles and counting so far and we will be posting them up as soon as Melissa proof reads them and posts them out.
Thanks once again to all you guys.
Also, a big hurrah for the guys on the AskStudent team. Ajit Gaddam, Alex Smith, Melissa Hicks, Ryan Ferone… all these guys have been putting in huge hours, the last couple of weeks, and we have been stockpiling up articles. Most of these articles are going to be published under Melissa’s name even though it might be the contribution of a different member of the team. In the case of guest writers, it is still going to be published under Melissa but the name would be mentioned prominently.
All in all, It’s gonna be shock and awe baby!
If you wish to contribute to AskStudent, please send us an email in our contact us section.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Fall Skiing Lessons and other things to be aware of
November 27, 2006
Winter’s coming, but that’s not stopping some folks from hitting the slopes right now. Excerpts and lessons learned from a thanksgiving skiing roadtrip in Colorodo Springs. I know it sounds crazy… why not go to the southern beaches for a warm winter, but trust me nothing beats the thrill of skiing when its freezing.
Lesson # 1: To skiers and snowboarders out there: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the spring skiing or boarding, sunscreen would be it. It’s a cliche and a bad techno-pop song, but if you’re heading to the mountains this winter, I highly recommend you take my advice. Put it everywhere. Rub it into your hairline, under your chin and on the inside (yup, the inside) of your ears. Bathe in it, if you can.
This was the first thing I learned during a recent ski trip to Colorado Springs in Denver for my recent Thanksgiving break. For those of you who aren’t die-hard skiers and snowboarders, let me explain: the mountains do have snow at other times of year besides Christmas, New Years and Presidents Day. Winter skiing and boarding can mean excellent road conditions, shorter lift lines, more comfortable clothing and cheaper everything.
While your friends are shivering on a beach that’s still a little too cold, you can spend your days off flying down uncrowded slopes on soft snow. But, I quickly discovered, there are a few important things to keep in mind before you hit the road.
Lesson Two: Know the Weather
My vacation got off to a bad start because my friends and I forgot to consult the National Weather Service until the evening before we were supposed to leave. Our travel route, of course, was directly in the path of an incoming storm. The highway patrol predicted that a portion of the road would be closed by midnight. We had to leave immediately, and I hadn’t even started my laundry.
College students and sperm donors
November 27, 2006
College students comprise 90 percent of American sperm donors. Why? They’re smart, cute and virile — everything a would-be mom wants.
Jeff Salkin was struggling to pay his bills when he saw an ad that seemed too good to be true: a clinic would pay him to masturbate.
“I was having a hard time coming up with enough money for food and rent. I found out selling sperm is pretty easy, and at 40 bucks a whack, it’s pretty lucrative too,” said the University of Oregon senior, whose name was changed to protect his privacy.
Salkin is one of thousands of college students nationwide who cover their expenses by selling DNA. Commercial sperm banks, which exploded in the early 1970s and now number more than 150, have clustered around universities where the “natural resources” are plentiful: intelligent people who need quick cash and have sperm to spare. By 1993, frozen sperm was a $164 million a year industry, and companies like California Cryobank were aggressively recruiting on the campuses of brand-name schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
“At least 90 percent of our donors are college students,” said Melonee Evans, California Cryobank’s client relations manager. “Students are more eager to donate because they need the money and have more flexible schedules.”
Those who can make the time and the maximum donation, which usually means siring up to 10 children can net upward of $6,000 in one academic year.
“Most students do it because they really need the money,” said Geo Low, an employee at Berkeley, Calif.’s Reproductive Technologies, Inc. “And some think their genes are cool and want to spread them around.” According to Low about 15 students make “deposits” to her bank on an average day.
Students at top schools say they can hardly walk across campus without finding ads soliciting donations from the young, brainy and virile.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Wacky and bizarre graduation traditions at colleges and universities
November 27, 2006
Some college graduation traditions resemble circus acts more than the activities of venerable college graduates.
What will you remember best about college graduation? A sea of black caps and gowns, droning speakers, long receptions, teary-eyed parents? At some schools, it’s more likely to be soaking wet art students, flying wristwatches or piles of green apples.
More than 1400 college commencement ceremonies — most nearly indistinguishable from one another — will take place in the next month. But some colleges have managed to inject wacky and bizarre traditions into the time-honored ritual.
At NYU, hundreds of students jump into a Washington Square Park fountain as their degrees are conferred. At Yale, the university gives every senior a clay pipe and a packet of tobacco. At Wellesley, the graduating class holds a big hooprolling race.
Many commencement traditions started in the days when foppish WASPs dominated the nation’s universities. Yale’s pipe and tobacco tradition, for instance, comes from the 1860s. As recorded by Lymon Boggs, class of 1869, the graduating men would form a ring, smoke their pipes, then do a “stag dance” and crush the pipes under their feet “as a sign that the pleasures of college life were ended.”
Although some students still smoke these “churchwarden’s pipes” during commencement weekend, the stag dance has been lost in the modern translation. Today’s Yalies are more likely to protest the school’s tobacco stockholdings than smoke pipes. “I couldn’t really partake because every time I try to inhale cigarettes or anything, I can’t do it,” said Eileen Yam a recent graduate.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to prepare for your Graduation Ceremony
November 27, 2006
Commencement Day is a dignified ceremony that hearkens the intellectual coming-of-age for the next generation of leaders, scholars and professionals. It’s a time of tradition, pride, refinement and respect. Without reservation, it is the finest day of a college student’s life.
Who am I kidding? A commencement ceremony, much like any other school-sponsored event, can be a real drag. Don’t get me wrong; the whole graduation concept is very exciting, but the actual event can be less than stellar if you’re not prepared. So what follows is a little list of forget-me-nots that will help you make the most out of your graduation experience.
Sunscreen
What’s the number one cause of sunburn? Commencement ceremonies. It’s a proven fact! You’re going to be outside for a long time — at least two hours. If you want to use the time to work on your tan, use SPF 15. If you don’t want so much as rosy cheeks, SPF 45 is the way to go. I won’t dwell too much on this. It’s already been covered in that song by Baz Luhrman.
Gum
Who needs bad breath at commencement? You’re going to be sharing memories with friends, giving a lot of hugs. There may be kissing involved. Get something minty, like Wrigley’s Spearmint; take no chances.
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