KIPA Conference

I know I talked about my work on Transy’s newspaper a little bit at the beginning of the year. Well, I’m still going steady as Opinions Editor and regular columnist, and while I devote hours a week to the Rambler, this weekend made it all worth it!

This weekend, Transy hosted the annual Kentucky Intercollegiate Press Association (KIPA) conference, where the staff from college newspapers across the state come together to attend discussions and panels to get ideas about how to improve their papers. As I couldn’t miss class on Friday, I could only attend one session, but it was fabulous and I even came away with a story idea or two! A regular and popular columnist from the Lexington Herald Leader emphasized the importance of steeping yourself in your community to produce the best possible stories, and we had a discussion on the best strategies to go about doing it—what a great guy!

Not only did we have these discussions, we also had an awards ceremony on Saturday morning. A couple months ago, we submitted stories, and even entire issues of the Rambler to compete against those from other colleges, and the Rambler CLEANED UP! We even won first place for overall Opinion pages among all the others! It just really reminded me that our paper is truly respected by other campus newspapers across the state, and renewed my love of working with the paper, even though it adds a good deal of stress to my life on occasion. I wouldn’t give it up for the world, and if you’re at all interested in working for the Rambler when you come to Transy, I can hook you up ;)!

Transy Night Out--Gatti Town!

Oh hey!

So we’re right in the middle of midterms. February has been a tough month for me. I’m in the middle of planning a big service project for Psi Chi (national Psychology honorary), which I’ll probably post about closer to its happening, and my workload has been pretty intense. My weekends have been devoted almost entirely to work this month with only small breaks for a conference (see next post), and a sorority informal.

Transy will always provide a way to take a couple hours off on the weekends, though. At least a couple times a semester, the Student Activities Board will host a “Transy Night Out” on a Friday or Saturday night. In the past, they have provided free admission into movies, UK Hockey matches, ice skating, and most recently, last weekend, they provided free entrance into Gatti Town!
I would assume everyone knows what Gatti Town is, but if not, it’s basically a pizza buffet and huge arcade. And we got in completely free! We had to pay for our own games, but we gobbled up as much pizza as we wanted free of charge. It was a great way to hang out with your fellow classmates, even those which you might not normally hang out with. We all piled into the room where they show sports on the big screen to watch the UK vs. Vandy game, chatted away, and stuffed ourselves so full of pizza they had to all but roll us out!

Transy Night Out is reason number 1000028475 that I love Transy—it’s a wonderful program that helps bring our Transy community even closer by providing opportunities for us to hang out with one another off-campus. It also helps us forget about the stress of having to do homework on the weekends if only for a couple hours.

Procrastination Station!

Oh boy. I’m failing at life right now. I owe you two blog posts, don’t I? Well here’s one. One thing you’ll learn to become –fabulous- at in college is procrastination. Chances are you will have already had your run-ins with this disorder, but college has its way of amplifying it to an extreme degree. But you can’t just procrastinate any old way, oh no! There are a few college staple websites with which to procrastinate. If you wish to understand half of your peers, you better get familiar with a few websites if you don’t visit them regularly already:

#5: www.digg.com

Digg basically keeps track of the most popular articles, pictures, videos, etc on the internet. If you’ve ever visited a website and seen a little yellow box with a thumbs up and the word “Digg” underneath, that’s Digg. Basically, when people like a website, video, whatever, or just find it particularly funny or interesting, they can click this little button. The more people that click that button, the higher up that link appears on the Digg.com homepage. Basically it’s a great way to keep up with internet trends, funny memes, or disturbing news stories. Get to know it.

#4: FML/Mylifeisaverage

I grouped these two together because the concept is the same, but the attitude is different. FML stands for fmylife.com (I’ll give you one guess as to what the ‘f’ stands for). It’s a place where people submit their crazy examples of why their life sucks. It’s a good procrastination tool because it allows you to feel a little better about your life on bad days, and also it helps you make sense of all the times you hear people say “eff em ell” on campus. Mylifeisaverage.com is just the opposite—people submit stories from their lives that serve as examples of why their life is completely average. A prime example: “Today, I wore Axe body spray. I wasn't tackled by any women. MLIA.”

#3 Textsfromlastnight.com

This site is a 100% must check every day kind of site if you want to understand why you receive some pretty bizarre texts in college. Most likely, people are trying to get you to send it to this website. It’s pretty funny sometimes; it’s basically people that submit the ridiculous, raunchy or embarrassing texts they receive for your enjoyment. You will get plenty of these in college, so read up.

#2 www.playlist.com

Sorry for all you music pirates out there, but Transylvania’s server blocks Limewire and other downloading clients that allow you to steal music, software, etc. If you still want to create that fabulous party playlist, though, or a study playlist, or any other kind of playlist for that matter, this is the website to do it. It allows you to search for music to add to your playlists for free! No downloading, but you can listen all you want, and their selection is typically fantastic! Sign up today!

#1 Facebook (duh).

We are, afterall, ‘Generation Facebook.’ You probably already have one, but there are some things you’ll need to know before you come to college. Since pretty much everyone is now on facebook, you’ll need to be extra aware of the content that goes on your page. Be classy. Set your facebook to private; make your pictures friends only, and please please please untag pictures where it’s obvious you’ve been up to no good. It’ll make your life a lot easier, I promise.

Now get back to studying!