College life is undoubtedly a blast- attending fabulous parties, meeting cute boys, socializing with individuals from a variety of backgrounds, taking part in groups and activities, exploring your interests, your freedom, your individuality and breaking out on your own.

Oh, yeah, and the academic part – that’s why you’re technically there in the first place, right?

With all the constant chaos surrounding your collegiate career, it can be tough to focus on academics and classes. But getting good grades and succeeding academically is paramount; aside from just keeping a high GPA to satisfy your own standards, it’s essential for financial aid, keeping the parents at bay, and most of all, building a future career that excludes slinging fast food. Here are some tips to ensure A’s.

Be organized
Being organized is possibly the most crucial thing you can do to boost your grades and buy yourself some precious sanity. Pick up a cute little planner and make it your bible. Unless you’re heading to a bar or a frat party, don’t leave home without it. Mark all significant dates on your calendar, like exams and review sessions. Take a few minutes each week (c’mon, pull your self away from Facebook for five minutes, mama) to review the week ahead. Block off sections of time in advance for studying. Mark in your flurry of social commitments as well so you can manage your time. Make to-do lists daily, and rely on them to structure your days. Keep your oh-so-sexy notebooks and binders sectioned off for your different courses, and use folders to organize all your handouts and readings. A three-hole punch can be a wise investment- less than the cost of a pedi- and slide your review sheets, past tests and course outlines alongside your notes. For super-geeky organization, try color-coding things on your calendar. Read More »

Does the food at your cafeteria suck? Want to make some extra cash? Can you cook candied olive crumble with fish, braised short ribs with scallops, robiola cheese with fizzy carbonated grapes or chai ice cream with miso-sesame chocolate and powdered peach and pineapple? Didn’t think so.

Fortunately for Duke senior Bryan Zupon, who just loooves food, all this was a possibility. So, he opened a restaurant…in his dorm room.

Those Duke kids, they’re always going the extra mile. Damn overachievers.

“I don’t think that New Southern cooking has changed since the mid-’90s,” Zupon said to the New York Times. “I’d talked to a lot of big-name chefs in the area — for personal reasons and also for the newspaper — and they were so apprehensive to change. I was like, this is frustrating, so I’m just going to do my own thing and see where it takes me.”

Now I know, having grown up in North Carolina, that the state is not known for its culinary wiles. Although there aren’t any top restaurants, there are still some delicious places I look forward to eating every time I go home that could rival some of the best southern cooks out there.

Allow me to share: Read More »

College kids definitely know what it’s like to have the munchies at 3 a.m., pass by a fast food place and feel the temptation. And as if a SuperSized soft drink wasn’t big enough to entice us, McDonald’s has recently introduced the Hugo.

42 ounces of completely unnecessary calories. 410 to be exact.

Didn’t this movie influence Micky D’s to get rid of the whole “excessive sizes thing” a few years back?

Guess the McPeeps decided that ginormous sizes were back in for good, cause the Hugo - whose name even sounds fattening, like, if Hugo was an actual person, he’d look something like this - is being sold at exclusive locations like the ones in St. Louis.

The kicker is, the Hugo is only 89 cents, so it’s been selling like crazy, thanks to the summer heat. AND you’ll soon be able to use the Hugo to wash down their new 1/3 POUND ANGUS BURGER.

American’s are getting fatter, people. Do we really need all this?

But, I guess it’s really up to the consumers out there who can choose what goes in their mouths. That’s the beauty of America - not only do we have at our disposal soda called “Hugos” and hamburgers that weigh as much as our chihuahuas, but we can either say, “No, I will NOT digest you today, fat and lard,” or “Um, Hugos and Angus? Yes please!” Read More »