- Take advantage of all the events going on around campus for delicious free food. I can't tell you how much free food I got last year. I got free pizza like once a week, free wings a few times, I even scored some Chinese food in there! On top of the food, some of the events themselves are fun. I watched a movie about World of Warcraft addictions (and scored free Domino's), a bunch of Asian people singing (and scored free Chinese food), learned about sex (twice, and scored free pizza twice!), I could go on, but you probably get the idea.
- GO TO CLASS, UNLESS YOU ARE 110% SURE YOU DO NOT NEED TO. I skipped Calc a few times because it was boring as hell and I felt like I knew the material. I did NOT know it well enough and ended up getting a C+ and not getting into the business school and having to change my major (which all worked out fine, don't worry bout me). You have a metric butt-ton of free time, going to class will be worth it.
- Meet new people! You'll be surrounded by thousands of them, don't be anti-social! None of my Beech Grove bros went to IU, so I pretty much had to make new friends. Luckily for me, this was really easy because it turns out if you just talk to a ton of people you find cool ones. I've met some of my best friend at college.
- Get to know your campus. Getting to class is so much easier when you know what buildings you can cut through. You get a better idea of where to hang out with your friends, where to sleep in-between classes, etc... Sleeping in the Union was my favorite thing to do at IU. I don't know about other colleges, but at IU some people sleep just in the grass somewhere. It's really relaxing.
- Don't eat too much! Food is good, especially when you have fake college money to spend on candy and beef jerky and soda everyday, but you'll soon discover that the Freshman 15 is very real. Maybe that's because I had chips and salsa and candy and whatnot EVERY NIGHT EVER, not to mention I actually ate two full meals a day every day. Still, I gained weight. Don't let it happen to you!
- Get to know your professor a little. If you need an extension on an assignment or something, it'll improve the odds greatly. I'm not saying that you need to become best friends with them, but if they at least know your name, you'll be better off.
Thursday 18 August 2011
Oh, I Would Kill For The Atlantic
So a lot of you are going off to college or are already moved in there. This is exciting! Fun, new, frightening, liberating, etc... All sorts of words I could throw out there. I figured since I did the whole "new to college" thing last year, I could maybe throw together some advice based entirely on my first year at IU. This is straight from my personal experiences, what I did, wish I would have done, done differently, etc... I hope it helps!
Friday 5 August 2011
My Plug In Baby Crucifies My Enemies
A few days ago I saw Muse in concert and I have to say, it was unbelievably fantastic. So much so that I thought I would share my feelings on it with all of you!
Anyway, I went with Kyra and Devon. We met up with Jillian and some of her friends on the way and ate at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. If you've never been there and like burgers, I'd highly recommend it. From there we headed to the show where we met up with Austin and some of Devon's friends that I don't really know.
The opening band was Middle Class Rut, who weren't half bad for an opening band consisting of two people. They had a strong loud sound, but pretty poor lyrics and they got really repetitive. Also, one of them went on some kind of rant about how he wanted to have sex with everyone in the crowd. That was awkward. That and he said fuck a lot.
Cage The Elephant were next, who I know entirely from the opening song to Borderlands. They ended up being pretty good. I probably wouldn't bother downloading an album or anything, but they seemed to have a decent diversity of songs, a sot of energy on stage, and a generally good stage presence.
While we were waiting in between bands, the TV screens had people's messages displayed on them. Naturally, I had to try my hardest to get my ridiculous ones on there. I managed to get over 20 messages on the screen including my League Of Legends name (I started playing that, you'll get a post about it sooner or later), a Portal 2 reference, and about five stating that I love Radiohead and Thom Yorke (lead singer).
I would imagine Muse is what you've wanted to hear about, so I'll talk about them soon. They started with Exogenesis Part 1, which was a really surprising and fantastic choice, creating a really ominous and dramatic feeling. From there they went into Uprising. I don't really care for Uprising, but it certainly got the crowd going well. Next up was Map Of The Problematique, which blew me away and was a really freaking awesome choice. They followed that with Butterflies and Hurricanes which is another personal favorite and came out epic as hell live. In between almost every song, they did random instrumental jams.
It's at this point I want to mention that Matthew Bellamy obviously does not enjoy speaking to the crowd very much. I mean, he wasn't shy per say, he just rarely ever talked!
After Butterflies I believe was Supermassive Black Hole, which is a fun song and was cool to see live. It's after that that things took a very Resistance turn. As in, they played Undisclosed Desires, Resistance, United States of Eurasia, and Guiding Light. Now all of these were great live, and I like The Resistance, but Guiding Light? Really? Of all the songs they have, I wouldn't have picked Guiding Light. Oh well... I don't quite remember the order of things after that, but they played Starlight. Starlight is one of my favorite Muse songs and had an amazing laser show. They also did Time is Running Out, which I actually don't like as much as I used to, and Hysteria which was pretty powerful and awesome.
After some half-assed attempt at getting an encore cheer (they didn't even say goodbye!) they came back and FINALLY played Plug-In Baby. I freaking love that song and they did it justice, I just wish we could have got more instrumental stuff. After like five more minutes of jamming with a harmonica, they closed with Knights Of Cydonia.
Overall, it was a fantastic show. I just wish they played more older stuff, ya know?
Anyway, I went with Kyra and Devon. We met up with Jillian and some of her friends on the way and ate at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. If you've never been there and like burgers, I'd highly recommend it. From there we headed to the show where we met up with Austin and some of Devon's friends that I don't really know.
The opening band was Middle Class Rut, who weren't half bad for an opening band consisting of two people. They had a strong loud sound, but pretty poor lyrics and they got really repetitive. Also, one of them went on some kind of rant about how he wanted to have sex with everyone in the crowd. That was awkward. That and he said fuck a lot.
Cage The Elephant were next, who I know entirely from the opening song to Borderlands. They ended up being pretty good. I probably wouldn't bother downloading an album or anything, but they seemed to have a decent diversity of songs, a sot of energy on stage, and a generally good stage presence.
While we were waiting in between bands, the TV screens had people's messages displayed on them. Naturally, I had to try my hardest to get my ridiculous ones on there. I managed to get over 20 messages on the screen including my League Of Legends name (I started playing that, you'll get a post about it sooner or later), a Portal 2 reference, and about five stating that I love Radiohead and Thom Yorke (lead singer).
I would imagine Muse is what you've wanted to hear about, so I'll talk about them soon. They started with Exogenesis Part 1, which was a really surprising and fantastic choice, creating a really ominous and dramatic feeling. From there they went into Uprising. I don't really care for Uprising, but it certainly got the crowd going well. Next up was Map Of The Problematique, which blew me away and was a really freaking awesome choice. They followed that with Butterflies and Hurricanes which is another personal favorite and came out epic as hell live. In between almost every song, they did random instrumental jams.
It's at this point I want to mention that Matthew Bellamy obviously does not enjoy speaking to the crowd very much. I mean, he wasn't shy per say, he just rarely ever talked!
After Butterflies I believe was Supermassive Black Hole, which is a fun song and was cool to see live. It's after that that things took a very Resistance turn. As in, they played Undisclosed Desires, Resistance, United States of Eurasia, and Guiding Light. Now all of these were great live, and I like The Resistance, but Guiding Light? Really? Of all the songs they have, I wouldn't have picked Guiding Light. Oh well... I don't quite remember the order of things after that, but they played Starlight. Starlight is one of my favorite Muse songs and had an amazing laser show. They also did Time is Running Out, which I actually don't like as much as I used to, and Hysteria which was pretty powerful and awesome.
After some half-assed attempt at getting an encore cheer (they didn't even say goodbye!) they came back and FINALLY played Plug-In Baby. I freaking love that song and they did it justice, I just wish we could have got more instrumental stuff. After like five more minutes of jamming with a harmonica, they closed with Knights Of Cydonia.
Overall, it was a fantastic show. I just wish they played more older stuff, ya know?