Words of Wisdom

First and foremost, what is said below are my personal suggestions and observations and are NOT of Penn State.  Also, I understand that it's hard to take advice from someone you don't know, so let me introduce and qualify myself.  I am a 8th semester MIS major who has lived in campus for the last three years.  I've been to most events offered by organizations on campus and consider myself very active on campus.

-The Webmaster

 

Buy an UPS (Uninteruptable Power Supply) for your computer if you have a desktop PC Contrary to what Penn State may have told you.  The power is nearly guaranteed to fail AT LEAST once during the school year.  Computers don't like being power starved, even for a second, bad things happen when they are.  Allow me to tell you a story.  Student A doesn't have an UPS, but Student B does.  During that hectic time right after midnight on the day that they could schedule their classes for next semester, the power goes out.  Student B has time to finish registering for his classes, while student A has lost any classes he almost submitted and now must wait for the power to come back on and for his PC to come back online and signed back into  eLion and possibly by the time this happens, the section of a class that Student A was signing up for has been filled up by laptop users and people with UPSs.  Don't be a student A.  Another time, the power out goes out again (before they improved the wiring in the Resident Halls, it happened A LOT, because we would overload the breakers)  this time both students were working on papers.  Student B can save his work, and shut down safely.  Student A has just lost everything since he last saved, and even that may not be recoverable.  The moral of the story, don't be like Student A.  Buying Advice:  A good rule to follow is the heavier the UPS, the better.  A heavy UPS means a big battery with lots of "juice" plus a heavier UPS can also mean better "guts" which are more efficient at converting the battery's DC power to AC.  Two good companies that make UPSs are APC (My preference) and Tripp Lite (A very good company with great products).  Those aren't the only two good companies, but the two most popular.  I personally have an APC Back-UPS 500.  It works well, but is the minimum I would use.  I get about 1 minute of uptime, before my computer gracefully shuts down.  The 500 stands for 500VA.  I would sugest an UPS that has a data link.  This allow the UPS to tell your computer, "The power went out, start to shut down", otherwise your computer will keep running until the UPS is drained.  Summery: Buy an UPS.  I would suggest one that is equal to or greater than 500VA.

 

 

Eat at Dobbins when possible Dobbins is inexpensive and the food really isn't that bad once you take into account how much they have to make of it.  Eating at Bruno's a lot will eat though your meal points fast.  The one exception is if you have non-Behrend friends that come over or if your family wants to eat a meal with you.  Then eat at Bruno's.  Dobbins is only inexpensive when you,

Otherwise, it's REALLY expensive.

On another note about Dobbins.  Be mature, do not make a mess of your uneaten food.  While it is true those people in the dish room are paid to wash your dishes, they're not paid well enough to have to put up with the mess you purposely made.  They're students just like you, just trying to make some money.

 

Read the Upcoming Events, Programs and Activities e-mail and go to things in it.  Straight up, you pay a SAF fee every semester and a lot of events are sponsored by them.  In a round about way, you've already paid to go.  Same goes for the SGA budget, the organizations they sponsor have YOUR money to spend, help them spend it by joining a few clubs or at least go to the functions they sponsor.

 

Be ahead of the schedule when possible.  If you have the time to get ahead on an assignment, do it.  You never know when something will come up and you'll be glad that you were ahead of schedule when it happened.

 

Fish make a great addition to a room.  I have had fish for the last three years and have enjoyed them immensely.  They're great stress relievers.  Just watch them swim around a little and you'll feel more calm.  It's also nice to have a captive audience.  If you're the type that thinks out loud, you'll feel better talking to the fish, than to yourself.  There's also something to be said about having to care for some other living creature.  If nothing else convinces you to have fish, this might: Fish are guest magnets, you got fish, you'll have people in your room watching the fish.....at least until "new" effect wears off.

 

More will be added as I think of them.  :-)