Local Textbook Blog

Don’t let your RA think you’re only a “Solo Cup Kid.” Get in good with your dorm’s middle manager to learn the hidden rules, stave off future problems, and actually meet some interesting people living right next door.

Your RA will likely be one of the first people you meet at move-in, and as they’ll probably tell you at hall meetings, they’re primarily there to help ease your transition to college life. If you’re a bit too focused on carousing at college, it can be tempting to ignore an RA’s attempts to build community in favor of, say,making soda can beer covers. However, by putting in a little time with your RA, you can make the college experience much easier on yourself. Whether you’re interested in avoiding being busted for your Classy Evening Soiréés, or you just want someone to help make your college transition way less stressful, putting in face time with your RA is the way to go.

Attend information sessions: Hall meetings will allow you to learn important information: where to go when the building catches on fire, how to wash your clothes without overloading the machine, and most importantly, what the RA can and cannot do. Can they enter your room if you don’t give them permission? Do they need to have a noise complaint before investigating? Knowledge is power! In addition, this will allow you to get more of a feel for your RA and what they will and won’t tolerate.

Hit up the hall programs: RAs are desperate for people to attend their hall programs—being the resident who gives up an hour to eat pizza and bake cookies will make your RA love you. After all, they’re likely to walk right on by your room, despite the slightly odd noise, if you’re the resident who bonded at the hall program—not true if you’re the guy they caught wandering the halls stoned at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. Plus, if you actually want help with your sex-iling roommate or that guy blasting techno as you try to study, your RA is going to be much more willing and equipped to help you if he/she knows who you are.

Be quiet: Your RA doesn’t want to write you up. They don’t. It requires paperwork and yelling and it’s a pain. The best way to avoid being written up? Be quiet. Tell your friends to be quiet. The RA is not going to stumble upon your group of fifteen people getting drunk to Top Gun if you don’t invite them in by yelling.

Privacy lock them on Facebook: Any half-way savvy reader will know to put their professors, parents, grandparents, and clergy members (it happens) on limited profile. Remember to do this with you RA—they may be obligated to report you if they see that amusing photo of you with a beer in your dorm. Their personal feelings about you will not trump their no-doubt strong desire to not get fired.

It may seem pointless to forge a relationship with someone whose only connection to you is living on the same hall, but RAs can be a great resource if you make just a little effort at it.

Source: Lifehacker

A friendly ‘hello’ when I passed the RA in my hall got me a bunch of friendly warnings in place of fines and trips to the dean. It’s worth the effort.

Source: Lifehacker

Accurately remembering names is one of the simplest yet most important components of interacting with people, no matter in what capacity. This article presents some tips I’ve acquired over the years with regards to remembering and using people’s names.

Image by quinn.anya

Introduction

Accurately remembering names is one of the simplest yet most important components of interacting with people, no matter in what capacity. A person’s own name is the single most important word to him/her; it is intimately tied to his/her identity as an individual. How you deal with people’s names can have a profound effect on their impressions of you: Think about the times you’ve felt special when someone you admired addressed you by your name in a sincere tone; or think about the times when you’ve felt belittled when someone negligently called you by the wrong name, or worse, maliciously made fun of your name in front of you.

This article presents some tips I’ve acquired over the years with regards to remembering and using people’s names. There are many far more reputable professionals who have written about this topic, so I am not claiming that my tips are novel. However, such professional ‘human interaction gurus’ are often targeting their advice to a business-minded audience, giving tips on how to socially network, schmooze, or otherwise impress people at work. In contrast, I am writing based upon my own experiences growing up as a technically-minded kid without much in terms of schmoozing or popularity-acquiring skills, so hopefully other nerds and geeks can better relate to my advice.

Tip 1: DO remember someone’s name the FIRST time he/she tells it to you

Here is the most important tip of this article, so pay attention!

Unless you’re the Unabomber (or some other hermit living in isolation), you will have to make hundreds or even thousands of introductions to strangers throughout your lifetime. Like death and taxes, personal introductions simply cannot be avoided, so it’s wise to remember the most crucial bit of information that comes out of them: the other person’s name.

Unfortunately, most of us totally forget the other person’s name as soon as the introduction is over. Here is how a typical scenario plays out:

1. The other person says to you: “Hi, I’m Sasha”
2. You respond by presenting your own name: “Nice to meet you, Sasha. I’m Philip”
3. A split-second later, you totally forget Sasha’s name because your mind is too pre-occupied thinking about the next thing you’re going to say to carry the conversation forward, or too focused on listening to Sasha talk. Likewise, Sasha also totally forgets your name.
4. The conversation might proceed for a few minutes, and then by the time you and Sasha part ways, neither of you can remember the other’s name, but you’re both too embarrassed to ask for it again. Game over.

This has happened to me dozens of times, and it still continues to happen, although less frequently now that I’m more conscientious about remembering people’s names. The main lesson here is that if you don’t make an active effort to remember someone’s name the first time he/she tells it to you, then it’s really difficult for you to get another chance to do so.

One simple way to elide this awkwardness is to later ask a friend who knows Sasha to remind you of her name. But I feel that a better way is to try your hardest to remember names the first time around. Let’s revisit our same introduction scenario again:

1. The other person says to you: “Hi, I’m Sasha”
2. As soon as you hear her name, start repeating SASHA in your head loudly a few times — SASHA, SASHA, SASHA. If you want to practice saying it out loud a few times, ask her about her name. “Sasha, that’s spelled S-A-S-H-A?” or “Sorry, I’m not so good with names. How do you spell that?” The purpose of these questions is to simply get you and Sasha to repeat her name a few times to help you to remember. This step should only take a few seconds at most, or else it can start feeling awkward.
3. Now introduce yourself: “Nice to meet you, Sasha. I’m Philip.”
4. Unless you have something desperately urgent to say, let Sasha talk, and as you listen to what she has to say, keep associating what she says with the name SASHA. Think creatively about how you can clearly associate that name with her face. If you know someone else with the same name, try to associate that person with Sasha; or if you know some clever mnemonic or memory aid to help you remember her name, then use it, no matter how absurd it might seem.
5. When you finally part ways, mention her name to her! e.g., “Great talking to you, Sasha, I’ve gotta go meet up with my friend now.” This has the double benefit of making her feel good that you remembered her name, and also helps you reinforce her name in your head even deeper.

With some practice, you’ll notice that you will become much better at remembering people’s names, without appearing at all awkward.

Tip 2: DO make extra efforts to learn foreign-sounding or unconventional names

Most people you’ll meet will have conventional-sounding names, like Steve or Rachel (if you live in America). However, you will inevitably meet people with unconventional, foreign-sounding, or hard-to-pronounce names (with respect to your home culture). These folks are used to people forgetting or botching up their names, so you will make an extra good impression if you can accurately recall their names. It’s obviously harder for Americans to remember a name like Ramachandran than George, but that’s not an excuse for not trying.

My main advice here is to (apologetically) ask the other person to repeat and clarify how exactly to pronounce their name: “Sorry, I can’t hear too well with this noise in the background. Could you repeat how to pronounce your name?” These people are used to having to repeat or clarify their names, so they likely won’t mind, especially when you are meeting them for the first time. Don’t worry at all about how to accurately spell their names, but rather focus on making up a phonetic spelling that’s easy to remember. For a name like Chakravarty, you could think to yourself, “CHALK - AHHH - VAR - TY, rhymes with party” And when you address them by their names again, you can ask for them to repeat it a few times, with something like “Pardon, did I pronounce it correctly? I want to make sure I get it right.” At the very least, they will appreciate that you are making an effort.

Tip 3: DON’T make any remarks about people’s unconventional names

Everyone with an unconventional name probably remembers being teased as a kid in school over his/her name, so such insensitive behavior during adulthood (even if not maliciously intended) can bring back less-than-fond memories.

You risk sounding ignorant, xenophobic, and bigoted if you make dismissive or insensitive remarks about people’s names that happen to be unconventional by your local definition. For example, “Boy, those Asian names are so hard to remember! Sheesh, I can deal with Dave or Mike, but Yamamoto, damn!”. Or even something as innocuous as “Whoa, that’s pretty weird-soundin’, dude! Where did that come from?!?” Even if you don’t actively intend to be prejudiced, such statements make you sound so. This is especially true if you’re a member of the majority group, i.e., a white person in America.

Remember, in most countries, your name sounds weird!

Tip 4: DON’T call people by nicknames or alternative forms of their names if they haven’t first sanctioned it

Play it safe by always addressing someone by the exact name he/she used when introducing him/herself. Hearing someone call you by an unsanctioned nickname or name variant can be mentally jarring, since you’re simply not used to responding to it. Even worse, it shows disrespect and arrogance on the part of the caller, since he/she seems to be asserting the right to modify your own name in front of you. Someone named Robert might not want others calling him Rob or Bob or Bobby-boy, or might have reserved those variants only for use by close friends or family members.

This action becomes even more offensive and bigoted when the other person has a foreign name. For example, if you meet someone named Katsuyami but you say something like, “God damn! What a weird-soundin’ name! How ‘bout I call you Kat instead? You cool with that, kid?” What an insult!

Tip 5: DO use people’s names occasionally in conversation, and especially when saying hello and goodbye

Once you remember someone’s name, the great thing about using it in conversation is that it can develop better rapport (since everyone likes hearing their name) and can also help you remember it even better. Of course, it’s gratuitous and phony-sounding to preface every sentence with mention of a name, but I’ve found that you should at least use names when saying hello and goodbye to enter and exit with a pleasant impression, respectively.

Tip 6: DON’T ever call people by the wrong name

Hearing your name mispronounced can be annoying but forgivable, especially if lots of people find your name hard to pronounce, but hearing someone call you by the wrong name is always infuriating! Out of all facts that someone can possibly misremember about you (e.g., your job, college major, or ethnicity), getting your name wrong is the ultimate insult. It simply leaves a yucky visceral impression that the other person doesn’t give a damn about you.

Thus, if you’re not 100% certain that you’ve got someone’s name correct, it’s probably better not to address them by it, and instead immediately find some covert way of re-learning it (e.g., asking a friend or even apologetically asking that person to re-introduce him/herself to you).

However, don’t just give up and not make subsequent attempts at learning someone’s name just because you didn’t get it the first time around. Hearing someone call you by the wrong name is horrible, but knowing that someone most likely doesn’t know your name and isn’t willing to learn it is also fairly irritating.

Tip 7: DON’T misspell someone’s name in writing

When you are writing emails to people (or letters, if you’re old-school), the single most important word to spell correctly is their name. Typos everywhere else can be tolerated, but people will reflexively cringe if they see their names misspelled. A person sees his name in writing probably more times than any other non-trivial word, so any misspellings will immediately pop out.

Many people have misspelled my name as Phillip in emails, even when my emails to them clearly spelled it Philip; this is one of my personal pet peeves, and I can’t help but notice every single time it occurs.

A brain-dead-easy way to get someone’s name correct in writing is to simply copy-and-paste it from a previous email they have written to you; the chances of someone spelling their own name wrong is far less than you spelling it wrong!

Tip 8: DO try to learn the names of important people surrounding your conversation partner

You can build even greater rapport with someone if you can remember the names of his/her significant other, spouse, kids, or even parents. That way, instead of sounding generic with something like, “So, how is your wife’s art project going?”, you can appear more personable with, “So, how’s Deborah’s art project going?”

Don’t stress as much about these names, though, since they are less important than getting the person’s own name nailed!

The physical fitness training manual the army used covers just about anything you could want:

1. Cardio Fitness

2. Muscular Fitness

3. Muscular Endurance

4. Flexibility

4. Body Composition

5. Nutrition

6. Exercise Drills

7. Injuries

So get reading!

Source: Hack College

Public speaking can be terrifying—an estimated 95% of people experience some anxiety when speaking in front of groups. Unfortunately for everyone except that lone 5%, college is full of public speaking requirements: speaking up as a member of a club, for example, or having to give the first of many class presentations. However, with these tips you can hopefully reduce your public-speaking stress and give killer presentations.

Be Prepared - Part of the terror of public speaking comes from a fear of screwing up publicly. You can reduce this chance (and as a result, the fear) by preparing beforehand: make a bullet-pointed outline for your speech, for instance. If you’re doing a powerpoint presentation in class, be sure not to have everything on the powerpoint—instead, put bullet-pointed cues on the slides and expand upon them while speaking (it’s okay to have personal notecards with the expanded information on them). This way you’ll look like you know what you’re talking about by giving the audience information that only comes from you, rather than your visual aids. In addition to looking competent, an outline or notecards will give you something to go back to should you get completely flustered.

Rehearse - Your visual aids and notes won’t amount to much if you act like you’re seeing them for the first time. You may feel like an idiot doing it, but practicing in front of your mirror will make you more comfortable with what you’re saying, will help you grow less dependent on your notecards, and will give you a sense of how long your presentation is running so that you’re not taken aback by time constraints during your actual presentation. After you’ve gone over it in the mirror a few times, find some friend (preferably someone who will be a part of the audience for your real presentation) and do your spiel in front of them. That way you’ll get a little bit of a sense of how people will actually respond to your presentation (do you need to pause for laughter? Are you being unclear?) and you won’t be quite so taken aback by a group of people responding. Of course, if your audience member has to present something too, it’s only good form to offer to be an audience for them in return.

Make Eye Contact - This is part of why you were aiming for someone in your intended audience for the last step—when you present, ask them to sit somewhere you can see them. That way, if you get freaked out by being focused on by lots of people, you can just make eye contact with someone you’ve already presented to. If that person helped you rehearse, they’ve already got some investment in you—they’ll be an encouraging presence. If you can work up the nerve to do it, make eye contact with other friendly faces during the presentation. If nothing else, it will reassure you that you have at least a few people paying attention, and it will reduce a seemingly faceless audience into individuals. You can talk to individuals—you do it all the time!

Smile - This goes along with making eye contact. Smiling a little will encourage your audience to smile back—people like being smiled at. Since your smile will be mirrored back by at least a few people in the audience, it will multiply your humble little facial expression back at you, and if a bunch of people are smiling at you while you present it will help calm you down. If an audience puts you at ease, your presentation will be light years smoother, and that will put your audience more at ease. It’s a cycle of reciprocal excellence.

Put it in Perspective/Be Okay With Change - I have a professor who consistently seems like he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown during lecture. It’s not that he doesn’t know the material—he does—it’s that he has a complete inability to deal with changes to what he’s rehearsed. So, when the SMART Board breaks or he doesn’t bring a book, or switched his bag with his daughter’s, he clearly gets nervous and stressed out in front of us. But you know what? None of the class judges him—we like that he seems human, and he has a devoted student following in part because his frantic lecture style makes us trust him. If you’re presenting, try not to freak out about changes (it’s just stressing you out), but be okay with being startled or nervous—chances are high that you’re presenting to a room full of your peers way more focused on themselves than on you, anyway. If they do bother to notice, chances are high that their sympathies lie mostly with you, their fellow student.

Volunteer to Go First - If you can, just bite the bullet and do it. First off, it makes you look courageous (in the eyes of your peers) and prepared (in the eyes of your professor). Secondly, and perhaps even better, if you go first and the presentation happens to totally bomb? Everyone will forget about it as soon as the next person stands up in front. It’s a win-win for you, the nervous presenter.

They snore, they blast music at 2 am during finals, they get naked at awkward times. Having a roommate can be a real pain, but most of the time you can fix these problems with just a few obvious steps.

1. Talk and Act

Talking is great, but if there’s no change, it’s just a frustrating waste of time. Try to catch your roommate when there’s no one else there for a few minutes. Openly discuss the problems you’re having, and open yourself up to hearing some complaints from the roommate as well. Before you leave, make sure you agree upon the actions the other can take to fix the problem.

A week later, if the roommate still hasn’t taken the steps you agreed upon to fix the problem, remind him or her, ask why not, and address each point the roommate makes one at a time. The most common answer: “I haven’t gotten around to it yet,” is one of the easiest to respond to. Agree on a time, and hold the roommate accountable to that.

2. Be a good roommate yourself

Make every effort to clean up after yourself and shower everyday. Use headphones while they’re studying, don’t practice an instrument after dark, do the dishes without being asked, take out the trash, and vacuum.

3. When all else fails

If the roommate refuses to stop doing whatever is annoying you, and you can’t change rooms, disregard everything above. This article has some solid tips to get on your roommate’s nerves: 20 Fail-Proof Strategies to Get Rid of a Bad Roommate

“If they are allergic to cats, get one. If they have a cat, shave it to look a lion.”

Nothing can ruin a subject you love like a bad professor, so make sure that good professors teach the classes you want!

Rate My Professor, the Hot or Not of college professors, will help you get a sense of what the teacher’s like before your first exam.