Home For the Holidays

by Amber Lee

As the semester comes to a close I, like any other college student, am anxious about finals and look forward to the break of the holidays. At Georgia Tech the students get Thanksgiving and the following Friday off. Then there are finals and the semester ends after the second week of December.

The policy at Georgia Tech, and other institutions with a similar policy, can be confusing and frustrating – specifically with Thanksgiving. Unofficially, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is an off day and whether classes are held t is up to the professors. I normally have three lectures and a recitation on Wednesdays and all but one class has been canceled. I have quiz that day in the class that is not canceled so attendance is mandatory. This makes it very difficult to get home before the holidays because as an out-of-state student I have a long distance to travel home. On the other hand, students whose professors have canceled their classes get an extra day off without penalty.

Complaints such as mine are certainly not uncommon and because of student complaints policies among colleges vary. Some colleges have addressed the problem by giving the entire week off since many were leaving early anyway.

Winter break policies are varied also. For example, until recently Harvard held it’s finals after the winter break. Personally, I would find it hard to study and enjoy the holidays with my family, but there are some students who would rather have their finals after the break. When all is said and done, students want to maximize on their vacations as much as possible. Whether that be by study, spending time with their family, or partying is dependent on the student.

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Procrastination is Not So Sweet

Scott Zadig

Many students, along with myself, have probably exhibited some form or another of the notorious habit known as procrastination. Procrastination is not exactly a friend of any college student and it is usually their reason for their downfall. Some people try their best to overcome the urge of putting off work at the last minute, but they end up falling victim to it once again for the next assignment they need to complete. What most people do not know is that procrastination is not only bad in a sense that it develops poor time management skills, but it also has a direct correlation to some other negative effects that end up hurting a student in many different aspects.

According to David Glenn from the University of Ohio state, avoidant styles and habits that come from procrastination lead to higher rates of smoking, drinking, and the tendency to ignore serious health issues. Students who procrastinate also have increased chances of digestive ailments, insomnia, and cold/flu symptoms. Most students do not realize the more serious effects that result from procrastination and they do not make a big enough effort to fix it. David Glenn brings up an interesting and important fact that studies have been done on. People think that simply improving their time management is the easy fix to their procrastination, but studies have shown that it is not effective. Encouraging someone to get over procrastination cannot be done simply by pushing someone to become more efficient with there time. Experts consider procrastination as a type of syndrome and there has not been a true “cure” for it. Students having awareness of procrastination and knowing of its seriousness is the first start to developing a solution. Students need to first realize they have a problem that could be damaging to their health and know that they need to do more than just manage their time more wisely to break the habit.

Adderall Abuse

Kevin Corley

As academic rigor increases at universities, students must find ways to cope with the increased workload. While the true solution is the devotion of more studying time, many students turn to illegal ways of coping with school work. The abuse of Adderall to help study is becoming more prevalent in today’s college society. Adderall is a drug used to help people with ADHD focus. However, many students in college illegally use Adderall to help them focus on their studies and schoolwork. According to an article referencing the Washington post, Adderall sales have increased by 3100 percent between 2002 and 2005. At Georgia Tech, the academic rigor is so great that it is not uncommon to hear of people taking Adderall to get their studies done. Personally, having been here for only a semester, I have heard many students talking about using Adderall to help them with their work.

In an article about Adderall abuse, Lucy Blair states, “It’s cheating. It’s cutting corners. It’s kind of like the easy way out”. Students who are prescribed Adderall take it because they need it to focus. Students who do not have ADHD and take it have an unfair advantage over other students. It is a form of cheating that helps give students an edge over others. While it not directly cheating by providing them information for a test, it is altering their mental state. Similar to steroid abuse in sports, Adderall abuse is a form of cheating that is not only dangerous to the health of those abusing the drug but unfair to those that are completing their work and taking tests without abusing drugs. Abuse of such a drug undermines the grading systems in schools and undermines the true value of an education to students. Students who get better grades because they are utilizing Adderall make the integrity all students grades and degrees questionable. Unless colleges do something, people with integrity are being hurt while cheaters are being rewarded.

Video Game Addictions on Campus

by Gregory Micek

Video games have become more prevalent in the college environment over the past decade. With the influx of video games in college dorms, addictions to video games have also become more common and are a growing concern for university staff, students, and parents alike.

According to Time Magazine, during his “’hardcore’ gaming streaks” Jon Essenburg, a freshman at Princeton, would drink two energy drinks in the evening to stay awake gaming until noon the following day, and then he would “crash, snoozing through his classes and waking up only for dinner and more playing time.” For many gamers, combining the freedom of college with a gamer’s love for video games results in a growing addiction that, left unchecked, can have serious effects on that person’s academics and health. Staying up all night can negatively influence a person’s sleep patterns, making that person feel tired for days after an all-nighter. Therefore, college gamers should be wary of the amount of time they allow themselves to play video games.

Also, Essenburg mentions that he missed classes simply to catch up on the sleep he missed while gaming. According to Time Magazine, a study by the Pew Research Center reported that 48% of college gamers in 2003 claimed that “video games kept them from studying ‘some’ or ‘a lot,’ and 32% confessed to playing in class.” Playing too many video games can prevent a student from studying, doing homework, or even attending class. Excessive video game playing can prevent a college student from performing to that’s student’s full potential and can lower that student’s grades. As a result, college students should prevent themselves from developing addicting habits to video games that inhibit their academic pursuits in college.

New GI Bill Website

By Rohan Gupta

Congress approved the Post-9/11 GI Bill in 2009 in order to allocate additional benefits to the original GI Bill or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. The original bill provided college education for returning WWII veterans and a year of unemployment compensation. The newly amended bill provides additional benefits for servicemen who served in the military since September 11, 2009. These new benefits include full coverage of tuition, allowances, and other adjustment benefits.

The Council on Education recently created a website to help military veterans choose colleges and obtain education benefits designated by the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The council opened the website today and hopes to encourage many veterans to take advantage of the opportunities their website offers. Apparently, many veterans neither know how to obtain the benefits designated by the bill nor know how to use them for a college education. The website provides information concerning benefits and eligibility, college and career advice, and anecdotes about veterans who completed a college education.

Unfortunately, the website does not provide any information on an issue that I discussed in one of my older posts. The issue is concerned with the allocation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill's funds to veterans. So many veterans applied for the bill's benefits that the Department of Veterans Affairs faces a backlog that may take several months to clear. The veterans who did not receive the bill's benefits appealed to the Department of Veterans Affairs and thus created another problem for the department. Hopefully, the department can fix these issues soon and provide the necessary financial aid to the veterans.

Apart from what the website may not cover, it is still a very helpful source for veterans looking to pursue higher education. Information that was not properly conveyed to these veterans earlier is now explicitly available on the council's website.

No Coffee for You!: Ridding the Campus of Its Coffee Stands

By Shane Le Master

Many people say that the innumerable coffee shops and coffee stands scattered around Georgia Tech’s campus are a very nice touch and that their presence makes getting coffee very convenient. However, many young adults are using coffee now as a means of neglecting sleep. Instead of being responsible and practicing good time management to get to bed a decent hour, many students are pulling “all-nighters” and then drinking coffee to keep themselves awake. Students, as being growing young adults and as individuals who extensively use their minds, need to be sure that they are getting adequate sleep every night. In order to better facilitate these healthy habits, Georgia Tech needs to remove all the coffee enterprises on campus. This way, more students will find it more inconvenient to supplement little sleep with caffeine. Instead, they will develop more prudent and sustainable sleep patterns.

College statistics show a strong correlation between coffee consumption and poor sleep among students. According to a study by Texas A&M University, 93% of students do not get enough sleep. A report in the Villanova University newspaper shows that on average, 90% of young people consume coffee on a regular basis. It is doubtless that there is a strong relation between students who do not sleep adequately and students who regularly consume coffee. The school needs to identify this correlation and make the necessary changes in order to promote the well-being of its students. A removal of all the coffee shops and coffee stands on campus would make students less likely to use caffeine as a fall back when they imprudently fail to make time for adequate sleep. The final result would be a more responsible, more rested, and more productive student body. On Facebook, hopefully we will be able to see an end to the “I love coffee” and the “Pulling an all-nighter again” status updates and instead be able to see more things like “I love sleep” and “Looks like I’m going to get my 8 hours again.” While such an occurrence seems impossible now, it can surely happen if the school takes the necessary steps to tone down the presence of coffee on campus..

File Sharing

by Amber Lee

During orientation we are bombarded with much advice and many warnings about how to succeed in college and stay out of trouble. One caveat that I’m sure all colleges have given regards file sharing.

All college students have at least heard about illegal file sharing and participate in it at some point while they are in college. However, new research is showing that many students may be doing so unknowingly. For example, the entire campus at Georgia Tech is wireless. When I first connected to the network I soon found that many students’ music libraries showed up when I started iTunes. There is a way to make your computer undiscoverable even though you are a part of a network, which I promptly did, but not everyone may know how to do this.

It is also somewhat unclear as to what is and is not okay to share online. For example, one student was threatened with expulsion for posting the answers to past assignments online. This caused his greatly professor to be complain and attempt to get the student expelled. Although ultimately the student’s actions weren’t against the rules and no action was taken against him, the professor’s anger is understandable. Many professors recycle their assignments if a student posts the answers online they run the risk of future students finding the answers and cheating.

But the most notorious form of file sharing is the illegal sharing of songs. The music industry has been combating the piracy of songs for about ten years now and one of their biggest targets has been college students. But it is impossible for the RIAA to track down a specific student on a college’s network they have been using the help of the colleges themselves to prevent file sharing and issue subpoenas if necessary. Suing various individuals has done little to slow down the pirating, which is why it is finally being acknowledged that another approach has to be taken.
Most agree that the best solution seems to be having a blanket licensing fee. Meaning paying one flat fee for “unlimited” downloads. They are running a trial program at a few colleges with some success. The only problem I have is that the company offering the music may not have the songs that I want. Even now I sometimes have to shop around for the music of an artist who isn’t in the mainstream.

Ultimately, I think multiple actions have to be taken. Young people feel they are invincible, but their actions are rarely done anonymously. They need to be educated as to what exactly is wrong and illegal to do. And finally, the music industry needs to be proactive in developing an easier way to download music that is also legal.

Laptops in Lectures

Kevin Corley

Given the large lecture classes utilized to teach mass amounts of students, it is easy for students to go unnoticed and become distracted. Most lecture classes allow the use of laptops during class as they can be useful for note taking and viewing supplementary material. However, a study mentioned in The Chronicle found that students taking laptops to class admitted that note-taking wasn’t the highest priority. Eight-one percent admitted to checking their email during class and sixty eight percent admitted to keeping instant message applications open. The truth is that while laptops can be a useful note taking tool in class, in reality they are more of a distraction than anything. Laptops are harmful to student’s grades because they are too distracting.

A professor, Cynthia M. Frisby, found that by no longer allowing the use of laptops in her class, the grades of her students increased. Personally, I feel that most classes would benefit from not allowing the use of laptops in class. In my own experience, it is easy to become distracted by a computer and lose track of what the professor is teaching. When looking around a lecture hall of students, it is not uncommon to find most other people on Facebook or various other sites. In most circumstances, laptops in lecture halls do more harm than good. They provide too much opportunity for distraction to students. Many students and professors would benefit from a stricter laptop policy in lecture halls. At the very least, schools should make it possible to turn off wifi access in lecture halls. The internet is the most distracting part of having laptops in lecture halls. If professors can control when internet access is on and when it is not, students could be more likely to utilize their computers for note taking. Internet access typically is not necessary for most classes. Overall, schools should enforce a stricter laptop policy in lecture halls, whether it be restricting laptop use entirely or simply access to the internet.

Georgia Tech and the Water Wars

Scott Zadig

In recent news, the three states of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have been having “water wars” concerning the rights to use Lake Lanier as a source of water. The states of Florida and Alabama have been having issues with the amount of water they receive specifically from the Chattahoochee River. They do not receive enough water to meet their needs and they took the issue to Supreme Court. In the court ruling, a federal judge ruled that Georgia has been illegally tapping water from Lake Lanier and using water that should have gone to Florida and Alabama. Paul Magnuson, the federal judge that made this ruling, ordered that if Atlanta’s allocation of water does not return to what they were in 1970’s within the next three years, then Atlanta’s water will be significantly restricted.

If a solution is not found and the court ruling takes its affect, the city of Atlanta will suffer major consequences. There would be a deficit of approximately 302 million gallons a day and that the deficit would increase to 497 million gallons per day by the year 2035. Not only would this have a significant impact on the city of Atlanta, but also it would greatly affect the Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech is home to 9,700 students, which is approximately 54% of the student body. The water shortages would make Georgia Tech a difficult place to attend school, specifically to students who are from out of state and have to live on campus in order to attend classes. This fact alone would turn away potential undergraduate students if they do not have the option to live on campus and have a legitimate source of water. Reduction in the student body would most likely result from this court ruling and would in turn hurt the university as a whole. It would not only reduce the number of students, but the diversity of the student population would decrease as well because students from other states and countries are not going to attend a university that is inhabitable. Georgia Tech and its students make significant contributions to the city of Atlanta, the state of Georgia, and the world. A solution needs to be implemented before a ruling of such substantial impact takes place.

Caffeine Abuse: A Growing Addiction

Gregory Micek

Caffeine is a drug that plays a large role in the everyday life of an extremely large number of people. According to Time Magazine, the Journal of the American Diabetic Association notes that about “90% of adults ingest caffeine every day,” and National Geographic “has described caffeine as the world’s most popular psychoactive drug.” Caffeine is an extremely prevalent drug on which anyone can develop a dependency.

The role of caffeine in the college environment is such that it has become a necessity for many students. Students often use caffeine to avoid sleep, to stay awake longer, and to be more alert at night when cramming for exams or rushing late assignments. Time Magazine notes Michael Wood, a senior at Princeton University, who stated that “during reading period and finals week, caffeine becomes [his] lifeline.” Michael Wood also said that a couple of Red Bulls can make “you feel much more comfortable about leaving your semester-long research project for the last weekend before it’s due.” College students use caffeine to cram projects and assignments into all-nighters, rather than taking the necessary amount of time for a few weeks to prepare the project or assignment at a leisurely pace.

Caffeine abuse can lead to withdrawal and dependency. According to Time Magazine, “[a] 2006 study at Northwestern University found that 265 caffeine abuse cases were reported to a local U.S. regional poison control center from 2001 through 2004” and the average age was twenty-one, or an average senior in college. Caffeine withdrawal can cause individuals to feel “headache, fatigue and irritability,” and caffeine can also inhibit study by increasing anxiety rather than increasing alertness.

Gender Bias Awareness in Higher Education

By Rohan Gupta

Throughout the history of higher education in America, the capabilities of women were frequently undermined. In academe, the quality and priority of education for women was secondary to that of men and the acceptance of female professors was met with suspicion and reluctance. Though such times have changed, new stereotypes concerning the capabilities of women are emerging and becoming a major issue facing higher education. Because many members of academe believe that the motherhood of female professors hinders their competence, groups opposed to such criticism are now speaking out to stop such an attitude.

Contemporary critics assert that female professors compromise their judgement and abilities when they have children and believe such professors must not be given major academic duties. The center for WorkLife Law at the University of California's Hastings College developed an online bingo-type game to create awareness about gender bias and help recognize it in academe. The goal of the game is for female or sometimes even male professors with children to identify three types of gender biases in the work place and declare "bingo." The winner of the game receives a free t-shirt by mail. The center hopes that university administrators and other head bureaucrats will visit the website with the game and see the importance of the issue.

The game website also has material that should help female professors survive gender bias. The material includes scenarios, four patterns of bias, and an economic argument for administrators to stop such criticism. Hopefully these efforts by the center for WorkLife can eliminate such discrimination facing female professors and provide them with a more conducive atmosphere at work.