Sorority and Fraternity

I am really happy that I chose to rush earlier this fall. Sororities and Fraternities are a great way to meet people at such a large school. I met so many people through my sorority and it really helped to know people in some of my classes and just have a group of girls that I know well and can depend on. A lot of people think of Greek life as always and only partying but in reality there is so much more. It is truly really like a family, and there are education and GPA requirement as well as philanthropy events that we participate in, in order to help different charities. There are some commitments that come with sorority and fraternity life. Also Greek Life does cost money which a lot of people do not like but in the end it is really worth it. There are also a lot of stereotypes that go along with sororities and fraternities but there is a lot more than just partying and you really do have friends for life.

Just An Idea

I was thinking about how I wanted to learn about the economy the other day because when my parents or even other college students talk about it I feel so clueless. I was thinking I must not be the only college student that doesn't know a lot about how the economy is doing. So I was thinking that the Daily Illini should make a section in the newspaper that is just a quick glance at the Nation's economy. In addition I think it would be helpful if this section was a sort of "dumbed down" look at the economy. This way more people would understand it and want to pay attention to the economy. Also because it would just be a quick look at the economy then it would not take a lot of time at all to read this section. I feel like if we had something like this I would definitely read it and it would help me be able to interact in discussions about the economy. Also I would know what I could do as a citizen in order to try to take my part in helping the economy. I was just thinking how this could possibly be a good idea and helpful to many college students who are rushed for time, yet still want to be in "the know" for different issues in the economy.

Parking

So I plan on going home for Easter in 2 weeks so rather than take 3 bus rides in the course of 2 weeks I decided that I would drive my car down here and keep it here until the end of the semester. I planned on buying a permit except they are closed on weekends so I have to wait until tomorrow in order to purchase the permit. So I was driving around campus tonight for almost an hour trying to find a parking spot on campus that would allow me to park overnight without being at risk for a ticket or even worse being towed. There are NO available parking spots on campus and if there are then they all have really weird time restrictions like "No Parking between 2am and 5am." What am I supposed to do? Go out at 2am and move my car, which wouldn't even be possible because there would be no place to move it since all the lots and meters have this 2am to 5am rule. I think U of I needs to work on having some visitor parking lots. I had my friend who visited the other week park in E14 which is very far from the quad and she got a 50dollar ticket. I would be willing to pay for a visitor lot if U of I would make one which they haven't. I think it would be a very good investment, and be fairly easy to do. An easy way to do this would be to have a lot devoted to visitors and have a little booth with someone working in it during the day who could take like 5dollars a day for parking I actually think many students would use it as well.

Spring Break

Spring Break is now over and several hundreds of dollars have just been spent on five or so days at the beach and all that is left are faded tans and memories on a digital camera. I was thinking while I was on spring break if any companies suffered this year because of the economy. I went to Puerto Rico with my roommate and it seemed like the beaches were overall pretty quiet and so were the airports which was very different from previous spring breaks that I have experienced. Some of the airlines increased prices due to the decreased number of travelers. I will be interested after the spring break season to see if this helped the companies or made their situation worse. Half of me would think that by lowering the prices for airfare more people would be interested in traveling during the spring break season. I was just thinking about this as I was traveling this Spring Break and I thought it would be a good topic to blog about and possibly get other people's opinions about it.

Media

I was thinking about the media and the effect that it has on celebrities lives and I have come to the conclusion that it would suck to be a celebrity. Every aspect of your life is shown to the whole world. I just don't think that is fair. All the money and fame must be nice for the celebrities but there is definitely a loss of privacy. The most evident case right now of this is Rihanna and Chris Brown. I am definitely against relationship abuse but there have been countless articles on this subject and I just feel like you should not write something that you don't have all the facts on. Now people are saying that they got back together, which I think is great and fully support. It is not other peoples' job to critique every move that celebrities make. If Chris Brown and Rihanna want to get back together even after everything that has happened then I really don't see what the big deal is. All of this coverage could just hurt their relationship even more. Just like how the media and paparazzi made Britney Spears go crazy. Luckily she has her life in much better order then she used too but you can't even blame her, if people wouldn't have been tracking her every move and critiquing it then she would have never cracked. I think the media should leave celebrities alone. I know we all love reading gossip magazines, but everytime we do, think of how annoying and humiliating that must be for them. I hope the paparazzi realize the damage they have done and are still doing and realize they are hurting people and should just leave them alone.

Octuplets

I went home this weekend and I was reading through a magazine and I read an article about the women in California who had octuplets! At first when I heard about the eight newborns I assumed that it was to a happy couple who was utterly shocked at the fact that they were having eight children, and not to mention that they are the longest living octuplets in history. But oh was I wrong. Nadya Suleman is a single mother, with no job, six other children already at home and over $40,000 in debt from student loans. I do not even know why she every inserted those last six embryos. She knew she had no money , and no space in her three bedroom house. Also, she will most likely not have any help from her mother and step father anymore (who have been caring for the other six children while she has been in the hospital). I do not have any clue how she expects to take care of fourteen children, not to mention in a few years when she has eight children going through the terrible twos! Fourteen children with a spouse would be roughly impossible, I can't even begin to imagine a single, jobless mother with fourteen kids. As much as I hope Suleman does not get any financial help, because of her stupidity with trying to raise 14 kids, but deep down I really am worried about the children and I hope they get some money. I don't see how they can survive and live at least a semi-normal life when there is no money going towards their family and household.

Dorm Food

I have had a few different conversations come up this week redarding food in the dorms at U of I so I thought I would blog about it. First, I live in Bromley Hall which is one of the private certified dorms. We are paying more money to live at this dorm and have special and weird meal plans. We get either two or three meals a day and there are no "rollover" meals. There are very few options for each meal and even when there are options the food is awful. I can probably count the number of times I have eaten the hot food at Bromley on one hand. Every other day I eat the salads and sandwhiches. It really sucks when all you have to eat are turkey sandwhiches everyday and sometimes twice a day. I was talking to my friend, who is currently a senior in high school and just was accepted to the University of Illinois, and I was helping her decide which dorms would be best to apply to . And being perfectly honest...because the food is so awful at Bromley I do not know if I would recommend it. The only good part is that there is only a very slim chance that you will gain the freshman fifteen which for girls at least is a nice little bonus. I feel like because U of I is such a great school we should have better food options especially in private dorms when we are paying more money. I visited my friend at Purdue and there was not even a comparison to the food quality between my dorm and my friend's dorm. I really hope Bromley can do something about the food for next year so that there is at least a little desire to eat the food here.

Shocking Statistics for Our Future and facebook use

I am in Advertising 199 a discovery course that focuses on the Psychology of Advertising and today we watched a five minute clip about the numbers we don't know about our world and a lot of them were actually very frightening. There were a lot of statistics about our world's population and how the world is growing so much that there were 67 babies born in the US during the length of the video, and up to 256 babies born in India during the clip. The numbers were crazy and it really makes us think about what life will be like in the future and in generations to come. There was one section of the video that said it took something like 48 years for radio to reach 5o million listeners, it took the television 13 years to get 50 million viewers, for the internet it took 4 years to get 50 million users and for facebook it took 2 years to get 50 million users. Those numbers are rediculous. I seriously can't believe that it took only 2 years for 50 million people on facebook, which is much less time than it took the other types of technology. I know last semester we talked about facebook a little bit and even though it is a good way to find new friends, communicate with people that may be across the country, and advertise and sell new products I still think it takes up a lot of time that could be used productively. I know for me I am constantly checking my facebook when I could and should be doing homework even when I realize I am wasting some of my time. I am going to try to make an honest effort to limit my time on facebook during the day and that way I can get more work done.

Free Unlimited Pass at the ARC

I went to the ARC today to take a few of the free group fitness classes. Today they were running a special for the unlimited group fitness pass. Normally the passes are $50 but today they were $45. One would think that the $5 difference is not that big of a deal but when I arrived at the ARC at 7pm, the line was at least an hour long. Who would think that for just $5 there would be that many people waiting in line. But I was thinking about it and it does make sense. I mean first of all we are college students and saving every little bit of money helps. Also because of our economy, saving money in any sort of way is also beneficial. So after my classes at the ARC I got in line (luckily it was much shorter) and I waited for about thirty minutes and got my unlimited pass for $5 cheaper.