The Real Education of Patrick Ripoll - Page 3

That's the reason why, suuuuuuure (he said in Innuendo Voice).

One great thing about college is that it will teach you how to fucking sleep. When I first started college most noise would keep me awake, whereas nowadays I can sleep on hardwood floors with a backpack for a pillow and go right through multiple alarms or loud music outside without any problem. If you go through college and can't crash on any sort of surface or terrain then you haven't gotten a complete education, especially if you're majoring in poverty.

I'm a financial advisor, and one of the areas I specialize in is college financial planning.

If you get a job, and you plan on collecting financial aid in any form, make sure your job is part of the work-study program. Otherwise your income will be assessed against your Expected Family Contribution for the following year at 50%. It may not seem like a lot at college student wages, but over the course of a year it can add up to having to pay thousands of dollars more. It's one of the easiest ways for students to screw themselves out of additional aid without even knowing it. In fact, your job at Blockbuster may have hit you pretty hard with regards to financial aid for next year.

Work-study good. Or get someone to pay you under the table. But I didn't say that.

Absolutely. Especially in liberal arts classes.

In fact, I first met Chavez in a philosophy class where the two of us and one other guy were the only ones who ever participated. We had a blast, the rest of the room was dead bored.

Another factoid about the clear cd-case caps: They are the EXACT diameter of a smoke detector. So, you know, you can stick one up there and it covers your smoke detector. Just sayin'.

That's really fucking shitty. I wouldn't do you like that, Ripoll.

I took all the introductory astronomy my university had to offer when I went back to study some radio astronomy in the electrical engineering department. Astro 120 and 122 were trivial. Throw this in your Netflix queue and you're 90% of the way there.

Put a breathalyzer on your phone - don't drink and dial.

As for psychology electives, I earned a 6 by reading the textbook and showing up to get homework and take tests, and by volunteering for the experiments of grad students at ten bucks a pop. Astronomy was more interesting, if not as lucrative. Psychology was a necessary evil, as I had to take at least one arts elective per year.

This alone justifies my living at home through University.

Honestly, if you go on spring break somewhere in Florida (or especially out of the country), anticipate the need for bail money. It's one thing that no one really thinks is going to happen, and inevitably, always does.

It's impossible to think that there aren't going to be any drunken photos of you, especially with everyone owning a digital cameras, and the photos being posted by myspace or email these days. The best way to make sure you're not incriminated by photos is to be the photographer (even if it's not your camera). But do avoid video cameras like the plague - you'll always come off worse in video than still photos.

Especially since you're going into film, it wouldn't hurt to learn your way around operating a good SLR camera, which nowadays you can get for under a grand. Learning apertures, framing, compositions, & use of light (especially on your own!) can only be a good thing for you...

Maybe it's not too nerdy, but it is a little nerdy that you thought about it to that extent. Just sayin.

Right. Cause no one on here is nerdy.

My college advice is basically this: college is the last time in your life you are free to do nothing but drink and fornicate. Enjoy the lack of responsiblity, because it goes away once you graduate.

That's better than having anything Bob Marley or Reggae related. In fact stay the hell out of the entire genre while you're at school.

Abort!!! Abort!!!

Do not put up the autographed Hostel II poster. Sure, it's cool, but that will just piss you off all the more when it gets ripped/burned/soaked/shat upon. And trust me, one of those four things will inevitably happen.

That's what the colossal poster sales at the beginning of the semester are for.

Stop me if I've told this story before. My roommate freshman year dyed his hair a bunch of times our first semester. It got like straw. He hadn't been home, and was afraid his parents would disapprove, so the night they're picking him up for Thanksgiving break he decides to try to get it back to his natural color. His hair's so damaged, though, he calls the Miss Clairol hotline for advice, and they tell him to do it in two steps-- first, apply a stripping treatment that removes all dye but leaves your hair pumpkin orange, then apply the dye to get it back to his natural brown. He's planned it out so he has just enough time to get it done, and a girl from the floor is helping him out. He does the thing and his hair is Lydon orange, and then when he wasn't looking I got rid of the brown dye.

That story is hilarious but I can only wonder how your roomate got back at ya.

Ah dying one's hair, one of those things I didn't do at college. But I've got dark hair so it would've been REALLY difficult to do.

Still got away with not cutting my hair for two years and at the end I kind of had a Frampton comes alive thing going on.

Also: another time he said he was never going to have kids, so I drafted some unenforceable contract that he signed whereby he promised that if he ever has kids he has to name them after me. I just found the thing a couple of weeks ago. He signed it 17 years ago.

Seriously, have a good time, Patrick.

Might I suggest a firebomb?

This stuff is great. I lost my truck because of Jungle Juice once. I think I might have also killed or injured a migrant worker. But it was all in Boulder so it doesn't count.

I always knew duct tape could help out in any situation.

The whole page isn't loading, so I'm not sure what others have said, but please, please, please wear a condom.

You do realize that disposing the body is going to be a bitch and a half right?

And suddenly i've just walked into an episode of Dexter: The College years.

You're only a freshman and you've already got your forced abortion plan down? I tip my hat to you, good sir.

Get a footlocker and put anything valuable you have in there. Won't help much with your TV or the like, but that's part of living in a dorm room. With any luck your dorm mate will turn out to be an upstanding, nice guy.

You can always take a look at how much they'll charge for installing your own lock on the door.

Head down to the hardware store, get a drill and go to work. That is unless they're dicks and charge you to replace the door frame or something.

Needless to say, my freshman year door room had to get repainted from things still unknown. But, that only cost 8 bucks which wasn't that bad.

It is very possible that there is a no lock policy on the doors. A lot of on-campus housing is pretty strict on altering rooms, I've seen policies banning the use of thumbtacks even though I doubt they enforce that.

I've been taking classes at Shelton State (it's a local CC) this summer, and I discovered that it's the kind of broke ass school you're wondering about.

And for Rippoll, I've got nothing that will help with the lock situation, but if you've got a friend you already know who's got an apartment, I would suggest stashing your DVDs at his place.

I would also suggest only living in a dorm for one year, and then finding a cheap one bedroom apartment nearby. The dorm experience is absolutely essential to a "successful" college experience (as in, everyone should do it), but later on it's a great help to be able to have somewhere to go in which you can be alone or with that hot drunken chick and not be bothered by anyone.

In college, it's important to note that most of the time something gets stolen, it's by someone you know and think you can trust, not by some mysterious prowler who is going to break your padlock.

It's sort of in how you carry yourself. In my experience people tend to start out as very open and "what's mine is yours", only to get taken advantage of and try, in vain, to reestablish some boundaries. If you start out as Mr. Nice Guy who is okay with people walking into his bedroom and rifling through his stuff for something to "borrow", guess what you can expect by spring quarter? Don't lend more than one DVD at a time, that's a useful rule also.

Don't know if it's too late for this, but keep your good, important shit (collectables, DVDs, original CDs, etc.) with your folks, until you get your own place. Burn copies of your CDs, rent films via Netflix, etc. Smaller, important stuff that you absolutely need should go into a footlocker, like Greg suggested earlier. Get the best, tamper-proof lock you can.

If you buy anything you really like, consider if it'd be safe at your dorm and how essential it is to you. If you can live without it, do so. If not and you have to have it, buy it and ship it home to your folks for safekeeping.

Get in the habit of carrying your bank/credit cards, driver's license, ID seperate from your wallet and carry them in your front pockets (hard to pick your pocket looking right at the theif, and God forbid you get mugged, you're only out your cash).

Put small ID marks on your clothes (usually on the size tags, inside sleeves, pant legs, etc.) so if anyone steals them, you can prove they're yours by the mark. Had a friend do this at Monmouth - embarrased the shit out of his dorm mate in front of his fellow roomies, then made him walk home minus his pants. The theif had to move into an off campus apartment next day.

Food - you're fucked. Having that last beer, Twinkie, Baked Alaska, etc. saved for a special occasion will be long gone by the time you're ready for it. You might want to get a small fridge for your room and put a lock on it, but that might be overkill.

The best thing about Emerson was that no matter what shit I had, literally every other person in the dorm had better than me. My laptop is laughable, my food supplies next to nothing, I ate meals using the upside down lids of CD 50-packs as bowls for Christ's sake!

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My best free acquirement when I was living in the dorms was my freshman year when I was doing homework on the comp with the door open and was so exhausted that I fell asleep sitting up, and when I jerked awake an hour or so later someone walking by had seen me and left a beach ball sitting on my laptop keyboard.

I don't know you that well yet, Patrick, so I don't know if you are good about washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, etc. Four guys living together are bound to be slobs to an extent, and bound to only clean once in a while. It's good if everyone does some housework, but - don't be the guy who does absolutely none, because then they'll all want to kill you. And on the other side of the coin, don't be the chump who is the only ones who *does* clean up, because you'll wind up hating them. A group of friends and I moved off campus in my senior year, there was one guy who absolutely never ever washed his dishes. My one roommate and I who cleaned always wound up washing his fucking dishes. One time we decided we'd wash every dish except his coffee mug - and we just left it there. It eventually sprouted mold, and we wound up washing it anyway. If you've ever seen two really skinny college girls trying to murder a big fat guy, you'll see that although it seems minor, it can cause alot of resentment. Pitch in. Or, your other choice of working it out is that all four of you could ignore the housework all together and just be quadruple slobs.

Great advice here, Ripoli.

Something no one's mentioned is this: If you *know* you're gonna get hammered out of your mind, make small preparation. First, grab a liter bottle of Grape Pedialyte. Drink it. Alcohol will fuck with your electrolytes (it's what plants "want") and THAT'S where that jackhammer headache comes from the next morning. So if you load up on them before going on a bender you'll have less to fear from the hangover beast.

My daughter is going to college in a little over a year. The one and only piece of advice I'm going to try to get her to internalize is to NOT get more than one credit card. Honest to fucking God....more than one will make your school debts seem like a trip to McDonald's by the time you extricate yourself.

btw...do what you can to support live music while you're at school. Going to a bar is fine. Going to see a band is better. Find a group or two that you like and be a bit of a fan. It probably doesn't matter much in the long term, but you'll appreciate the experiences a bit more. Plus, it generates a little good karma.

Spring Break! WHOOOOO!

That should really go in the Meat thread.

Congratulations on a successful move-in!

Okay, here's some advice from a guy who has gone to post-secondary as a young 'un and as the "old man"

1) Nothing is permanent. Use it as a mantra when the shit gets you down. One year out of University and all the shit that happened to you will have been forgotten...provided you successfully graduate.

2) Do nothing that will be permanent. No matter how much your roommate/girlfriend/wannabe lover/prof want you to, do not get a tattoo. Who you are now is a lot different then who you will be for the rest of your life. A tattoo of the credits for Citizen Kane may seem cool when you're surrounded by film geeks but in the real world stunned silence will be the response.

3) Dating is not permanent. I have met one person who met their significant other while in university and they both regret it (they love each other but they missed out on the hot monkey action of casual sex Thursdays). Date, dance with, have sex with, fuck randomly anyone who is willing. (Be sure the rules of engagement are understood ahead of time ie "We're just fucking, right?" There's no need to be a dick but be honest.) STDs are permanent, wrap your whopper!

4) Hangovers aren't permanent. Enjoy them. Starches and elctrolyte replacement drinks are your friends but it's okay to wallow in a good hangover once in a while. You need stories.

5) Road trips are a must. Concerts are the best excuse (my best was traveling from Saskatoon to Vancouver on a days notice to see the B 52s and Ziggy Marley) but a late night "Baby, I was wrong, forgive me" road trip is also good. Just don't be the guy who is doing the grovelling. The trip is much more fun if you're the supportive friends.

As a corollary, always have Tom Waits' Heart of Saturday Night ready to go. It's excellent singalong music for the long ride home. For the way down, AC/DC is a must plus you need "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger. Yes, it's a horrible song but it makes the car go around 90 mph.

His bed should now be the drunk bed, the getting ass bed, the keg bed, or a combination of all of the above.

And don't forget in addition to the starches and electrolytes to get LOTS of greasy diner food when you wake up in the morning. Or at noon. Or two-ish. But seriously, I don't know what it is, but the best thing for a hangover is either an egg/bacon/cheese sandwich with hashbrowns, or a cheeseburger deluxe with tons of salty fries. Yum. I almost looked forward to hangovers, knowing that I'd be having food like that.

Not sure if you can get it in the States yet but poutine is the best hangover food ever...

ETA: Has to be curds poutine, none of this mozza poutine.