The Sneaky Student

This is the perfect time of year to stock up on essentials you’re gonna need for your coming year at uni, be it clothing, kitchenware or electricals. The added bonus being it’s summer sales time – you can nab them all for a bargain price!

There are so caveats to the above statement though!

• Things are only a bargain if you actually need them – there is no point buying clothes to grow into/lose weight to fit into. These will sit unused in your wardrobe and remind you what a failure you are at gaining/losing weight. Don’t do it to yourself. Buy things that you’ve tried on and you know fit well.

I admit I’m a little bit of an old woman when it comes to technology, as far as I’m concerned a phone should do exactly that; phone people and text when required. I do have an I-pod touch so can see the appeal of as many apps as you can shake a stick at but never has my life revolved around the amount of wi-fi available or how many smurfberries (they even sound ridiculous) I’ve collected.

I used to mock people who were surgically attached to their phones but now I am a Blackberry widow.  You might have inferred that from one of Alex’s last posts about the top 5 student apps, as they are fairly blackberry heavy.  There … Continue Reading

Obsession is a dirty word, to put it bluntly: like addiction, to obsess is often to be irrational or unproductive.  Yet, if you go too far in the opposite direction, you’ll literally get nowhere.  What is needed is something called a productive obsession. A productive obsession is about finding the balance between what you are driven to and enjoy doing (and therefore, will happily obsess over), and something that adds value (be it in a business situation or in your leisure time). Indeed, Psychology Today reports that cultivating a productive obsession can be one of the best things you can do.

Having read their article, I was able to distill three main reasons to utilise your healthy obsessions:

They … Continue Reading

I know a lot of people who get to University and still don’t have a clue about the language they are studying, especially in joint honours courses. I’m no exception: spoken french has always been my sticking point, and my language marks are what I need to improve the most of the next few years.

That being said, anyone interested in learning a language, or required to, can benefit from the resources I’ve found and compiled for you below. They range from vocabulary tools for learning by rote, to useful flashcard websites that are compatible with mobile devices, to language hacks that allow you to understand around 80% of a language in very little time at all, just by learning … Continue Reading

Modern students have an “always on” mindset, that is, we like to be plugged in to email and social networking round the clock. Indeed, a majority of students now wield some sort of smartphone or ultraportable device, be it a blackberry or an iphone.

With that in mind, here’s is our list of the top 5 mobile-accessible apps for students. Our list bridges music apps to organisational ones, the essential student staples.

1. Grooveshark

We were considering a number of apps for our music app spot, but in the end Grooveshark won us over, because of the price and native blackberry support (be it slightly buggy). This is really the only viable Blackberry music app as of July 2011.  Its … Continue Reading