Jet Set Weekends

Hey there hackers! Super jazzed to be here today with you, checking in from the UniHacks mobile headquarters which happens to be in Denver, Colorado for the next week or so (then we travel to a farm where UniHacks is sure to get a little Old McDonald flavored). These post is inspired by one of the most outdoorsy cities on the planet where we’ve been staying for the past couple of months. Sure, there are more rural areas, with more beautiful natural surroundings, that could be considered outdoorsy. But we’ve never been in an urban area where everybody loves to be active, and outdoors, and on the trail more than here in Denver. It’s pretty awesome, and it’s also inspired the newest UniHacks pick up line/quip: “I’d let him eat trail mix in bed.”

And there are so many gorgeous dudes on the front range that we’re saying it like every. single. day. Shoot, we’re saying it more than 12 times a day. We say it so much that it has lost all of it’s novelty, and has just become one of those things that we just say too much.

Needless to say, if we decide to take one of these lovely Menverites home, we want to make sure that there is trail mix to be had in bed. But there’s one thing we absolutely loathe about trail mix.

1. It’s super over priced.

We’re going to take a break on that whole cleansing thing that we were going on about a few weeks ago because we haven’t had a chance to go through all of that and make sure everything checks out. We don’t want to send you on a wild goose chase for gallstones (gross).

So instead, we’re going to throw some tips your way about avoiding distractions. Finals might seem like a billion years away, but they’re hiding around the corner. They’re just there waiting for you to get distracted and forget all about them. Don’t let finals win. We’ll show you how to avoid distractions like the plague, whether it be for finals or for your long term goals.

Schedule Some Fun

Yeah, you didn’t expect this post to start out with us advising you to have fun, did you? Well, we’re full of surprises. Researchers have found that those who schedule fun activities with friends, family or strangers are more productive and less likely to get caught up in procrastinating. If you don’t schedule something amusing at the end of a long day, you’re more likely to push studying into the night and allow your day to fill up with distractions.

Check Em Less

Set up three times a day when you can check your social media and email, or set up a productivity tool on your browser like the StayFocusd App on chrome. If you have a ton of self control, just pick a time during morning, noon, and night to get caught up on the things virtually coming your way. If you lack the discipline, set up the StayFocusd app and set 10-20 minutes during your day to check your social media and email. If you want to dedicate a chunk of your day to applying for easy scholarships, you can manually block your distracting sites out for that time period using the App.

Get Up Earlier

We can attest to this idea. If we get up at 6 a.m., we get our work done so much earlier in the day, that it seems like we have a ton of time to mess around. Wake up early and start working. No one will be around to suck up your time, and you’re more likely to get more done.

Spring is on the way and your Unihacks team is here to help whip you into shape for the upcoming heat wave. When you’re carrying around extra weight in your belly from this winter, you’re risking more than not having a beach bod. The Unihacks team spent some time learning the ins and outs of anatomy this week, and we learned some pretty interesting stuff about your gut flora that made us want to head for the hills and/or take some steps to clear it all up.

A big part of that process is organ cleansing, which is something you could easily do on campus. It means that you’ll have to skip those processed meal plan meals (yes, even if they’re vegan), and invest in some high quality organic foods, oils and salts. We’ll be getting into all of that over the next month or so, in our How-To Cleanse series, which is going to be great if you’re figuring out how to be a dietitian or if you’re just ready for a bodily spring cleaning. But first things first. If you want to start cleansing, you have to set the foundation. And to do that, you need to make sure you’re eliminating three times a day. When we use that word, we don’t mean that you’re kicking someone off the survivor island.

We’re talking about poop. If that word makes you cringe or go into an anxiety ridden state, you should grab a copy of Everybody Poops before you head into the bathroom. It’s one of the most natural things our body does, and to be so weird about it might say a lot about having a possible disconnect with your body.

Now that we’re over the “get over it” portion of this post, we’re going to help you figure out how to do that. According to the brilliant anatomist, Ellen Heed, there’s are specific things that need to be in place in order to have healthy movement through your colon. She calls it The Recipe For Poop. Sure, sounds gross, but it’s a hilarious way to address something serious that’s going on in your body.

The Recipe

• Water
• Fiber
• Adrenaline
• Salt

We’ve all faced the times when we have to be focused on the task at hand, but can’t seem to muster the concentration needed to complete the task to the degree of quality necessary. While you can never fully eliminate this annoying speed bump to success, you can do things to curb it’s influence over your day.

Eat For Your Brain

Everyone knows that when you eat better, you feel better. If you make sure to put the best things into your body, you can be sure your body can preform at it’s best level, and the brain is no exception. Foods like blueberries, salmon, flax seed and coffee in moderation are a great start. You should consider following an all natural food blog to help you come up with delicious ways to feed your brain the nutrients it needs to be at 100%.

Productivity Tools

If you’re using the amazing Google Chrome browser to surf the web, you probably already know about great add-ons like ad blocker and panic button. Another great app is StayFocused. It allows you to limit how much time you spend on the sites that waste the most amount of time.  This way you can make sure you only spend 10 minuets a day on things like facebook and twitter, and it can also force you to admit you spend way to much time watching videos of homeless people fighting over cheeseburgers.

The Five-More Rule

This is a great one once you get used to it. Anytime you find yourself in the middle of a particularly draining task and you feel that you’d rather stick hot bamboo shoots under your fingernails than spend one more moment working on it, force yourself to do five more. Weather you’re reading a boring book, or working on math problems. If you can force yourself to do just five more before you decide to take a break, you’ll be even closer to accomplishing the task when you come back to it later.

Sometimes we get so caught up in teaching you guys how to do completely useful and necessary tasks that we’ve picked up along the way, we forget that you’ve got to eat. And there are probably a ton of things that you want to learn how to make from the confines… I mean comfort… of your own dorm room.

I’m sure your mom is one of those awesome moms that sends you care packages, and buys you mini appliances for no reason every time she comes to visit. You’re a lucky son-of-a…nice-lady. She’s probably hooked you up with a blender, George Foreman grill, and a toaster oven. If your mom is one of those, show up on campus with a 40 and a pack of Lucky Strikes, well, sorry. At least you made it to college. You might have to save up and spring for your very own mini cookers/mixers. But that’s cool. The great thing about mini appliances is that they’re super cheap and extremely versatile. You could also apply for a Walmart scholarship to help you afford some schtuff for cookin’ in your dorm.

That was a preface to the new series were starting up on UniHacks… We’re callin it How-To Cook EZ Schtuff in Your Dorm Room. And we’re starting off the series slow. Hopefully, you’re able to at the very least wield the sharp object your mom calls a knife in order to slice a citrus fruit in half. Everything is down hill from there.

All you need to make this in your dorm is a grapefruit, a toaster oven and possibly some brown sugar. You could sub in a microwave if you’re in a pinch but the toaster oven will make the grapefruit toasty and somehow more delicious (radiation tastes bad). It’s vegan… because it’s just a citrus fruit and I’m pretty sure it’s gluten free.

Instructions:

• Cut grapefruit in half.
• Score the edges with your sharp object.
• Cut into sections like it’s a pie.
• Remember that it’s not a pie. It’s a grapefruit.
• Throw it in the toaster oven.
• Wait. I take that back. Don’t actually throw it. Just place it in there on a pan.
• Broil it for 10 minutes.
• Remove.
• Let cool.
• Eat.

Eat.

Welcome back to Uni Hacks! It’s time for our new series… The UniHacks Guide To Travel. That’s kind of a lame name. How about Where In The World is UniHackon Sandiego? No? It will be like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but we promise not to call you Gumshoe. Instead, Gumshoe will be our safe word. That way, when we’ve taken things to far, you can spit out the ball gag and shout it out. We promise we’ll stop. Wow, that went to a weird place.
Speaking of weird places. Every place seems a little weird when it’s new. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to stay that way for very long. You can get accostomed to the customs and find your way around in no time flat. This way, you don’t have to worry about getting turned around, and you can make the most out of your time in a new city.
1. Do Your Homework: This is far and away the biggest thing that you can do to easily find your way around a new city. Put your pride down and pick up a guidebook and a map. Yeah, it’s a little touristy, but if you do it from the safety of your own bedroom, no one will ever know what a tourist you are. Just study up and get familliar with important landmarks and well travelled roads. It’s always better to take the road less travelled, but it’s easier to do that when you can find your way there.
2. Know Your Red Zones: You can find out places to avoid via the internet or someone who knows the city well enough to know. Ask if there are places that are shady or high crime. Some places don’t get scary until night time, so don’t just assume that if you wander around all day that those same neigborhoods are going to be fine at night.
3. Get Your Bearings: Remember, if you get turned around, there isn’t any shame in stopping to ask where you are. You are new after all. But if you’ve done your homework and you figure out where north is, as soon as you get in, you shouldn’t have any problems finding your way around. If you’re directionally challenged it might help to get a compass.
How do you find your way around a new city?

If life feels like a race, it's time to reset.

When your life becomes disorganized, it can seem like you’re on a downward spiral of doom. A few things come out of place, you lose track of your schedule, or you get uprooted from your normal life, and everything seems to unravel from there. The next thing you know, you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off. You’re behind. You’re messing things up. You’re just trying to stay above water.

This can be extremely unsettling or downright scary. This is especially true if you find yourself in this loops for weeks, or even months. You’ll probably feel like you don’t have any control over your life. You might feel like you don’t know who you are anymore. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to get back on track. If you start today, you’ll feel more organized and more in control within a few days.

Get Back to a Steady, Healthy Diet: When we’re behind, we tend to get grab and go, easy, fast food. Unfortunately, this food is normally not very healthy. Unless you’re going for a Burger King scholarship, it’s probably a good idea to cut out fast food all together. Those nasty meals cause fatigue, which we combat with a ton of caffeine. This leads to a crash and robs us of all of our productivity. It might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but make time to plan out your meals and snacks this week. Take some time to cook. In the short term, it will take a little time. In the long term, it will help you get back into a good rhythm.

Get Some Rest: When we’ve lost control, we tend to spend a lot of time treading water and running in circles. If you’ve ever been off track, you’ve probably had this experience. You overlooked everything you needed because you were in such a hurry. If this has happened to you, you know what it’s like to literally run in circles, and you probably know that it’s counterproductive to be in a constant state of rushing. It’s time to hit the reset button.

It may seem like you’re too behind to go to bed at 10 p.m. tonight. Do it anyway. You might feel too rushed to go for a calming and unnecessary walk around the block this evening. Push that feeling to the back of your mind and take some time out of your day to do something slow and calming.

Close your eyes and breathe for a few minutes today. Do it tomorrow too. And the next day. These resting moments will help you slow down, so you don’t miss the obvious (like the keys and your computer sitting on the counter as you walk out the door) and cause more problems for yourself.

Explain Yourself: Most people, including your boss or professor, have had this experience before. They’ll usually be pretty understanding if you can muster the courage to fess up. The faster you admit you’re drowning, the faster you can go about fixing the problem instead of worrying that everyone will find out that you’re behind.

What do you do to get back on track?

This post was going to be titled, How-To Have Safe Sex, but that story has already been told. There are only so many ways to say “wear a condom” but there are a ton of bad decisions that you can make that will lead up to contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Here’s your go-to guide for contracting VD from University Hacks. Follow it step by step a few times and you’re sure to catch something…

1. Get Really Drunk: This isn’t a requirement, but it helps. Getting really drunk will lower your inhibitions so you can successfully accomplish the rest of the things on this list.

2. Go Directly to the Skeeziest Place You Can Think Of: The 7-Eleven bathroom? The bathroom of the diviest dive bar on your block? Really, any public bathroom will do. The alley behind the 7-Eleven is probably a little better. But since it’s winter, you might want to go someplace warm. You want VD, not hypothermia. Are there any frats on campus that are rumored to have had a recent chlamydia outbreak? Get over there pronto. You want to get in the door before they’re all downing penicillin.

3. Make Sure They’ve Never Had an STD Test: This adds a little mystery to the process. What’s the fun in knowing? If they’ve been tested in the past three months, make sure they can promise you that they’ve slept with at least 43 people since then. Remember: 43 is the magic STD number. That’s science.

4. Ditch The Rubber: You know what I’m saying here. If the idea of having unprotected sex with an untested rando behind the 7 Eleven is starting to gross you out, have him pass you the Shnapps. As mentioned earlier, being drunk isn’t a requirement, but it will sure help quiet that little voice in the back of your head telling you that this is the worst idea you’ve ever had.

5. Hope, Pray and Repeat: So you didn’t catch anything after this go round? Don’t worry. Just remember, there are plenty of people out there with STD’s just waiting to get caught.

How do you catch STDs?

Cafes can be a great place to study

Whether you’re taking a few courses online or you’re enrolled full time at one of the top online colleges, you may find it difficult to go the non-traditional route as an online student. You won’t see your professors every day, which makes it easier to shirk student responsibilities. You won’t have a campus to seek refuge for some peace and quiet. And you wont be turning in any assignments that were scribbled down while you were waiting in the hall for class to start. If you’re an online student building on your education by getting a new degree, or if you’re new to the college game and went the online route for convenience, there are five ways to ensure your success while taking online classes.

1. Set up an area to “go” to your online classes and to study:
If your space will be in your home, make sure the area you choose is quiet and separated from the main living areas. If you live with other people (your spouse, children, or roommates), try to put your desk in a room with a door that locks. Otherwise, you’ll have someone poking in every ten to fifteen minutes. Coffee shops and public libraries can also make great online college campuses. You can sustain yourself with coffee, get some free wifi and have access to a ton of books on your subject.

2. Set a schedule and stick to it:
At the beginning of the semester, set up a class schedule and a study schedule. Pretend you’re going to actual classes that have set times. If you schedule your online class for three o’clock be at your designated area at three o’clock on the dot. One of the challenges with taking online classes is that it’s easy to get distracted or burnt out and procrastinate doing the online coursework. One of the keys to success in online college is sticking to your schedule.

3. Get familiar with your online resources:
Do several Google searches and look for resources you can use for your online classes. Make sure these resources are approved by your professor.

4. Dress for success:
It’s easy to think that if you’re taking online classes that you can throw on your jammies and head for the couch. But what you choose to wear has a lot to do with your attitude. You’ll take your online classes more seriously if you’re dressed like you would for a traditional college class.

5. Sit up straight:
Good posture is associated with a longer attention span, higher test scores and less fatigue. It’s especially important to sit upright when you’re taking online classes. The act of sitting, staring at a computer screen and typing all day can be stressful for your body. By sitting up straight, you’ll lose less energy and you’ll be able to use that on what’s really important: engaging in your online classes.

Train the dog to turn the light on every time you turn it off.

You’ve got a paper to finish and it’s due at 7 a.m. You’re studying for your first exam in one of your 102 classes. You’ve got a huge project to complete and time is ticking. Whatever it is, you’ve got something due soon and you’ve spent the last few days making out with that cute dude who transferred dorms this semester.

So, yeah, you have two options. You can snooze and loose or you can pull the ultimate all nighter, get your stuff done, and maybe you’ll even have time to sneak off and kick it with new dorm dude.

You can always chug down a couple of energy drinks and let your jittery, crazy brain try to soak as much in and pump as much out as possible, but you’re probably going to end up crashing and burning.

There are a couple of things that  you can do that will keep your energy up all night long.

• Take a dance break every thirty minutes. Take five minutes and get your heart rate up. It will give you a boost twice an hour that will keep you awake alll night long.
• Pump the bass. Keep the volume up and the beats hip hopping. Make sure you don’t put on the smooth jazz no matter how tempting a relaxing moment might sound.
• Set a timer. If you’re worried that you’ll fall asleep, set a couple of alarms to go off, just in case.

Whatever you do… Don’t eat a bunch of food. Eating your face off might seem like the right thing to do in this situation. Food gives you energy, energy keeps you awake, right? Wrong. Don’t starve yourself, but don’t stuff yourself either or you’ll be out like a light in no time flat.

So are you ready to tackle the night and get everything done that you need to get done? Are you ready to ditch all of that and go make out with 396 some more? Whatever you decide to do with your late night, good luck!

Hey there… you! Howdy……… man! What’s up… uh… doc? I’m sorry. I totally forgot your name. Well, I never really knew it because you’re a nameless, faceless reader. But for the sake of this post, let’s pretend that you told me your name and I completely forgot it.

Forgetting someone’s name sucks. There’s no way around it. They feel cruddy and unmemorable. You feel like a horse’s a**. Beyond the social awkwardness that name forgetting causes, it can also hinder your success.

Forgetting the name of an interviewer is a flub that won’t get you hired on as the newest forensic psychologist in the department. Forgetting the name of a cute girl could leave you dateless come this weekend. And forgetting the name of your favorite blogger, well, that will get you chastised all over the internet. No, I wouldn’t do that to you.

There are three things that you can do to become that person who’s creepishly good at names.

1. Commit: Quit telling yourself and others that you’re bad with names. It’s just a cop out. Every time you know you’re going into a situation where you think you’ll be meeting a lot of new people, remind yourself that you’re trying to get better at remembering peoples names. Setting the intention will allow you to focus on the task at hand.
2. Concentrate: You know that moment when you’re meeting someone and you’re doing that whole instant judging, first impression forming thing that you do. Push that back a minute and fully concentrate on their mouth and the words that are coming out of it when they’re saying their name.
3. Repeat: After they say their name, repeat it back to them if you can. Comment on it if you can. Then say it to yourself silently. Use it in the conversation if you can. Repeat it when leaving. They say that saying someone’s name five times will help solidify it into memory. If you can’t do it aloud, do it in your mind while attaching it to the image of their face.

Goooooooooooooooooals!!!!!!!! They're practically the same as resolutions.

So it’s been about 18 hours since you made your New Years resolutions. Are they all laying broken and shattered around you right now. Shoot, did they even make it until you woke up today? Did “eating better” befall a drunk taco binge in the wee hours of the morning? Did “exercising every day” succumb to your hangover?

Well, it’s not to late to get back on track. It’s only the first day of the year. You don’t have to spend the next 364 days thinking, “Well, I guess I failed at all of my New Years resolutions guess I should just keep binge eating, slacking off at school and making out with poor unsuspecting strangers.” We’re here to help. There are hella things you can do to keep your New Years resolutions and we’re putting them all together for you in this handy How-To Guide.

Are you ready to start of this new year with your best foot forward? Great! Here’s the Unihacks Guide to Resolutions.

1. Make Em: In order to stick to your goals, you’ve got to decide on what they’re going to be. And they’ve got to be like goldie locks. No, your girls don’t have to be a little blonde girl wandering around in a bear house. That’s crazy talk. But they’ve got to be just right. If you make them unreachable you’re going to get frustrated and you’ll feel like you’re letting yourself down. “Being an internet sensation” is a bad goal. It’s like setting “winning the lottery as a goal.”

2. Write Em Down: This step is easy. Write down your goals. But take this step another step further. Write down specific actions that you can do this week to work towards your goals. And take that step another step further. Write down what usually blocks you from keeping your goals. These three things give you a road map of your resolutions.

3. Enlist a Goal Keeper: In order for most of us to realize our dreams, we have to have someone there to keep us accountable. Tell someone you trust that you’d like them to give you an occasional phone call or email and ask you how you’re doing on your goals. These little reminders can help motivate you when you get crazy lazy.

 You’re still on winter break, so the thought of managing your time is probably far from your mind. It’s break time and that means there’s more time for Facebooking, reading the best vegan food blog, tweeting, internet dating… etc. etc. etc. You have the spare time, so why wouldn’t you spend it fooling around on the interwebs?

We’re not here to nag at you or tell you to get it together. There’s just something to be said about developing good habits before you enter a busy time in your life. So, we’re not urging you to take advantage of the calm before the storm, but we’re here to spread some ideas about online time management in case it happens to be one of those things on your new year resolution list.

According to the Princeton Review, most college students want to spend less time online. Spending less time online doesn’t mean that you have to give up your Facebook account or stop reading blogs (please don’t).

1. Set Online Goals

Make sure you have an intention for going online. It may be helpful to write out the reasons you’re getting on the web before you log on to your computer. If you have to pay an electric bill, look up some information on scholarships, see if that dude you met last night added you on Facebook, write it down. Then check them off as soon as you get them done. If you log on to Facebook and you don’t see any little red bubbles, check it off your list and shut the window. If you think of something else you wanted to do on Facebook, write it down and save it for your next session.

2. Set a Time Limit

Give yourself a daily time limit. Three half hour sessions should give you more than enough time to get everything done that you could ever want to accomplish.

3. Set a Timer

If you’re going with half hour sessions, set an actual timer for that period. It’s easier to keep track of time if you use something that makes noise. Onlineclock is noisy and you can change the colors to make it pretty.

4. Set a Date for Interweb Indulgence 

You don’t want to miss out on the newest internet crazes and you love reading your favorite blogs (like UniHacks). This is totally understandable. Give yourself a super free hour, one day per week. Click away. Go click crazy. Stalk to your hearts content. But do it Sunday at 9 p.m. Just set your timer and have a good time with your free reign.

So, you want to skip Christmas this year, huh? What are you, the Grinch?!

We’re not here to judge you. We get that this holiday can suck sometimes. It’s okay if you’re not into it every single year of your life. Maybe you just went through a break up. Maybe you’re broke or living paycheck to paycheck. Hey, we understand. It’s an emotional and expensive holiday.

Maybe your family sucks. Maybe your significant others’ family sucks. Hey, we totally get it. There’s no reason to explain to us that some people suck to be around, for extended periods of time… when there’s lots of booze around.

Maybe you’re on the run from the law because you got caught committing that crime of passion a few months ago. She was so beautiful and he was going to hurt her. You had to pull the trigger. And now there are agents after you. You know they’re going to be camped out around your childhood home for the holidays. They know you want to be there, that you just want to hug your mother one last time before you have to face the consequences. We get it, man. We already told you that we get it. Quit confessing stuff.

Here are three foolproof ways to skip Christmas this year:

1. Pretend You’re Finishing a Novel: There’s nothing that people respect more than giving a writer space. You tell everyone that you’re holing up in a cabin like Bon Iver and laugh to yourself as you fly off to South America using all of that cash you saved on a much needed vacation. You can say that your book is about what happens when you don’t participate in Christmas…. Sh*t. That’s almost too genius for words.

2. Say You Got a New Gig: Consider this one as hitting two birds with one stone. Your family is finally proud of you! Finally. Plus, they’ll understand that you have to spend the holidays relocating so you can start FBI training right after the 1st. After you’re clear of the holidays, “quit” your “new job” and cite irreconcilable differences as the cause. That makes it sound like you’re standing on a moral high ground, which is obviously something you’re used to, Mr. Moral.

3. Play Dead: Yep. Fake your death. This one’s pretty tricky to undo, but you’ll figure something out when the time is right. Besides, you can start a new holiday tradition for yourself: peeking in the windows to watch everyone grieve. This tradition may get a little annoying in the third year when your family forgets all about you. Hey, maybe that’s a good time for your resurrection.

What are you going to do to skip Christmas this year?