Made by yours truly.

Happy studying! 

Not what they mean by "Crimson ass." (Photo credit: justanimal.org.)

In the past two days, this website and this one have been created, to give Harvard girls the chance to show off their lady bits in support of fair Crimson. These websites seem to be inspired by a page launched two months ago, where men get to show off their goods – hard only, of course.

Presumably to keep things less gender-segregated, this tumblr was created yesterday.  Note the clever slogan that the admin posted at the bottom of the page.

Frankly, I’m intrigued by the motivation behind all of this. Are we all that starved for sexual attention that posting X-rated pics to an anonymous tumblr is the only way to get it? Has reading period driven us all mad already? Or are we, as stereotypical Harvard students, just aching to show the rest of the world how perfectly perky our boobs are, and to hell with it?

The Voice jury is out on this one, but at least maybe for some of you, these websites have brightened the darkness of reading period just a wee bit.

(Photo credit: mbtcast.com.)

As reading period drags on and finals loom, the view on our end is looking pretty bleak. In these troubling times, it’s important to take comfort in the fact that there are those unfortunate souls who are worse-off than we are!  In this case, the individuals are some of our fellow college students from around the country, who attend schools that have been rated by the Princeton Review as the twenty colleges with the least happy students.

To make your days a little bit brighter, The Voice happily offers you the complete list of the even-more-downtrodden, in order of increasing suckitude.

20. University of New Orleans

19. Whittier College

18. University of South Dakota

17. University of Maine

16. University of California-Riverside

15. United States Air Force Academy

14. Tuskegee University

13. Fisk University

12. Alfred University

11. NYU

10. CUNY Baruch

9. Illinois Institute of Technology

8. Indiana University of Pennsylvania

7. United States Naval Academy

6. Clarkson University

5. Montana Tech of the University of Montana

4. United States Coast Guard Academy

3. United States Merchant Marine Academy

2. Marywood University

1. New Jersey Institute of Technology

Tl;dr: Quit yo’ bitchin’, Harvard students. Apparently things could be worse.

Wrap a scarf around your neck, yank on a hat, and zip up your coat. It’s a thin coating of white, but it’s there and it’s beautiful. It doesn’t matter if you’re going home to Boston, or someplace more tropical, or even someplace with real snowstorms. If you’re here right now, look out your window — it’s like a Currier and Ives greeting card out there.

Take a study break. Make a snow angel. Have a snowball fight. Make a snowman. Whoop and holler and run around like you did when you were five and the first snowfall of the season meant Mom would make cookies and hot cocoa. In the rush to leave campus and get home for the holidays, don’t forget about how beautiful Harvard is when it’s all dressed up in white.

Boston winters are long and cold. Appreciate the precipitation when it falls.

We’re serious.

There will be rain and wind. Lots of it. So much that there’s a wind advisory in effect for Cambridge until late tonight. There’s a good chance that by this point, you’re lacking sleep and haven’t really gotten around to eating three square meals a day. Don’t trash your immune system completely. No one likes the sick kid with the sniffles when everyone else is trying to concentrate on a three hour final. Don’t be that kid.

This is Harvard and we’re hardcore. We plod through rain and snow and ice to get to lecture, section, and lab. Surely we won’t let the inclement weather prevent us from gettin’ nekkid and running the gauntlet.  Keeping the forecast in mind, here are some suggestions for the night so that runners and spectators alike can get their crazy on, despite the foul weather.

Runners:

• Wear shoes. The ground will be wet, cold, and slippery.
• Have a friend waiting with a towel for after the madness and seek warmth and dry clothing immediately.
• Don’t wait up for your friends. Standing around will only attract attention and soak you more thoroughly.

Spectators:

• Use umbrellas. I know that we’re intelligent students, but in the midst of the excitement, don’t run outside without boots and an umbrella. You’ll regret it.
• Hold towels for your friends and BE THERE when they need to find you. They’re running. You’re not. Don’t be a jerk and withhold their clothing and towels afterward.
• Don’t stand too close – Primal Scream functions on mob mentality. A charging herd of wildabeests wouldn’t move out of the way for you. Don’t assume that a charging herd of naked college students would.

IT’S NAKEY TIME

ooh ooh! That's me!

10:30am – Well, I had every intention of getting up at 9:30. Fail. And now the dining halls don’t open for another hour and a half. Okay, this late wake up is only a blip in my day. I’m going to be SO productive today. I’m going to rip through lecture slides like a champ and maybe even take notes on them. I’m going to do practice tests and review questions. It’s going down.

11:50am – Have made my way through ONE lecture powerpoint in the last hour and a half. The original lecture was only an hour. Must.Stop.Checking.Facebook.

12:10pm – Lunch time. I can’t be expected to study on an empty stomach.

2pm – Now that I’m back from lunch…and CVS…it’s time to get down to business. FOR REAL. Lights are on, pencils are sharpened, notebooks are open, all systems are a go.

Let’s get down to business (to defeat the huns!).

3pm – Woah. That was a full hour of productivity. Time for a reward. It will take me 5 minutes and 5 minutes only to check my emails and facebook. Five.Minutes.

4:00pm – Well, that was certainly longer than 5 minutes. Back to work.

4:30pm – Need food. At this point, I’m too lazy to shlep to the dining hall, never mind anyplace else in the square. It’s certainly convenient that I have a bag of peanuts sitting in my room. And I absolutely cannot write with a pen, type on a computer, or flip through a notebook while I’m shelling them. I wouldn’t want to get peanut shell mess all over my work space. Then I would have to stop working to clean it. Nom nom.

5:15pm – Dear room above me, please please please turn off your stereo. The weekend before finals is not when I want to hear the bumpin’ bass of your sub-par party playlists. This is NOT THE TIME. I want 1. silence, or 2. the singing whales and crashing waves of my seascapes relaxation playlist. Kaythanks.

6:00pm – It’s dinner time and I want food, but the blockmates want to “study” until 6:30. *Sigh* I can be productive for the next half an hour, right? Right?

6:30pm – Productivity has died completely in the presence of captioned cat photos. Blast. Well, at least it’s dinner time. And meals should never be corrupted by schoolwork or stress. Food is sacred.

8:00pm – Okay; it’s go time. Like, really. Because exams are rapidly approaching and I am grossly under-prepared. Better check my email first though – wouldn’t want to miss vital messages.

8:30pm – I can’t focus in here. My desk is messy, the lights aren’t quite right, and the mini-fridge is humming like an excited bee hive. I’ll be so much more productive in the library.

9:00pm – Empty table. I’m organized. Ready to go. Studying in 3,2,1

11pm – Break time. Off to the Dhall for a cup of tea and a short break. Maybe I’ll even bring a book. I just won’t let anyone distract me. Seriously.

1pm – So it was a long break. Don’t judge me. At this point, my brain’s not going to process anything more that I try to cram into it. I had better go to bed early so that I can wake up with the sunrise tomorrow and really get crackin’.

For real though.

I missed my paper deadline! Damn it, Sporcle!

With reading period quickly approaching, papers being due, finals coming up, and problems sets up the yin-yang, Facebook, Perez Hilton, Twitter, and other internet sites are not really helping any of us be productive in any way, shape, or form. But at the Voice, we have good news for you!

As we were perusing the results of a Google search for “temporarily block websites” we found a really neat Google Chrome extension, Block It, that can limit or block your use of some websites. You have the ability to restrict what hours you can use the internet, when your limits are reset, and what your internet limits are. So instead of having your roommate change your Facebook password or throwing your computer against a wall, try some of the tools the web has to offer and happy studying!

This week, adding to our online anthology, some poems on the bitterness of a transient existence. Just remember that first of Four Noble Truths? “Life is suffering.”

Know why I am screwed?
900 pages to read.
Ugh, English Major.

Know why I’m not screwed?
I was done a week ago.
Yay for VES.

Procrastinating,
By writing haiku poems:
A dumb idea.

Fetal position.
I will take my exam in
Fetal position.

by Henry Woodward-Fisher ’12
December 2009 Issue

So, it’s Fall Exam Period 2009, freezing outside, you forgot to wear your sneakers and you’re now nursing Primal Scream induced frostbite and grazed knees. How will you get through the next week or so when Reading Period was such a disaster? You’re feeling especially out of shape after running around Harvard Yard in your birthday suit and you’ve still got a lot of BoardPlus and Crimson Cash to use up before the start of the holidays. What the hell is the blood-brain barrier anyhow? How on earth are you ever going to get through this new calendar?

ON PROCRASTINATION:

White Noise Generator – Just click on www.simplynoise.com to get the Internet’s purest and highest quality white noise (y’know the sound that TV makes when it’s not on a channel), it apparently aids sleep and helps block out other distractions.

LeechBlock – Go here for a Firefox extension that blocks websites (like Facebook, I Saw You Harvard, Twitter, etc.) that you might be tempted to visit repeatedly as you study.

MeeTimer – This Firefox add-on logs how much time you have spent on each site that you visit. It can give you pop-up reminders if you are spending too much time on procrastination web sites.

Things to avoid: Never, repeat, never go to meatspin.org or hippohippo.ytmnd.com – such things will only lead to unhappiness and awkward looks from others.

ON STUDYING:

Watch lectures faster! – Enounce allows you to play any video (read: lecture videos) at the speed that you like without any loss of audio quality (aka “no chipmunk sound”). You can watch your lectures up to 50% faster and still absorb the material.

Join/make a study group – Share the work and ease the pressure. You could even use Google Wave to collaborate on study guides!

Evernote – This handy note-taking program allows you to organize notes, lecture videos, pictures, and PowerPoint presentations. Clip parts of web sites; sync between computer, phone, online account; and search text in pictures.

Avoid library depression – We know it’s bad, but break up your studying into more manageable chunks and follow the aforementioned tips to help save yourself from slipping into the abyss. Of Lamont.

ON DAILY ROUTINE:

Wake up earlier. The most productive times of the day to learn new material and get stuff done are early in the morning and just before you go to bed. Why not get up two or three hours earlier and take the evening off?

Eat apples. It keeps the doctor away and reportedly is better for waking you up in the morning than coffee. Other brain foods include fruit, nuts and Ranger Cookies (of course).

Do exercise. It may be getting dark at a ridiculously early hour, but 30 minutes running along the Charles will really set you up for a productive day of work. Get those endorphins going and reinforce those reward pathways!

Do have free time. Set time aside for things that you actually derive pleasure from – brew fresh free-leaf tea, get a haircut, play that guitar, practice for the spring semester 2010’s Female Orgasm seminar, etc.