Tips for Making it Through Finals

By Colton Hattersley, EPPS Blogger

Finals are now underway, and everybody is struggling to get the best grades possible on their various exams. The recent IcePocalypse, as I so endearingly like to call it, made me remember one very important fact about this month – CHRISTMAS IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the holiday season is a great time to relax and enjoy your friends and family, but the stress of finals week causes us to forget that there is a great opportunity within our grasps. To ensure that you get into the holiday spirit even before Winter Break, here are a few tips:

 1.      TAKE A BREAK TO DECORATE – much of our time spent studying occurs in our dorms or apartments. One way to keep in spirit is to decorate your room during one of your study breaks! The environment in which you study has an effect on your overall performance, so add some holiday cheer! Buy some lights to hang on your ceiling, put up a stocking and adorn the walls with candy canes.

2.      STOCK UP ON HOLIDAY SNACKS – we all tend to skip a meal here or there to maximize our study time, relying instead on the snack foods we have in our rooms. Another way to embrace the magic of the holiday season is to stock up on holiday snacks. Drink your favorite holiday drink, whether it is hot chocolate or egg nog, and munch on a candy cane or gingerbread cookie. Not only do they taste good, but studies show that sucking on a mint while working increases concentration, which is good for studying.
3.      LISTEN TO HOLIDAY MUSIC – many people have become dependent on some external noise to study with. For those of you who can, studying with Holiday Music is another way to fill yourself with holiday cheer. Make a playlist on Spotify or just YouTube your favorite songs of the season so that, while studying for your finals, you can feel cheery.

If all else fails, remember the advice of Buddy the Elf: The best way to spread holiday cheer is singing loud for all to hear. Happy Holidays everyone, stay safe!

Making Friends as an EPPS Student

By Yusof  Nazari, EPPS blogger

Entering college from high school is a move that’s filled with trepidation and worry. It’s much like moving to a new city. Leaving all of your friends, accomplishments, connections, networks, and maybe even your parents behind if you move far enough away.

Among all this commotion is the glimmering sliver of hope that change might not be such a bad thing, and that maybe you’ll find new friends among the masses that attend the same school that you do. It can be a scary task, as meeting people always is.

With this in mind, I walked into my UNIV1010 and EPPS Freshman classes with the same trepidation that one does when they see a fly they want to swat, slowly crawl onto their television set in the middle of a Will Smith movie marathon.

Thankfully, this wasn’t needed. My classes were filled with some of the most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to know. Whether it’s Henry with his 45 minute long joke about the billionaire’s pink golf balls, or Courtney, who introduced me to a lot of music that I’m currently loving, making friends wasn’t difficult at all. I was scared that the EPPS school was small, and that I wouldn’t find people to hang out with, but now most of my good friends are my classmates that I walk to lectures with on a daily basis.

They’ve taught me that reaching out and introducing yourself might be the most basic thing you can do, but it’s also the most powerful. Who knows, maybe the person you’ve got your eye on to friend up is just as nervous about meeting people as you are.

The best part about making friends in EPPS is the things we have in common. Being mostly liberal arts majors, we’re able to speak on and debate social and political issues with an openness and breadth of knowledge that I hadn’t experienced since my debate days.

I’ve heard so many opinions and arguments, whether agreeing or disagreeing with me, and all of my peers have brought interesting and new insights into my thought-processes on social and economic issues. If we can learn anything from out liberal arts degrees, it’s that the world is a crazy and nuanced place, and I’m glad I have new friends to talk about it with me.

Sociology Club Offers Straight Talk about Sex

By Blaire Bayliss, EPPS Freshman

Whether or not you know it, you are a sociologist. If you want to understand the way the world works, if you’re interested in trends or if you want to know more about the way people think, then you are a sociologist in the making. If you have noticed the way that your circle of friends interact with each other, if you think that each group has its quirks, or if you have ever tried to understand other people’s lives, then you are a sociologist already.

Everyone is a sociologist- and by extension, everyone belongs at the Sociology Club.

When I first walked into sociology club on a recent Tuesday night, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The topic of discussion was sex trends on campus- something that was never publicly discussed in my conservative high school. Although I was interested to hear what would be said, I was almost certain that I would be awkward and uncomfortable. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

The topic was addressed from both a statistical and philosophical standpoint. During a lecture by Dr. Lanham, the entire room was enthralled by the shockingly low use of contraceptives and the shockingly high trend of abstinence. Then later, during a debate on the topic, everyone in the room was given the opportunity to share their thoughts on a variety of topics. I was completely surprised at the maturity of the discussion. Students and teachers of all ages discussed previous psychological and sociological studies, philosophical ideas, policy decisions, and interesting pieces of data that they had heard before coming to club.

Not only was the information approached from a responsible and comfortable standpoint, but it was also completely fascinating. Listening to other students give their opinion was both interesting and inspiring- and I found myself taking the microphone twice during the night. Sociology club turned out to be a safe experience where I could discuss my opinion on the issues that mattered most to me without the fear of judgment, ridicule, argument or even so much as a sneer. My opinions were respected. My voice was heard. And it was incredible. A definite plus was that at the end of the night, I was able to take home an entire tray of chicken nuggets… and the staff actually thanked me for it!

Sociology club was, overall, an overwhelmingly positive experience. I plan to go back every Tuesday for the rest of the semester.

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New to UT Dallas? Join the Club

By Joanne Nguyen, EPPS Freshman

New experiences can be pretty unsettling, and downright scary. Being a college freshman going into their first ever semester at a huge university and trying to navigate your way through school, while making the grade, making new friends, and maintaining close family ties can be pretty frightening for any young adult fresh out of high school. It certainly was for me upon stepping into my first college classroom for my first-ever lecture, along with all the other obstacles that came along with the new 'uni life' I had to get accustomed to. 

As someone who graduated from high school with honors and a pretty solid work ethic, keeping up with my GPA while in college wasn't as big of a concern with me as fitting in socially somewhere was to be honest. I knew my grades would be taken care of, but what would happen to my (nonexistent) social life now that I was here on a campus of about 20,000 students with the challenge and task of finding enriching people to be around?

UT Dallas is a very peaceful campus, the student body is overall very well behaved and you hardly ever hear anyone causing a scene or making a ruckus, which I think is wonderful. Coming from an inner city high school, the new surroundings I'm subjected to are just great. The only downfall- and after talking to many students who also agree, is that making friends can sometimes be difficult with how studious and shy the student body tends to be. With everyone focused in class on the professor and the lecture, meeting people in your own classes becomes a little difficult as well (unless you just happen to be a very outgoing person). 

For many students, clubs and organizations are a fun extracurricular activity that fosters their interests and allows for them to be around peers who also enjoy the same things and share similar interests. With UT Dallas home to about 200 student clubs and organizations (and growing) it's safe to say that there is a club out there on campus for just about everyone and every interest. If anything, it might be difficult just choosing which clubs to stick with and commit to seeing as there are so many wonderful ones available.

As for me, my loyalty has gone to UT Dallas' Japanese Student Association. I initially went to their first general meeting in order to see what this club had to offer and to connect with my Japanese roots, and found myself in very good, welcoming company. Not only were the members and officers of JSA very friendly and warm people overall, they also display wonderful organizational skills and the entire club has a very 'family' oriented feeling to it as opposed to some of the larger and more impersonal clubs on campus. 

The Japanese Student Association aims to introduce Japanese culture to UT Dallas and promote awareness of Japanese heritage, they regularly put on performances, attend volunteering events, participate in fund raising, and do many fun, social activities together to foster a bond between its members and much much more. 

They will continue to have me as a loyal member and I plan on sticking with this organization until I graduate and would highly recommend that other students pay JSA a visit when they have weekly general meetings. If anything, I would also highly recommend that any student who is not a part of at least one school organization should make an effort to be, in order to enrich themselves. 

UT Dallas Dorms are a Pleasant Surprise

By Hope Steffensen, EPPS Freshman

Privacy isn’t one of the things I thought I would discover when I came to college. It’s not something one thinks of in the typical college experience. Being from a family of six, privacy never was a common occurrence in my house. So, when I looked into coming to the University of Texas at Dallas, I was extremely surprised to learn that there were private bedrooms in the freshman suite.

All the other colleges I’d looked into had pretty terrible freshman housing. A freshman dorm room was a cramped little space with two beds shoved in the corners for a couple of poor freshman to cram into with all of their belongings. You also had to provide your own furniture, providing you could fit it in.

When I saw the UT Dallas dorm, I was sort of shocked and asked the person giving the tour if this was the set-up in all the dorms. The tour-guide was a little embarrassed, but he answered, “I know it isn’t the best set-up now, but when you’re a junior and a senior, you can move into the suites.”

Hearing that, I sarcastically thought, “Oh yes, don’t worry about the small rooms darling. It will only be for half of your undergraduate experience, so it is no big deal.” I liked other universities I visited, but the rooming was unacceptable.  When I told my dad about the freshman dorms at UT Dallas, he was sold even before I was. “You have to go there!” he exclaimed. “You’re going to love the privacy.” And, sure enough, my dad was right.

It is so convenient to have my own space here in college. The fully furnished room gives me my own dresser, my own desk and chair and my own closet space. I love it. I can have my blinds open and closed when I want because no one is there to complain about it being too light or dark. I don’t have to share my desk or dresser space. In my bedroom, it is all about what I want and when I want it. I have autonomy, and that is something the freshman college experience should be all about. 

The Oncoming Swarm

By Blake Eaton

Anyone who exercises regularly at a university gym knows the phenomenon: At the beginning of the year, a swarm of enterprising young fitness buffs flock to the fitness center only to drop like flies in a matter of weeks. So it wasn’t unexpected when I found myself having to strategically choose the times I spent at the gym these past couple of weeks. Thankfully, I seem to have found my niche; it turns out that college students don’t typically wake up at 7 in the morning.

I may have avoided the crowds, but the odd thing is that those crowds haven’t disappeared. Perhaps kids these days finally understand the value of good exercise. Maybe we’ve reached some sort of generational turning point. It’s only a few years until we reach an uber-fit utopia!

Or not.

I think this surge of gym rats at UT Dallas is really the result of something I’ve discussed before on this blog. We are witnessing a school on the rise. Over the past five years, the university’s student body has grown by more than 5,000 students—a whopping 34%! On top of that, the number of top-tier students has skyrocketed, with 88 National Merit Finalists beginning to study at UT Dallas this year alone. When you put it perspective, it makes sense that the gym feels a bit crowded.

In some ways, this growth is inconvenient. Not only is the gym crowded, but busy faculty advisors are swamped with students, and the university has been scrambling in some instances to find room for the amount of classes it needs to host. Overall, these facts could give the impression that the school has bitten off more than it can chew.

I couldn’t disagree more with that sentiment. It would be easy for UT Dallas to kick up its feet and let the status quo maintain itself. As it stands, the university is a pretty great place to be. The hard-working professors, advisors, and employees of UT Dallas want more, though. They want this school to truly grow as a community and as an institute of higher learning.

Take, for instance, the Supplemental Instruction program. Started just one year ago, the program has already grown to provide study sessions and services to over a dozen historically difficult classes. I may be biased (I’m a Supplemental Instruction Leader myself), but I see SI as an emblem of what UT Dallas stands for. It stands for looking forward, for seeing what the future can be instead of what the present is. 

When I see the flock of new students on campus, when I see the oncoming swarm, I smile because I know that it means we’re doing something right.

How to Get Involved at UT Dallas

By Vinni Anandham

Welcome Back UT Dallas Students!

I spent the majority of my summer working here at UT Dallas, and while I love my job, I got really tired of looking at a half empty campus. It is so wonderful to see all your lovely faces now that the semester has started, and I’m sure many of you are trying to find ways to get involved. Though there are a variety of things to do and get involved with at UT Dallas, many of you might wonder where you should start.

Well, I would highly recommend that you start by creating an OrgSync account at: www.utdallas.edu/orgsync/login. On OrgSync, you will find plenty of information about all the registered student organizations on campus. Many organizations have also posted pictures, videos and details of events. If you like what you see, send the organization’s president and/or advisor an e-mail to get in contact with them to find out how you can join.

Many students ignore this wonderful resource, especially in their freshmen year, but I suggest you take advantage of it and see what more you can learn. After all the excitement of Welcome Week, there will still be plenty of events on campus. The question is: How will you know and where will you find it? Well, OrgSync has a list of events happening on campus sorted by date so you don’t miss out on any of the fun.

If you still come to find that you need help searching for or contacting an organization, or on how to get involved, or even using OrgSync then stop by the SOF office (2.416C) located in the Student Engagement Suite (2.4) in the SU across from the Galaxy rooms and talk to either Vinni (that’s me!) or my wonderful co-worker Garrett! We love for people to stop by and talk to us, so come over just to say “Hello!” We look forward to meeting you all and helping you get involved on campus!

Let’s begin the year with a Whoosh!