<p>any people who have advice and tips for new students at usc, things to help students in areas that most people dont know of.</p>
<p>New students can always check the Freshman Advice Book given to them at orientation. :o</p>
<p>Don’t take Math-125 (Calc I) and Writing-140 in the same semester.</p>
<p>Both take up tons of time.</p>
<p>Energy drinks and sodas are cheaper in the vending machines than at dining areas.</p>
<p>People with the Trojan meal plan are your new best friends. (Especially useful as the end of the semester rolls around)</p>
<p>Tab really works. haha. be prepared to be up all night working on your papers (unless u have good work ethic… then i’ll have to hate you) EVK’s not that great but least its there. Go eat at the commons and jamba juice/etc.</p>
<p>read the DT (Daily Trojan)…it is very useful and articles are written to keep you “in the know”…IMO</p>
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<p>Even vending machines will rack up the $$$ (it’s like $1.25 for 16 oz, right?). </p>
<p>If you’re addicted to the stuff, best to find someone with a sam’s or costco card (or have your parents send you gift cards if they have one) and head down and buy them by the flat (easily 5 times cheaper) and keep your mini-fridge well stocked. </p>
<p>The only problem is the distance to the stores - there’s a costco in inglewood, but still, you’re also going to need a friend with a car. But even the grocery store can save you some cash over the machines.</p>
<p>It’s a pain to go all the way to Costco. I just charge a good portion of my negative balance in my account to discretionary and use that to pay for drinks, so in a sense, USC’s paying for me to stay up late, haha.</p>
<p>I’m not much of a coffee person. On the other hand, it’s still pretty hard to get used to the taste of energy drinks. They either taste like glue (if they’re diet) or extremely sweet/sour medicine. Everyone has their own means of getting their caffeine fix. Try out different ones while you’re on a meal plan freshman year.</p>
<p>And ditto for being friends with someone with Trojan meal plan.</p>
<p>My tidbits of advice: </p>
<p>1) Visit <a href=“http://www.senatecourseguide.com%5B/url%5D”>www.senatecourseguide.com</a> for student reviews of professors and classes. It’s especially good if you can do this before having to register for classes. </p>
<p>2) The areas around campus is very heavily policed by USC Public Safety and the LAPD. This is good in the sense that it keeps the area very safe, but it’s bad in the sense that there are a lot of LAPD who seem to get bored and give out tickets for menial traffic infractions. There was recently a DT article about the LAPD giving out tickets to dozens of students who rode their bikes at night without “bicycle lights,” which are apparently required by California law. Recently, I also saw the LAPD give out tickets to students who did not “walk their bikes across an intersection.” I know a student who got a ticket because he pulled over beside a red curb for less than a minute just to pick up a friend on the sidewalk. Ironic that they do all this, while turning a blind eye to all the underage students walking along 28th street with red cups… </p>
<p>3) This is similar to the above, but if you have a car, watch out for parking tickets, especially if you spend a lot of time on Greek Row. When you can’t find parking on the street, don’t park in a neighboring business parking lot - you WILL be towed (I know many people who have had this happen.) Look at signs carefully, because on certain days you can’t park on the street because of streetsweeping… Don’t let a meter expire; it seems like there’s a whole army of parking enforcement around campus. Never park in a campus lot without a permit. And just don’t go anywhere on gamedays, because once you give up you’re spot, you’re basically done for. </p>
<p>4) Go to lectures. It’s easy to skip them, but you’ll regret it come exam time.</p>
<p>War and the American Experience = pain beyond pain
Religion and Ethical Issues = suprisingly fun</p>
<p>When they say that you have to park in your assigned structure during the week, and anywhere on campus during weekends, that does not include the meters on campus. The meters are enforced by an outside company.</p>
<p>stressed- thx for the link rating profs- we enjoyed the reviews of the profs we met when we visited USC, all very favorable.</p>
<p>how important is the Greek scene for social life and how selective is it?</p>
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the orange Rockstar Juiced…amazing, especially for an energy drink. i actually like the slight bitterness attached to the tail end of the mango-orange-passion. it’s can be quite dangerous how tasty it is…it’s possible to want to have more than one in a day, depending on how much restraint you have. and dining dollars.</p>
<p>that brings up a good point…whether you’re on Cardinal/Gold or Trojan plan but especially Cardinal/Gold, always keep track of your dining dollars. for me, it was useful to calculate approximately how many dining dollars i could use if i stayed on campus every day and ate 2 meals a day. that’s a worst case scenario, so i’d at least be a little careful.</p>
<p>granted, i’m still running extremely low on dining dollars, but that’s because of those early-in-the-semester Parkside dinners (and Parkside dinners when you want to have a casual dinner with a girl and she insists on not eating EVK…). also, Odwalla drinks will be an immense hit to the dining dollars. my floormate on Trojan ran out of his money on Monday because he bought 2 or 3 a day, on top of meals…</p>
<p>I should try Rockstar Juiced sometime. I’ve recently found a low-calorie alternative that still gets me the caffeine without all the sugar (and tastes all right). Even if Rockstar Juiced tastes good, I’d rather get the caffeine without sugar than with, because as we all know from the Daily Trojan, sugar isn’t what keeps us up.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.energyfiend.com%5DEnergyFiend.com%5B/url”>http://www.energyfiend.com]EnergyFiend.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>i love the caffeine death calculator haha.</p>
<p>so what’s your low calorie alternative? i’m actually fine with all the sugar in Rockstar, considering i probably don’t get an adequate amount of carbs anymore now that i’ve neglected breakfast, though i’m still interested to know…</p>
<p>I’d rather get my carbs complex rather than simple. The drink I’ve been trying is called Zipfizz, which is a energy drink mix that you mix in with a cup or bottle of water. It’s nice because I can carry around the tube of powder wherever until I need it. With Rockstar or energy drinks in cans, it’s not that convenient in terms of portability and drinking little by little over time. Especially on a bike, you can’t just put an open Rockstar can in your backpack. And putting Rockstar into an empty water bottle would look plain weird because of the yellow color.</p>
<p>It’s not a big-name brand, and it’s only available in a few brick and mortar stores. The best deal I’ve found is to order it off Costco.com. There’s free shipping, and when I ordered, even though policy was a 5% fee for non-members, they didn’t charge me. It was $25 for 20 tubes. It comes out to exactly the same price per mg of caffeine (I’m starting to sound like a poor college student) as buying Rockstars on campus for $2 a can. Of course, if you buy bulk at Costco you can get a better deal, but you’d have to physically go and buy it at the warehouse, since they don’t sell them online.</p>
<p>i save complex carbs for the two meals i do get per day (i’m a reasonably healthy eater), though i do agree it still isn’t the healthiest way to get them…<em>shrugs</em> what can you do when you’re out of meals and dining dollars haha. Zipfizz sounds interesting…but does it taste good? i’ll have to look into that. i was thinking about buying just any form of energy in bulk and stocking the fridge.</p>
<p>It tastes good when I have it with some food. If I sip it slowly by itself, I can taste some bitter aftertaste and it kind of makes me queasy. But it works great! If I have it with lunch, I still have a bit of an afternoon slump (it could be exclusive to me; I have afternoon slumps with 8 hours of sleep), but after that, I’m quick awake and alert even after dinner.</p>
<p>Speaking of sleep, a lot of the lecture halls are unlocked at night time. If you’re planning on studying on-campus at night or you’re kicked out of Doheny (nice and quiet since not a lot of people are there) when it closes at 10 pm and don’t feel like being around all the late-nighters at Leavey, you can check out Taper, VKC, WPH, and other lecture halls. Eventually, the doors do get locked, but you can prop them open with something if you have to leave. It’s nice to study in a lecture hall especially if you have to work with other people since you don’t have to reserve them like you have to at Leavey. But the downside is they get pretty popular during finals week, so you have to stake them out early.</p>
<p>wecandothis: The Greek scene opens up a lot of opportunities and can definitely help you with social life, but you don’t have to “Go Greek” by any means to have fun. It’s not very selective at USC. Over 90% of girls who go through recruitment will get into a house. I have no idea what goes on at fraternity rush, though…</p>
<p>I hate energy drinks with a passion. Sorority recruitment this year was sponsored by Tab, so we had mountains of that crap in the break room. Yuck. The cute packaging is misleading. Full Throttle isn’t my thing, either. I guess that’s why I always fall asleep writing papers. :o</p>