Author: Sydney Jennings

In the film “The Post,” Han­ks plays the brusque and bril­liant Post exec­u­tive edi­tor Ben Bradlee and Streep por­trays the strong-willed, and now infa­mous, Post pub­lish­er Katharine Gra­ham. Togeth­er, they form an unstop­pable team to get ahold of and pub­lish the whop­ping 3,000 pages that would not only change America’s view on the Pres­i­den­cy and the nature of the Viet­nam War, but also how news­pa­pers could pub­lish clas­si­fied mate­ri­als even when they went against our government.

“The Post” is a great film for any­body to go see if they want a lit­tle his­to­ry les­son on the Viet­nam War and the Pen­ta­gon Papers, if they love Tom Han­ks and Meryl Streep (which is basi­cal­ly every­body) or just love a good ole fash­ioned dra­ma about the cor­rup­tion of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. How­ev­er, it is a cru­cial movie for any aspir­ing jour­nal­ist to go see right now just like many oth­er jour­nal­ism films that came before it, such as “Spot­light” and “All the President’s Men.”

Why you ask? Because it shows how deter­mi­na­tion, good jour­nal­is­tic skills and fight­ing for what you believe in as a jour­nal­ist are cru­cial in keep­ing the press’s First Amend­ment right to expose the truth at any cost. Despite all of the government’s efforts to keep the Pen­ta­gon Papers out of the press, the team at the Wash­ing­ton Post didn’t lis­ten and didn’t give in, so they could deliv­er the truth to the people.

First off, this is por­trayed with impec­ca­ble taste by Meryl Streep. Streep’s char­ac­ter, Katharine Gra­ham, gains con­trol over the news­pa­per after the death of her hus­band and is seen by many as some­one who only fol­lows the orders of the men in the news­room. As the film goes on, how­ev­er, the deci­sion to pub­lish the papers lies on her shoul­ders and she trans­forms from a demure socialite to a hard-nosed news­woman. Streep’s por­tray­al of Gra­ham not only shows the strength and deter­mi­na­tion you need to have as a reporter, but also the willpow­er it takes to make a tough deci­sion for the bet­ter­ment of your readers.

And Tom Han­ks’ char­ac­ter, Ben Bradlee, doesn’t shy away from the fight against the Nixon-led gov­ern­ment either. Bradlee is exact­ly what an edi­tor should be, which is deci­sive, brave and inspir­ing to his team of writ­ers and aspir­ing edi­tors should take note if you want to make it as an edi­tor at any pub­li­ca­tion, print or online.

Graduation season is just around the corner, so you are going to want to steer clear of these cities.

Right now, as you are read­ing this arti­cle, you’re prob­a­bly think­ing: I have plen­ty of time to think about post-grad­u­a­tion job search­ing, so why should I even both­er read­ing this? Well, no offense, but that line of think­ing is wrong. It’s nev­er too ear­ly to start think­ing about where you want to live after the end of your col­lege career and what full-time career you want to go into.

E! News Anchor Catt Sadler quit after learning she got paid significantly less than her male counter-part, but was it the right call?

Catt Sadler, the long­time E! News host quit after learn­ing that her male co-host, Jason Kennedy, was being paid close to dou­ble her salary. While Sadler and her team repeat­ed­ly asked to rene­go­ti­ate her con­tract to get a high­er pay, they were turned down mul­ti­ple times.

“My team and I asked for what I know I deserve and were denied repeat­ed­ly,” Sadler wrote on her per­son­al blog, The Catt Walk.

Sadler has worked at E! News since 2006 and this year, her con­tract was com­ing to an end, but net­work exec­u­tives did tell her that they want­ed to extend her deal. It was dur­ing these nego­ti­a­tions, that she was informed that Kennedy was being paid more than her even though she believed they did essen­tial­ly the same job.

One of Sadler’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives told Peo­ple Mag­a­zine, “their roles at the net­work were vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal. The only thing about them that was not com­pa­ra­ble was their gen­der – and the fact that she filmed a min­i­mum of sev­en shows a week to his five.”

Both Sadler and Kennedy had joined E! News around the same time as each oth­er, both work­ing their way up to anchors of the pro­gram. Sadler had recent­ly picked up more work by host­ing a two-hour live day­time show called “Dai­ly Pop” on the net­work. That, along­side co-host­ing the evening series on the net­work, added more respon­si­bil­i­ty and hours for Sadler.

Kennedy also does his fair share by co-host­ing the evening series, cor­re­spond­ing for the network’s red car­pet cov­er­age and host­ing the week­end series, E! News Weekend.

While Sadler believed that her and Kennedy had com­pa­ra­ble work, the net­work didn’t agree, as dis­played in their state­ment, “Catt and Jason’s roles were not comparable.”

Sadler did not want to leave the job that she loved so much, but she felt that she could not remain silent on the issue. “How can I oper­ate with integri­ty and stay on at E if they’re not will­ing to pay me the same as him? Or at least come close? How can I accept an offer that shows they do not val­ue my con­tri­bu­tions and par­al­leled ded­i­ca­tion all these years?” Sadler wrote on The Catt Walk.

Sadler con­tin­ued to write in her blog post about oth­er “brave women” that have come before her. “Females refuse to remain silent on issues that mat­ter most because with­out our voic­es, how will we invoke last­ing change? How can we make it bet­ter for the next gen­er­a­tion of girls if we do not stand for what is fair and just today?” Sadler asked of her readers.

The gen­der pay gap issue

While the gen­der pay gap has nar­rowed since the 1970s, which in part was due to women’s progress in edu­ca­tion and work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion,  the medi­an salary for women work­ing full-time remains at close to 80 per­cent of men’s. Now, this pay gap does depend on var­i­ous things such as job, hours worked and edu­ca­tion lev­el to name a few.

The pay gap also varies across dif­fer­ent racial back­grounds and ages. For exam­ple, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Women, Amer­i­can Indi­an and Alas­ka Native women are paid 57 cents for every dol­lar a white man makes, and for Native Hawai­ian and oth­er women from the Pacif­ic Islands, that num­ber is slight­ly high­er at 59 cents. For Lati­na women, they get paid 54 per­cent of what men make, which means that it would take them a whole year of full-time work to get paid what the aver­age white male makes. For black women, that per­cent­age is raised just a lit­tle bit at 63 percent.

Those are pret­ty big dif­fer­ences across racial back­grounds, and it also depends heav­i­ly on age. The gen­der pay gap only increas­es with age as women in their 20s earn­ing 96 per­cent of what men are paid and women in their 50s mak­ing 78 or 89 per­cent. That num­ber shrinks even more once a woman reach­es her mid 50s and ear­ly 60s, down to 74 percent.

Sadler is not the only female celebri­ty to speak out

While the pay gap is felt by many dif­fer­ent women across many dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­grounds, ages, edu­ca­tion lev­el and more, women oth­er than Sadler has been speak­ing out in Hollywood.

In 2015, Char­l­ize Theron also suc­cess­ful­ly rene­go­ti­at­ed her con­tract for the “Snow White and the Hunts­man” sequel for high­er pay after the Sony hack revealed that she wasn’t being paid as much as her male co-star Chris Hemsworth. Nego­ti­a­tions worked in Theron’s favor and she got a $10 mil­lion worth deal, the same as Hemsworth. How­ev­er, it was a lit­tle eas­i­er for Theron, who said that once she asked, she sim­ply just got more pay. In an inter­view for “Elle,” Theron recalled the rene­go­ti­a­tion, “I have to give them cred­it because once I asked, they said yes. They did not fight it. And maybe that’s the mes­sage: That we just need to put our foot down.” Theron’s sto­ry, though much dif­fer­ent from Sandler’s, does high­light the need for more women to put their foot down and stand up for their right to equal pay, even it takes a lit­tle longer.

Indivior’s newly developed drug, Sublocade, may reshape the battle against opioid addiction.

Ear­li­er this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion approved Indivior’s exper­i­men­tal drug for pub­lic use in an attempt to fight America’s grow­ing opi­oid addic­tion issue. The Lon­don-based com­pa­ny, which spe­cial­izes in addic­tion treat­ment, cre­at­ed Sublo­cade, the first injectable drug for patients who are recov­er­ing from addic­tion to hero­in, pre­scrip­tion painkillers and oth­er opi­oids. With one injec­tion a month admin­is­tered by a health­care pro­fes­sion­al, the drug has the poten­tial to reduce abuse and relaps­es after patients stop tak­ing their cur­rent medication.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Newsweek, the drug was approved fol­low­ing two clin­i­cal stud­ies that includ­ed more than eight hun­dred adults who suf­fered from mod­er­ate-to-severe opi­oid use dis­or­der. The results revealed that those “who were inject­ed with Sublo­cade passed more urine tests and self-report­ed less drug opi­oid use dur­ing a six-month peri­od, com­pared to the place­bo group.”

This approval came at a good time as Amer­i­ca is expe­ri­enc­ing one of the dead­liest drug epi­demics in its his­to­ry. Accord­ing to ABC News, more than six­ty-four thou­sand Amer­i­cans died from drug over­dos­es last year, most of which involved opi­oids. How­ev­er, just how effec­tive will this drug be, and most impor­tant­ly, could it be the drug to help end the opi­oid cri­sis in America?

What are opioids?

Opi­oid med­ica­tions are clas­si­fied by the FDA as, “pow­er­ful pain-reduc­ing med­ica­tions that include pre­scrip­tion oxy­codone, hydrocodone and mor­phine, among oth­ers, and have both ben­e­fits as well as poten­tial­ly seri­ous risks.” They are main­ly giv­en to peo­ple to help soothe bod­i­ly pain after surgery or seri­ous injury. When tak­en prop­er­ly, these med­ica­tions can help man­age a patient’s pain, but when abused or mis­used, they can cause seri­ous harm.

Opi­oids impact opi­oid recep­tors in the spinal cord and brain to decrease the inten­si­ty of the pain peo­ple are feel­ing, accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tute on Drug Abuse. In addi­tion, it increas­es the amount of dopamine, which is a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter that caus­es eupho­ria, or intense plea­sure. Dopamine gets released into the lim­bic sys­tem that hous­es the brain’s reward cir­cuit, so our brain gets trained that the feel­ing we get from opi­oids is a good thing. This is why peo­ple can become so addict­ed to opi­oid med­ica­tion very quick­ly, even if they take the appro­pri­ate amount, their brain basi­cal­ly rewards them for tak­ing it.

Even though opi­oids are addic­tive, they are legal, so many doc­tors still pre­scribe them to patients who are in pain after an injury or surgery. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion, between 2006 and 2014, the most wide­ly pre­scribed opi­oid was Vicodin. In 2014 alone, 7.8 bil­lion Vicodin pills were dis­trib­uted in Amer­i­ca, quite an increase from the num­ber of 6.4 bil­lion dis­persed in 2016.

Doc­tors are start­ing to say no to opi­oids when try­ing to pre­scribe a pill for patients who have acute pain, which is pain that won’t last after a patient’s recov­ery from an injury or surgery. How­ev­er, the under­ly­ing issue at hand is the fact that there is a lim­it­ed sci­en­tif­ic direc­tion for doc­tors to fol­low while treat­ing chron­ic pain, which is pain that will nev­er go away, such as back pain and fibromyal­gia. Accord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by a Nation­al Insti­tute of Health expert pan­el, pre­scrip­tion of opi­oid med­ica­tion to treat chron­ic pain has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly, but there’s lit­tle guid­ance on how to actu­al­ly use opioids.

Because there are no oth­er drug options to help peo­ple with chron­ic pain, doc­tors still pre­scribe patients pain med­ica­tion in hopes that it will at least make them feel more com­fort­able. This log­ic, cou­pled with the harm­ful effects of opi­oid med­ica­tion, have made many Amer­i­cans depen­dent on the drug to help soothe their pain, and once they have some of it, they need to keep tak­ing it, which has led to our cur­rent opi­oid crisis.

So, what is the opi­oid epidemic?

The opi­oid epi­dem­ic is not only the issue of addic­tion to opi­oid med­ica­tion, it’s also the issue of mis­use, abuse and sub­se­quent dead­ly over­dose cri­sis in Amer­i­ca. Every sin­gle day, more than nine­ty Amer­i­cans die after over­dos­ing on opi­oids and it is only get­ting worse.

The ori­gin of this cri­sis can be traced back more than twen­ty years to the 1990s when Pur­due Phar­ma, a big phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny, intro­duced Oxy­Con­tin into the mar­ket. Oxy­Con­tin is a long-act­ing ver­sion of oxy­codone that slow­ly releas­es the drug over twelve hours. It was hailed as a major break­through in sci­ence because of its slow release and all-day com­fort to patients and gen­er­at­ed close to $35 bil­lion in rev­enue for the company.

The prob­lem? The harm­ful, sole ingre­di­ent oxy­codone, which is sim­i­lar to hero­in and up to twice as strong as mor­phine. That’s pret­ty pow­er­ful, which is why many doc­tors at the time were hes­i­tant to pre­scribe it. Pur­due Phar­ma found a way around those timid notions by fund­ing their own research so their doc­tors could claim that the drug was not addic­tive and com­plete­ly safe.

Oxy­Con­tin did help many patients with their intense pain, but many also became hooked on the drug, and by 1999, two hun­dred thou­sand Amer­i­cans died from Oxy­Con­tin over­dos­es and oth­er pre­scrip­tion opioids.

Fast for­ward to this past Octo­ber, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump declared the opi­oid epi­dem­ic a “nation­al pub­lic health emer­gency.” Trump went on to say that, “’Nobody has seen any­thing like what is going on now,” accord­ing to CNN.

Today, about a thou­sand peo­ple die every week from drug abus­es and two-thirds of those deaths are from opi­oid over­dos­es. It’s no won­der the opi­oid epi­dem­ic is now being regard­ed as the worst pub­lic health cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, affect­ing peo­ple of all races, ages and eco­nom­ic stand­ing. The hard­est hit demo­graph­ic, how­ev­er, is white peo­ple and Native Amer­i­cans, which is a shift from pre­vi­ous drug epi­demics. Accord­ing to PBS, opi­oid deaths among white Amer­i­cans in 2014 was 7.9 deaths per one hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple, com­pared to 3.3 deaths per the same num­ber for black Amer­i­cans. The rate was even high­er amongst Native Amer­i­cans with 8.4 deaths.

Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to the same PBS arti­cle, peo­ple between the age of forty-five and fifty-four are more like­ly to die by opi­oids than any oth­er age group, with a whop­ping 11.7 deaths per one hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple. In com­par­i­son, mil­len­ni­als, peo­ple between the ages of fif­teen and twen­ty-four, had a rate of 3.1 deaths. These sta­tis­tics are scar­ing many civil­ians, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and med­ical professionals.

How Sublo­cade will affect the opi­oid cri­sis in America

Sublo­cade is the first injectable form of an old opi­oid addic­tion drug called buprenor­phine, com­mon­ly giv­en to recov­er­ing opi­oid addicts. Buprenor­phine pro­duces the same effects as opi­oids, such as eupho­ria, but start­ing at a low­er inten­si­ty and grad­u­al­ly increas­ing with each dose until they lev­el off. Due to this mech­a­nism, it low­ers the risk of mis­use, depen­den­cy and side effects.

MSU senior Braden Cleary is the co-founder of TheMountCo and creator of The Bearded Man Project, an initiative to bring attention to the waning popularity of America’s national parks.

What do you get when you com­bine a beard­ed man, a t‑shirt and your love of nature? You get The­Mount­Co, a cloth­ing com­pa­ny that was co-found­ed by child­hood friends Braden Cleary and Pre­ston Smith.

Grow­ing up, Cleary spent most of his time ski­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Boy Scouts, where he did his fair share of out­door activ­i­ties. His pas­sion for the out­doors is what sparked the idea for The­Mount­Co, a cloth­ing com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing nature and the Nation­al Park Service.

The idea came to Cleary in high school after he and Smith decid­ed they want­ed to start a busi­ness togeth­er once they got into col­lege. Even though Cleary and Smith went to dif­fer­ent col­leges, Cleary going to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty and Smith going to Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­si­ty, they stuck to their goal and start­ed The­Mount­Co their fresh­man year of col­lege.  

Becom­ing a Brand

Once Cleary and Smith had the idea for the cloth­ing line, they need­ed a logo—something that would stand out, so peo­ple would rec­og­nize them.

First, they had the idea of a line of t‑shirts with sim­ple features—a man’s face, a thought bub­ble and the image of his favorite sport with­in the bub­ble. For exam­ple, one t‑shirt they designed depict­ed a man’s head with ski-relat­ed quotes, such as dif­fer­ent ski moun­tains, above it. So, Cleary and Smith hopped on the com­put­er to try and make this idea come alive, but when they start­ed to design it, they came up with The Beard­ed Man instead.

They start­ed small at first, most­ly sell­ing their prod­uct to their friends and fam­i­ly, but once their cloth­ing line picked up some steam, they added a web­site and beefed up their social media pres­ence. Soon enough, The Beard­ed Man could be spot­ted across the coun­try on their hats, t‑shirts, sweat­shirts and more.

The company’s most recent excit­ing ven­ture is becom­ing grass­roots part­ners with War­ren Miller Enter­tain­ment, the world’s biggest name in snow-sports cin­e­ma. Every year, War­ren Miller goes across the coun­try show­ing their lat­est films of dif­fer­ent snow-sports ath­letes doing what they love to do on ski moun­tains across the globe. The excite­ment the films gen­er­ate dri­ves adren­a­line-seek­ers in the audi­ence to actu­al­ly come and mar­vel at the beau­ti­ful, snow-filled land­scapes that act as the ath­letes’ play­ground. “I want­ed to come up with a col­lab­o­ra­tive project, thought of War­ren Miller films and was able to pro­mote at the biggest film­ing in Michi­gan,” Cleary says. By part­ner­ing with War­ren Miller Enter­tain­ment, Cleary was able to bring his cloth­ing line to the biggest show­ing in Michi­gan, in his col­lege town of East Lans­ing, and pro­mote it to fel­low ski bums.

Becom­ing a Co-Founder

So, how does the senior mar­ket­ing major keep up with his grow­ing busi­ness, school work and still be a part of the MSU Alpine Ski and Snow­board team? Cleary del­e­gates his time, some­thing he learned back in Boy Scouts. “That’s a key fac­tor for me to do all of it,” says the MSU senior.

And he doesn’t have any plan to stop soon. After grad­u­at­ing in the spring, Cleary plans to move to Trevor City, one of the biggest vaca­tion towns in the state, and open up shop there so he can focus on grow­ing the brand.

C’mon, just admit it, we’ve all done it. Just sprinkle some harmless white lies in your resume trying to impress the employer and score your dream job.

When apply­ing for a job or an intern­ship, you want to make your resume look pro­fes­sion­al and, most of all, impres­sive, so some­times you may fudge a few lines to fit the job you’re apply­ing for. Maybe you’re apply­ing for an intern­ship and they want a can­di­date who knows Microsoft Excel real­ly well and you wrote that as one of your skills (even though you prob­a­bly haven’t used Excel since your high school com­put­er class). Or maybe they want some­one with HTML knowl­edge and while you may have learned a lit­tle bit of it in col­lege, such as how to bold or ital­i­cize a word in code, you wrote it as a skill, too.

This list is to make sure you don’t suffer from the nightmare of preparing to move from your dorm room to your new apartment.

Well, you did it. You found that dream apart­ment. You final­ly moved out of that small, rinky-dink col­lege dorm room equipped with a twen­ty-year-old twin-size bed that smelled like feet, a few inch­es sep­a­rat­ing you and your room­mate and an old rick­ety desk that you nev­er used.

Now, you moved up in the world and are try­ing to be a real adult with your first col­lege apart­ment. Per­haps you’re mov­ing to an apart­ment pro­vid­ed by your col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty, or you some­how con­vinced your par­ents to co-sign a lease for you in an off-cam­pus apart­ment that is a lit­tle nicer than the col­lege-owned property.

Regard­less, you are now becom­ing a real-life adult with a real-life apart­ment with, most like­ly, your own room, kitchen and bath­room instead of the com­mu­nal ones that you shared with an entire floor of co-eds. Even though you prob­a­bly have room­mates, shar­ing an apart­ment with three or four oth­er peo­ple is def­i­nite­ly more ide­al than shar­ing a dorm room with them.

You’re prob­a­bly super excit­ed right now as you and your room­mates are try­ing to map out exact­ly what you need for your new pad to make it your new home for the next year or two. To be hon­est, you’re prob­a­bly sur­prised at how much stuff you will actu­al­ly need in your new apart­ment, much of which you didn’t even think you need­ed until now, such as a can or wine open­er. Yes, sim­ple things like that get over­looked all the time when col­lege stu­dents are mov­ing from a dorm room to an apart­ment because you’ve nev­er had to wor­ry about bring­ing small house­hold items. All you’ve had to wor­ry about so far is bring­ing bed­ding, bed ris­ers that you most like­ly didn’t use, toi­letries, cloth­ing, a microwave if you’re the room­mate that got stuck with that task and a mini-fridge to house all of your cheap alcohol.

Being in an apart­ment is very dif­fer­ent from liv­ing in uni­ver­si­ty hous­ing and you will need a pletho­ra of things for your new home. But don’t wor­ry, this arti­cle has got you cov­ered. Here are the 7 things every col­lege stu­dent needs for their new apartment.

1. Wine opener

As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed in this arti­cle, a wine open­er is a cru­cial yet fre­quent­ly over­looked neces­si­ty for every col­lege apart­ment. By the time you have moved into an apart­ment, you would have been most like­ly old enough to legal­ly drink, so instead of drink­ing cheap liquor, you will resort to drink­ing cheap wine. You will be sur­prised at how many times you will actu­al­ly need a wine open­er. Whether you are try­ing to cook a nice pas­ta din­ner for your room­mates with red wine or enjoy­ing a glass or two of white wine while hang­ing out with friends, you will def­i­nite­ly be hap­py that you brought one.

2. Inspi­ra­tional posters

Every­one in a col­lege dorm room hangs posters up on their wall; they’re most like­ly posters from their favorite movie, actor or sports team. How­ev­er, when you move into an apart­ment, you prob­a­bly want to upgrade those posters to reflect your upgrad­ed liv­ing arrange­ment. Inspi­ra­tional posters or wall decals will make you feel like a cham­pi­on upper­class­man. These posters will help you stay sane dur­ing finals week as well because, let’s be hon­est, you will need a pep talk before you take on that full week of exams and papers.

3. Cof­fee maker

Hav­ing a cof­fee mak­er at your apart­ment will be a life saver. When you lived on cam­pus, your din­ing hall prob­a­bly had free cof­fee that you could drink when­ev­er you want­ed. How­ev­er, now that you’re liv­ing in an apart­ment, you’ll need to make your own. Whether you need a jolt of caf­feine for your 8 a.m. class, a mid-after­noon pick-me-up or some­thing to help you pull an all-nighter, you will be glad that you have that cof­fee mak­er to help you. You’ll also save a lot of mon­ey by mak­ing your own cof­fee instead of spend­ing around $5 or $6 on your favorite Star­bucks or Dunkin’ Donuts drink every day.

4. Clean­ing supplies

Any clean­ing sup­plies, espe­cial­ly mul­ti­pur­pose wipes, are essen­tial for any home, espe­cial­ly a col­lege apart­ment. Mul­ti­pur­pose wipes are great for an easy and quick clean up when you are in a hur­ry or when you’re feel­ing lazy. Oth­er sim­ple clean­ing sup­plies such as a broom and vac­u­um will also become your most handy clean­ing tools because they allow for a quick cleanup before and after that row­dy night with your friends.

5. Stor­age

Just like when you moved into a dorm, you will need a lot of stor­age for your first apart­ment. Most first apart­ments for col­lege stu­dents are small and cramped, which is why they are so afford­able for those on a strict bud­get, so you are going to want a lot of stor­age space to keep all of your belong­ings. Bring along that under-the-bed stor­age from your dorm room and any stor­age bins you had as well. You will need to store things that you nev­er thought you would have to, such as dif­fer­ent clothes for the chang­ing sea­sons, pots and pans that don’t fit in your kitchen, extra bed­ding and any oth­er excess stuff that you and your room­mates brought mul­ti­ple sets of.

6. Dry erase board

Dry erase boards will become your best friend in your apart­ment. You and your room­mates can use them for basi­cal­ly any­thing such as gro­cery lists, a cal­en­dar of upcom­ing events to keep track of everyone’s hec­tic sched­ules, a chore list for every­one in the apart­ment to make sure they are doing their part to help keep the apart­ment nice and tidy, and even lit­tle reminder notes to remind your­selves of any upcom­ing home­work, projects or the dread­ed par­ents visits.

7. Tool kit

A tool kit will be your sav­ing grace when­ev­er any­thing breaks in your new apart­ment, and things will break at one point or anoth­er. Whether you have a leaky faucet, a bro­ken chair leg or just some inspi­ra­tional posters that need to be hung, you will need a tool kit for most­ly any­thing. You want to be pre­pared for basi­cal­ly any­thing that goes wrong in your apart­ment so you don’t have to rely on your land­lord all of the time.

Is your wish list ready for the gifting season?

Well, it’s offi­cial­ly the hol­i­day sea­son with Pep­per­mint Mocha Lat­te offered in every café, hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tions in every store and, even though we haven’t even made it through Thanks­giv­ing yet, hol­i­day music play­ing soft­ly in your favorite cof­fee shop.

This is also around the time that col­lege stu­dents are metic­u­lous­ly count­ing down the days until finals are over and they can final­ly go home and get some seri­ous rest, have a home-cooked meal, sleep in a bed that doesn’t feel like rocks, see their friends from high school and more impor­tant­ly, give and receive some gifts.

The hol­i­days are a time for giv­ing and col­lege stu­dents love this sea­son more than any­one else because, well, they’re broke. When you’re younger, you can’t wait for the hol­i­days because you get time off of school to be with your loved ones, eat a great hol­i­day meal of your family’s choos­ing and get lots and lots of gifts. It’s the same when you’re in col­lege, but the dif­fer­ence is that every col­lege stu­dent is too broke to buy them­selves any­thing, so the hol­i­days turn into a time to get all of the neces­si­ties (with­out actu­al­ly pay­ing for them).

Need some new clothes that haven’t been stained by a beer show­er from a frat par­ty? Put it in on your wish list. Need a new lap­top after you spilled some ramen on yours? Wish list. Need some extra snacks to stash in your clos­et after devour­ing all of your sup­plies a week into school? Def­i­nite­ly put Pud­ding Snacks and Gold­fish on your wish list.

You prob­a­bly have already thought through your wish list for the hol­i­day sea­son, but if you haven’t and your par­ents are pres­sur­ing you to write it all down or you just want some more ideas, here are six essen­tial items that every col­lege stu­dent needs on their wish list this hol­i­day season.

1. A gift card to your favorite cof­fee shop

I’m sure the cof­fee that they have at your schools din­ing hall is pret­ty good, maybe a sol­id four on a scale of one to ten? But let’s be hon­est, you are always crav­ing your favorite lat­te, mac­chi­a­to or spe­cial iced cof­fee that Dunkin Donuts or Star­bucks makes. A gift card is always a prac­ti­cal item on any wish list and a card to your favorite cof­fee shop will come in handy when you need a pick-me-up dur­ing those long nights study­ing in the library.

2. A heavy-duty case for all of your tech gadgets

Every­body nowa­days has a case for all of their tech gad­gets; they would be basi­cal­ly naked with­out them. How­ev­er, when you’re in col­lege, you need a case that can with­stand a lot of dam­age. Let’s say while you’re try­ing to take a cute self­ie at a par­ty, some­one drunk­en­ly bumps into you and your phone drops. Or, you fall asleep after watch­ing Net­flix until  2 a.m. and your lap­top falls off your bed. Any­thing can hap­pen at col­lege and you have to pre­pare your expen­sive tech gad­gets. A good case that is going to last through all of the unex­pect­ed things that hap­pen in col­lege is def­i­nite­ly a necessity.

3. Mon­ey for textbooks

It’s no secret that text­books can get very expen­sive. Nobody knows exact­ly why it costs around $100 for a biol­o­gy text­book that you’ll use for one semes­ter, but you’re going to need that over­priced book. So, hav­ing some extra cash to help pay for your books next semes­ter will help a lot. Or, you can opt to ask for a gift card to your school’s book­store that you can use on books or any oth­er school sup­plies that you may need.

4. New shoes

You might not think putting new shoes on your wish list is a must, but it is. When you went back-to-school shop­ping, you prob­a­bly already bought some new shoes to go along with that new top or pair of pants. But over the semes­ter, they have prob­a­bly seen some hor­rif­ic scenes and have got­ten beat­en up pret­ty bad­ly. From the dirty, mud filled tail­gates to the rainy days on cam­pus when you’ve had to run to shel­ter, they have seen some ups and down, and they’ve prob­a­bly even had a few alco­holic bev­er­ages spilled on them at a par­ty. If any of these things have hap­pened to your shoes, you prob­a­bly need a new pair or two depend­ing on how rough your semes­ter was, so you are def­i­nite­ly going to want to put new shoes on your wish list.

5. Noise-can­celling headphones

Noise-can­celling head­phones are a neces­si­ty in col­lege where you rarely have a moment of com­plete silence either to study or just to get lost in your own head. With noise-can­celling head­phones, you can lis­ten to music and drown out the noise around you. You can just put them on while study­ing or writ­ing a paper so that you can real­ly focus on your work. They are per­fect in the gym, the library or your dorm room when your room­mate has friends over.

6. Polaroid camera