As you settle back into the dorms and sift through syllabi while searching for drink specials from the local pub, you also should put in some time improving your social life. The fall is a great time to lay a solid foundation of dating success on campus. To provide some tips on turbocharging your dating life, we turned to Neil Strauss, author of the international bestseller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and founder of the Stylelife Academy. → Read More
College is a time to try new things – especially that second or third year, when everyone’s turning 21. Suddenly, a whole new world has opened up – a world of intoxicated semi-public bliss, previously off limits to your nascent self: the world of bars. Bars can be a stupidly intimidating place when you’ve just turned 21. It’s like going to some crazy country where they play music too loud, everyone talks with a slur, and everything you touch is mysteriously sticky. We’re here to help. Everyone should have realized by now that the CrunchGear team is really just a bunch of alcoholics who happen to have computers; with that, we present as part of our back-to-school series: 10 Things You Should Know About Going To Bars. → Read More
So you’re moving away from the dorms and their plentiful buffet-style meals. It’s a big step, I know, and you’ll have to do some adjusting. Cooking for yourself can be a rewarding experience, and you may discover that you have a knack for it, or enjoy the process as much as the results. But the first steps can be daunting, so focus on the basics. It’s not exactly gadget news, but since it’s Back to School time, we thought this was important. Most importantly, as a growing human being, you must remember the four basic food groups: chicken ramen, beef ramen, spicy ramen, and other. → Read More
We’re running a Back to School extravaganza right now, but one thing that I don’t know if we really addressed is: Who exactly is going back to school? Or, more accurately, who is going to college for the first time in a few weeks? (That’s who these Back to School things are usually for, freshman. If you’re going back odds are you know exactly what you need and what to expect.) What have today’s 18-year-olds experienced in the world, what are they about, and what do they expect from technology? → Read More
Back when I was in college – nigh on fifteen years ago – I remember reading a book by John Seabrook about his experience on the Internet. Now I was pretty plugged in back then and I got everything he was talking about. But there was one paragraph where Seabrook went down to the store and just bought a 9600 baud modem. Man alive! He paid for it just like that. I was so unaccustomed to having money that I couldn’t understand how someone could just buy a 9600 baud modem, about $200 or so back then. With that in mind, I’ll talk a little bit about how to get cool gadgets for cheap. You probably already know all this if you read CG, but maybe you can send this to your dumb less tech-savvy friends. → Read More
Right around this time of year, every store bigger than a breadbox is trying to cash in on college kids by pointing out everything they’ll need for the days ahead. Bed-risers! Over-the-door shoe holders! Thing is, packing for college isn’t like packing for camping. Stuff that seems oh-so-functional when you’re standing in the dorm room aisle with full reign over Dad’s credit card becomes nothing but added weight once you’re on your own. They’ll be great for measuring how much dust can gather on one thing over a few months, but that’s about it. Now, we’re not saying you shouldn’t buy anything. Make your space yours, express yourself, all that junk. That said, there are a handful of items we see college kid after college kid dump money on – now you can’t say we didn’t warn you. → Read More
It’s that time again, folks. Cars are being loaded, parents are being kissed goodbye, and summer is coming to its unavoidable end. It’s time to go back to college – or for many, to go to college for the first time. Fortunately for you, the CrunchGear team has been there and done that. We’ve dealt with the confusing schedules, lived with crappy room mates, and have made valiant efforts at shoving all of our crap into half of a 10′x12′ space. We’ve puked all over peoples couches, and drunkenly thrown our phones into pools just to see what happened. We want you to learn from our mistakes – or at least know what’s coming. With that, we begin our back-to-school (“school” as in “college”. If you’re going back to junior high or high school, go buy some binders, dig up some pens, then go do something better with your youth than read some silly blog) coverage. We’ll teach you what stuff you don’t need, regardless of how useful Bed Bath & Beyond makes it look. We’ll teach you ways to eat like a (very poor and possibly malnutritioned) king for pennies a day. Also, we’ll probably talk about booze a lot. → Read More
