Short and effective video below. Enjoy.

I typed “tuition help” into Google and was a little surprised when an ad for SeekingArrangements.com popped up. This site is site for Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddies & even Sugar Mommies.

According to the site a Sugar Baby is: “Attractive, ambitious & young. Sugar Babes are college students, aspiring actresses or someone just starting out. You seek a generous Benefactor to pamper, mentor and take care of you—perhaps to help you financially?”

Also according to the site, a Sugar Daddy is: “Rich and successful. Single or married, you have no time for games. You are looking to mentor or spoil someone special—perhaps a “personal secretary”? secret lover? student? or a mistress for an extra-marital affair?”

A Sugar Mommy? The much rarer female equivalent of a Sugar Daddy.

Is it a new form of prostitution or is it simply a mutually beneficial relationship? According to the law, as long as a woman is paid for some other services besides sex, such as companionship or assistant work, then it’s not prostitution. And while some Sugar Babies may feel like sex workers, most enphatically stress they are not.

In fact, some Sugar Babies insist they don’t want, or need, money; instead, they want to be showered with expensive gifts—gifts becoming a measure of love and respect. Others are very straight up about wanting money, whether for tuition help, rent, or simply to buy some of the finer things in life.

I asked one of the members if it made him feel bad, knowing that women only want to be with him for money.

“No,” he answered, “most men think that their women are with them to some degree for money. Many women make it seem that way, or just act like in such a way that it’s clear,” said Brian, a man who wished to keep his last name private.

And, lots of people who “seek arrangements” equate the site to marriage, stating that the two things are very similar, that marriage is an economic and sexual arrangement.

There is also a book: Seeking Arrangement: The Definitive Guide to Sugar Daddy’s and Mutual Beneficial Relationships it’s a very realistic look at how both sides deal with the issues that arise from entering into a relationship like this. If you are considering trying one of these “arrangements” then this book would be a great place to start.

By Emily Glazer
MarketWatch
(MCT)

SAN FRANCISCO — In his two years at Iowa State University, junior Abe Hunter has spent more than $500 on ATM fees.

Hunter has an account back home with Ameriprise Financial, formerly a branch of American Express Co., because of his family’s past affiliation with that company. But U.S. Bank’s prime branch and ATM location a block away from campus and exclusive debit-card partnership with the school’s ID program means Hunter gets most of his cash from U.S. Bank’s machines.

To minimize the hit from those ATMs’ non-member fees — they run anywhere from $1.50 to $5 depending on the machine — Hunter has memorized which ATMs charge the lowest rate of $1.50.

“I try not to think about it,” he says, referring to shelling out hundreds of dollars in fees for his four-times-a-week ATM habit.

Whether it’s overdoing it on loans or mismanaging money, college students often struggle financially. And rather than helping them by giving one bank priority access to campus and thereby students’ money, many schools are enriching themselves far more than their tuition-paying customers: While most colleges pocket between $10,000 and $20,000 a year for that exclusive bank use, some schools earn up to $200,000, according to school administrators at some public schools.

Two-thirds of the nation’s largest 15 universities either partner with banks to promote debit cards or are looking to do so, according to a survey earlier this year.

U.S. Bank, a subsidiary of US Bancorp, has partnerships with about 40 colleges nationwide, including offering student identification cards that also work as debit cards. Bank of America, its closest college-banking competitor, has about 700 relationships with alumni groups or athletic departments but focuses on college affinity credit-card accounts as opposed to exclusive on-campus branches or ID cards, said Diane Wagner, Bank of America’s senior vice president for media relations.

Although U.S. Bank would not release financial information because of confidentiality agreements, administrators at public schools with a partnership with that bank said they are paid either yearly or monthly based on the number of student, faculty or staff accounts, or by square footage of the space U.S. Bank leases.

Iowa State University originally received $10,000 in 1997 when it partnered with U.S. Bank, said Joan Piscitcello, the university’s treasurer. And with about 13,000 Iowa State accounts, the school banked $200,000 from U.S. Bank this year.

Northern-Calif.-based Sonoma State University and Northern Kentucky University received about $10,000 when partnerships were forged a few years ago with U.S. Bank; both universities had about 1,500 accounts at the time.

Evanston, Ill.-based Northwestern University offers a fairly typical example of how the process often works on school campuses. About 35 percent, or 3,000, Northwestern students have a U.S. Bank account, said Nick Skipitaris, U.S. Bank’s branch manager at the school.

Skipitaris said in June that U.S. Bank worked strategically with Northwestern when its contract was signed in 2004 to ensure the student-center branch and the seven ATMs were no more than two minutes’ walking distance from each other.

But Northwestern’s financial agreement with U.S. Bank is private, as Brian Peters, director of Northwestern’s University Services, wrote in an e-mail in June that “the financial arrangements between NU and any of our preferred vendors is not something that we share with the public. Most of our contracts have confidentiality clauses.”

During Northwestern’s orientation week, U.S. Bank often gives away thousands of promotions, including free portable speakers in 2006 and computer flash drives last year, to new customers. Whitney Bright, U.S. Bank’s vice president and general manager of campus banking, said most schools partnered with U.S. Bank to offer these giveaways, which cost U.S. Bank between $3 and $5 each.

Since Northwestern students’ required ID card, or WildCARD, can link to their bank accounts, students often are persuaded to open a U.S. Bank account in the fall of their freshman year, even if they already have another one at a bank in their hometown. Skipitaris estimates he hands out at least 1,500 business cards out of about 2,000 new students—and their parents—that come in hordes to the bank’s campus branch.

“I was told ‘U.S. Bank: That’s the bank you get when you come to NU,’” said incoming Northwestern junior Kristi Infante. “When I got here I thought that’s what everyone did.”

Infante uses City National Bank for savings when she goes home, but has only a U.S. Bank debit card. The Miami native said her WildCARD is the only credit card in her wallet. “The WildCARD is hooked up, that’s your ATM,” she said.

But consumer researchers are wary of the necessity of these partnerships since many students arrive at school already owning credit cards or bank accounts.

For many students, adding ATM fees to their other expenses is a nightmare. College students spend about $200 a month on general items, or about $2,400 a year—more than half of their annual personal earnings of about $3,900, according to a recent study by Student Monitor, a college market-research firm, of a representative sample of 1,200 four-year, full-time undergraduates.

Banks target college students, especially with debit cards, credit cards and checking accounts because students use them so often, said Eric Weil, managing partner of Student Monitor.

“We’ve kind of questioned the whole value of those types of relationships because again you have so many students who are acquiring their card and checking account before they set foot on campus,” Weil said.

But some students come to college without a bank account, and this new bank relationship enables schools to vet and filter any potential banking problems.

“Some campuses do partner with (banks) because they want to make sure … it is a well-regarded card and doesn’t offer unusual fees,” said John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association, a trade group.

And Skipitaris said he knows many Northwestern students already have their banking set up and “it’s OK to have a couple” bank accounts.

Incoming Northwestern senior Jillian Foley still uses Navy Federal Credit Union, and said her mom opened up an account for her when she was in eighth grade in Annapolis, Md.

“That’s where all of my money has always gone,” she said. “It didn’t make sense for me to switch to another bank.”

Every time Foley goes home, she takes at least $100 from her ATM account, which is right by her local grocery store. There are also two Navy Federal branches close to home.

“I’m kind of shocked,” she said, after calculating at least $100 spent on ATM fees in her last two years on campus. “When it comes up, it is a huge pain.”

U.S. Bank has been the bank partner of the WildCARD program since 2004. At the time Northwestern was the 24th educational institutional partnership with U.S. Bank.

Art Monge, manager of WildCARD and vending at Northwestern, said he anticipates the bank’s seven-year contract to continue past 2011.

Before U.S. Bank came to Northwestern, LaSalle Bank partnered with Northwestern’s WildCARD program in 1999. Issues over the Chicago-area bank’s limited access, inexperience with university card programs and poor customer service led to a change after the contract was up after five years, Monge said. Northwestern then put out numerous requests for proposals in search of a new bank to “best fit what the university was looking for,” he said.

“That RFP made it a point: customer service, extended hours — beyond 5 p.m., weekend hours, primarily Saturday — and more of a nationally known bank,” he said.

On a busy Thursday afternoon around lunchtime the short lines move quickly at U.S. Bank’s Northwestern branch. Skipitaris’ “Hey, buddy!” greetings are the norm, and students don’t trash their receipts immediately. Skipitaris attaches inspirational quotes—including Andy Warhol’s “making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art” — to personalize the bank’s service.

“People look for it now,” Skipitaris said. “They expect it.”
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(c) 2009, MarketWatch.com Inc.
Visit MarketWatch on the Web at http://www.marketwatch.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

By Megan Twohey
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

CHICAGO — For Satit Koonopakarn, the gold dagger and book of chants were the first signs of trouble.

His freshman roommate at the University of Illinois at Chicago pulled out the items on move-in day, explaining that he was a Wiccan and liked to practice witchcraft. Months later, Koonopakarn said, he awoke during the night to find the roommate standing over his bed casting a spell.

“I was lying there thinking, ‘Please God, don’t let anything bad happen to me,’” Koonopakarn said with a chuckle.

Like most colleges with residence halls, U of I-Chicago makes an effort to pair first-year roommates who are compatible, often taking into consideration personality assessments and lifestyle questionnaires, among other factors. But some matches still result in disaster.

To minimize the horror stories, a small but growing number of schools are inserting online technology into the equation. They are setting up their own social networking sites, instructing students to create a profile and select a roommate for themselves — like Match.com for dorms.

Assigned roommates have already seized on Facebook and Myspace as a way to learn more about each other. Colleges field complaints from students, and their parents, seeking roommate changes even before the school year begins. Loyola University recently heard from the mother of a student who pulled up a photo of her roommate’s house on Google Maps and deemed it too shabby.

While some schools are now trying to use the technology to their advantage, other schools are pushing forward with traditional matchmaking, insisting students need to branch out of their comfort zones and experience diversity.

For the nearly 2.8 million freshmen heading off to college — one of the highest numbers in history — the roommate relationship may have the single greatest impact on their college experience, studies show. Students dissatisfied with their roommates are more likely to feel negative about college and suffer lower grade-point averages and retention rates.

“It can make or break a student,” said Mike Schultz, director of university housing at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, who serves as president of the Association of College and University Housing Officers International. “Some students will leave a university if they have a poor experience. I’ve also seen marginal students with great student relationships succeed with the extra support.”

DePaul University had used a lifestyle questionnaire when matching freshmen roommates, striving to pair early birds with other early birds, self-confessed slobs with equally messy classmates, and smokers with those who shared the habit. But eight years ago, the university scaled back the criteria, asking only which residence hall and type of room the student preferred, said Rick Moreci, director of housing services.

“When we asked more questions, the students were even more upset when we made a bad match,” Moreci explained. “With less factors at play, students don’t have as much of a basis to complain.”

Starting next year, the college will take its hands-off approach further, allowing freshmen to select their roommate through an online networking site created by a company called Lifetopia.

Lifetopia-designed sites allow students to post photos and details about their background and interests, then shop around for compatible classmates.

Within the past several years, the company has signed contracts with more than a dozen colleges, including San Francisco State University.

The California school offers the Lifetopia network to students selecting roommates for off-campus housing and a similar in-house online networking program for those living in residence halls on campus.

“We’ve found that there’s less conflict when the roommates select each other,” said Philippe Cumia, the school’s associate director for administrative services. “Giving them a choice gives them a greater stake in the relationship and making it work.”

Even at schools without Lifetopia, some students are selecting their roommates through Facebook and MySpace.

This summer, Danielle Sterczek, 18, of Palatine, Ill., and Krysten Karns, 18, of Aledo, Ill., received random roommate assignments from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But once they discovered each other’s profiles days later on a group of incoming freshmen formed on Facebook, they successfully sought a swap.

Based on their profiles and online chats, it appeared they had a lot in common — including playing high school sports. As long as everyone, including the original roommates, was in agreement, the college approved.

But many colleges insist that by selecting roommates online, freshmen miss out on the valuable learning experience that comes from living with people of different backgrounds.

“The more diverse the mix, the more interesting the conversation, thoughts and experiences that will emerge,” said Katie Callow-Wright, director of undergraduate housing at the University of Chicago.
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(c) 2009, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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Follow @aptguide on Twitter and retweet to win

Apartment Guide and Penske Truck Rental today announced that people who follow @aptguide on Twitter have a chance at winning a Grand Prize of “Free Rent for a Year” ($15,000 in cash) and a credit of up to $1,000 to be used for a consumer Penske Truck Rental. Four Runner Ups will each receive an 8GB iPod® touch.

“Summer is the peak moving season and thus the perfect time to reward our brand loyalists by giving someone the opportunity to win free rent and a moving truck rental,” said Arlene Mayfield, president, Apartment Guide. “Twitter is a great way to facilitate the sweepstakes since many people who are looking for apartments for rent also use Twitter to catch-up on news, converse online and network.”

To enter the sweepstakes, which began at 10:00 a.m. ET on July 15, 2009, login to your Twitter account (or establish an account) and follow Apartment Guide, which has a Twitter username of @aptguide. Followers will receive a direct message with a link to the sweepstakes home page. To finalize your entry, simply retweet the provided message – “Enter for chance to win $15,000 (free rent for year): follow @aptguide and tweet this msg. http://tr.im/freerent #freerent.”

“We’re excited to be a part of this promotion and to collaborate with Apartment Guide,” said Art Vallely, senior vice president, Rental, Penske. “Moving can be a stressful time, but Penske helps make it smooth and easy with clean, well-maintained trucks and a staff who really cares about your big move. Give Penske Truck Rental a try for your next move and experience the difference in service and vehicle quality we have to offer.”

The deadline to enter the sweepstakes is 11:59 p.m. ET on August 31, 2009. Winners will be notified via direct message on Twitter.

To see the official rules and restrictions that apply visit www.apartmentguide.com/win-free-apartment-rent/rules.

If you happen to be near Jacksonville, Florida on Tuesday, June 23, drop by the Hyatt Regency for a free lecture by financial guru Suze Orman.

Ms. Orman is appearing as part of the Capella University Distinguished Speaker Series. According to the Capella University blog:

By Carrie Wells
McClatchy-Tribune
(MCT)
When Ryan Yarosh posted an advertisement for Binghamton University on YouTube in January, he had no idea the video would go viral. Eleven months later, more than 20,500 people have viewed it.

“To be able to effectively reach out to prospective students we need to be caught up in terms of the latest technology,” he said. “Our students, prospectives, alumni—we need to be where they are.”

Yarosh, the assistant director of media relations for Binghamton, is apart of a growing shift in university marketing campaigns onto social media sites like YouTube and Facebook. The ubiquitous nature of the sites allows colleges and universities to keep in constant communication with alumni and current and prospective students.

Facebook, where users can “poke” their friends or tag them in photos, is seen by some universities as an exciting, innovative way to keep in touch with alumni, who can scatter and be hard to keep in touch with after graduation. It is also a tool for engaging current students.

The University of Michigan’s Facebook page has nearly 22,000 “fans.” On the page are videos, an event celebrating their fundraising campaign, press releases, podcasts, discussions and user-uploaded photos. A couple people even donated $10 each to the university through the site.

Texas A&M University’s Facebook page, with about 14,000 fans, has videos where one can “see what it means to be an Aggie” (their mascot). The page also links to iTunes, where users can download Aggie music and videos.

Other universities use social networking sites to recruit new students. The State University of New York College at Plattsburgh has a game through Facebook in which users participate in an “Ultimate Challenge.” Players rack up points by completing various challenges, which could involve going to a football game or posting a picture of the university.

The embrace of social media sites is a relatively new phenomenon, said Michael Staton, the founder of Inigral, a company that recently developed a Facebook application that securely integrates data the university has on alumni lists and more onto the site.

“Over past three years universities have had to do a complete 180 on how they look at the social web, social media and open content,” he said. “They’ve had to move from a position of fear to a position of ‘we have to move on this as quickly as possible before our competitors do.’ They’re very afraid that someone is going to have a better Facebook page up and more viral videos, etc, and as a result have a bigger digital footprint.”

Abilene Christian University, a private liberal arts college in Texas, is the first user of Inigral’s application, and the company hopes to sign two more colleges by spring 2009. Around 60 colleges have expressed interest, Staton said, but many are leery of jumping into the site. His advice for universities planning on expanding their “digital footprint” was to make their content unique and interesting. Otherwise, he said, their plans would likely fail.

At Binghamton, the social networking process is still evolving. Yarosh said he only launched a Facebook page for the university last Friday. But he expects to market the university using other social networking sites in the future.

“It’s a great way to bring people from all over country _ people from all over the world, really _ into one common place,” he said.
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© 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (www.mctcampus.com).

By Mara Rose Williams
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Northwest Missouri State University students started spring semester classes Monday, but many aren’t lugging thick textbooks around campus.

Instead, most students are carrying a lightweight electronic device that can fit in a coat pocket and hold the textbook material for all their classes. Some students will download their text information onto their laptops.

At Northwest, textbooks— at least the bound kind—are fast becoming a thing of the past.

Besides taking a load off students’ backs, going textbook-free can save them a lot of money.

The pilot electronic textbook program began in the fall with four classes and about 200 students. This spring, roughly 4,000 of the school’s 6,500 students will use electronic textbooks.

“I think that it’s the way the world is going,” said Dean L. Hubbard, Northwest’s president, who is retiring in July after 25 years at the Maryville, Mo., university.

Textbook publishers say many colleges are moving toward using some electronic textbooks, but Northwest’s plan to eventually eliminate all bound textbooks makes it a leader in the movement.

“Right now, digital products account for a small percent of our higher education business, but it is growing at a rate that is breathtaking,” said Jeffrey Ho, a product manager for McGraw-Hill Education.

But Northwest can only move toward a bookless campus as fast as the availability of e-books allows, Hubbard said.

“Publishers don’t have all textbooks online yet,” he said. “But I would think as a realistic measure we could be totally out of the printed textbook business in three years.”

That idea pleases sophomore Mike Jenkins.

“I think the whole concept is pretty cool,” said Jenkins, 19, of Lee’s Summit, Mo. Jenkins used e-books in his history class during the fall semester.

“I would like it if we didn’t have textbooks at all anymore,” he said. “You wouldn’t have the hassle of messing with books. The e-book is so convenient, and you don’t have to carry all those books around.”

Plus, unlike printed textbooks, e-books have pop-up interactive quizzes and the ability to search the full text within seconds for key words. New electronic reader technology also will allow students to take notes in on-screen posted notes.

Jenkins found a few “minor” problems with the e-reader gadget that he and his classmates used.

“You can’t look at a whole page on one screen, and it doesn’t have a backlight to light up the screen, so you have to be somewhere that is well lit,” he said.

Not all students were as comfortable with the electronic textbooks.

“I always worried that something would happen, like it would crash on the night I had to study for a test,” said Jennifer Martin, a 22-year-old Northwest senior from Liberty, Mo.

“It’s a good concept, but I didn’t like it that much. I would rather flip pages back and forth in the textbook when I’m studying. Maybe it would be better to start this with freshmen who haven’t yet gotten used to studying using a regular textbook.”

Students who want a traditional textbook could still get one.

But the cost savings are hard to ignore, even at Northwest, a school that already is unique because of its textbook rental system and its history of giving every student a laptop.

A textbook-free campus would save the university about $400,000 a year. Currently the university spends about $800,000 a year to keep an inventory of about 50,000 to 80,000 textbooks that are rented out to students. Northwest students pay about $80 to $90 a semester on books, a fraction of what students at other schools pay.

Northwest will continue to charge students just a rental fee. But once the e-book program goes campuswide, Hubbard said, Northwest students’ book fee will be cut in half.

E-books are less expensive than bound books, which are updated every few years and then have to be repurchased by the school. E-books can be updated at no cost.

Even at schools without a rental system, students would pay far less for texts on e-books than they would for bound books.

Nationally, the cost of textbooks has soared in the last decade. The average college student spends nearly $1,000 a year on textbooks, according to the National Association of College Stores.

Northwest will purchase the electronic readers and then load them with the e-books each student needs. The student would pick up their loaded e-reader at the university bookstore or have their electronic textbooks loaded on their laptop.
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© 2009, The Kansas City Star.
Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kansascity.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (www.mctcampus.com).

By Mara Rose Williams
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—What’s that ringing? If you’re in a college dorm room, it’s probably not a landline telephone.

Most university residence halls simply don’t have them anymore. Some may still have a phone jack in the walls, but in many cases the jack is not activated.

Officials at campuses in the Kansas City area said that, for the most part, landline phones in campus housing have gone the way of typewriters.

It is another sign of more people cutting the cord to traditional phones and relying strictly on cell phones and the Internet.

Roughly one in six —17.5 percent—of U.S. households in 2008 didn’t have a landline, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Some colleges aren’t stopping at dorm rooms, either. About 75 employees of Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Ga., went wireless earlier this month, the school’s chief information officer recently told USA Today.

It is another way colleges and universities facing a difficult economy can cut costs.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City disconnected the landlines in its residence halls in 2007, a savings of $75,000 a year.

For the second year, Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., is not providing landline phones in all its dorm rooms. They do have hookups, “although very few are utilized,” said Heidi Templeton, a university spokeswoman.

Like Truman, the University of Missouri in Columbia and many other campuses have kept at least one landline phone in a hallway or main lobby for emergencies.

Last year, UMKC opened new student housing that included landline connections. Out of 850 students with residence hall rooms, only four hooked up landlines.

Darby Peoples, the dean of students at Avila University, said that at a conference last year many campus housing officials said that if they were building new residence halls they were not including landline hookups.

One of the exceptions may be the University of Kansas, which still offers active landline jacks in each residence hall room.

“We cannot guarantee every student will arrive with a cell phone or want to use it for every call,” said Jill Jess, a KU spokeswoman. “The landlines do get used.”

But not much, students said.

Libby Johnson, a KU sophomore from Lawrence, said that when she lived in Oliver Hall she didn’t know of anyone who had a landline.

“We all had cell phones,” Johnson said. “I got used to putting my cell number down for all my professors.”

A survey earlier this year by College Parents of America found that of the 900 parents who responded online, only 25 percent said they use landline phones to communicate with their child away at school.

Campus officials rely more on cell phones to communicate with students, too.

After the deadly shootings in 2007 at Virginia Tech, colleges and universities across the country began installing emergency e-mail and text-messaging systems to alert their campus populations of breaches in security.

School officials concluded that e-mail and text messaging were the best ways to reach students anywhere at any time because colleges know that for nearly every student on campus their cell phone is practically a body appendage.
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© 2009, The Kansas City Star.
Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kansascity.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (www.mctcampus.com).

Do you have a landline phone? Do you know anyone who does? Tell us what you think: are landline phones obsolete?

Granted this is coming from someone who receives school closing updates via text message, reads half his school assignments via Google books instead of buying them, and can’t imagine how anyone settled arguments before Wikipedia.  But for the last week or so my computer has been non-functional (thanks Mac, especially for charging close to 100 dollars for a new charger that’s equally crappy).  So as I wait for a refurbished charger at nearly and eighth  the cost of the official Mac one (tip: never buy chargers from the company you bought the computer from), I am sans laptop, and it has made my life hard.  But it has made me appreciate the little things.

E-mail. Maybe it’s cuz I’ve been going to college for four years, but I feel a desperate impulse to check my e-mail at least ten times a day.  What if a class is canceled?  An assignment changed?  New meeting scheduled?  Alas…

Research. Really, how did people know anything before Wikipedia?  Did they really go to the library just to look up one thing?

Work. I have a data entry job.  It’s nice because I can work from home and listen to music or watch TV while I do so. Except I can’t turn on my computer.

Blogging. Need I say more?  You can’t blog on paper.

Buying. Was late checking what books I needed, and then I couldn’t buy my textbooks, and it took me way too long to even order the new charger.  Sure, I could have just bled eighty bucks and drove to the Mac store.  But 80 in a store versus 10 online?  Please.

Banking. And as I did buy these things on a library computer I wanted to check my bank account.  But all of my account info is automatic on my Mac; not soon the public PC.  I had to click and answer who my high school mascot was and verify my site symbol for way too long to simply check my balance.  Would have been more time-effective to drive to an ATM.

Entertainment. I guess there’s TV but you gotta hate those commercials.  I guess there are a lot of books I’ve been meaning to read…

Even though I know I’ll be clicking away again soon, this experience has made me realize I rely on the computer way too much.  What if I could never have one again?  It makes me question whether I would be able to function in society.  And then it makes me wonder: what if NOBODY had a computer?

Do you need money for school? Some grants and scholarships will pay for you to have a computer! Visit FindaCollegeScholarship.com to see which grants or scholarships you qualify for!