Features

By Michael Chin Staff Writer Let’s be frank. Nobody cares about their classes after Thanksgiving break.  Instead we are trapped by mass amounts of the...

It’s no secret that Irvine isn’t exactly known for its crazy nightlife. In fact, the talk is usually about the opposite: Irvine doesn’t have one. Still, even if the campus seems empty at night, there are quite a few places in Irvine to chill with friends and enjoy each other’s company at night.

Nutritionists say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It gives you the nutrition necessary to function the rest of the day. Without it, our bodies don’t run as well and we can be met with fatigue and moodiness. Knowing this and studying to be a nurse, I still didn’t eat breakfast, until one day I found myself waking up to breakfast at a friend’s apartment after a night of late-night studying for a final.

On average, Thanksgiving dinners have more than 3,000 calories, and it's easy to see why, with all those scrumptious pies, candied yams, endless turkey stuffing and creamy casseroles. Many of us sit back, get comfortable, and consume over 6,000 calories during turkey day. This definitely will not do your waist line any good.

I walked up to the fenced enclosure, tilting my head up at a 45-degree angle to take my first glance at the 50-foot-tall high ropes course called "Odyssey,” located at the Anteater Recreation Center. Then only a meek freshman, I made it a goal to one day finish it. I dreamed of that moment for my entire time at UC Irvine.

Since childhood, we are told the story of Prince Charming, of true love and of a happily ever after. We are told that the handsome prince will overcome mountains, oceans and monsters to find and win our hearts. Together the fair maiden and Prince Charming will ride off into the sunset, holding hands and anticipating their lives full of love, wealth, glitter and talking animals.

Being the new kid on the block is never easy. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the 3rd grade or in your third year of college. Change can be one of the hardest things to deal with. Lauren Pyle, a transfer student from Irvine Valley College, Coastline College and Golden West College has experienced an educational path unique to most of us: being home-schooled from kindergarten through high school, going to community college and then transferring to UC Irvine. The thing is, she doesn’t see her challenges as something to keep her down. She sees them as things to help her learn and grow.

Turkey is a notoriously difficult animal to prepare. Thanksgiving turkeys tend to weigh in between 15 to 20 pounds, taking forever to cook through and the thighs and the breast need to be cooked to different temperatures and everyone is deathly afraid of undercooked fowl. This often leads to dry breast meat ruining everyone’s meal, requiring diners to pile on the gravy and the cranberry sauce.

“Spontaneity” is defined as behavior that is the result of impulse, not planning. I spent one year as a Boy Scout when I was in second grade. I never learned to tie complex knots or survive in the wild a la Bear Grylls, but my impressionable mind locked the motto “Be prepared” into my young memory.

One particularly memorable moment back in high school, I was walking behind this guy whose pants were sagging so low that he had to walk like a penguin in order for them not to fall down completely. At the time, I thought that it was ludicrous that he was willing to go to those lengths just to make a statement about his own identity and style.

Technology has played a vital role in improving our lives, affecting many different areas, from medicine to engineering to media and so on. With our dependency on technology growing, it's not a wonder that it's also been changing our education system. As time passes, more and more teachers invest in different forms of technology in order to better their teaching strategies. The issue is if these investments are really helping students move forward or if they're simply hindering the learning process.

Job interviews have a lot in common with blind dates: You sit down with a previously unknown person, talk for a while and exchange some details before ultimately deciding on whether or not you will start seeing each other much more frequently in the future. Granted, interviews are much more one-sided, but the analogy still holds. You go to interviews and blind dates with a similar mentality. Anxious. Excited. Hopeful. You want the person on the other side of the desk (or café table, all the same) to like you. You cautiously poke around a blind date’s life like you feign casual glances around the office as you walk to the interview room, watching to see if you’d fit in.