TechNews | Tuesday, OctoberZZ, 2013 TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYSINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South,State Street Chicago. Illinois 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiit.com Website: http://www.technewsiit.com TechNews STAFF Editor-in-Chief Ryan Kamphuis Assistant Editor Hannah Larson Campus Editor Utsav Gandhi A&E Editor Matti Scannell Sports Editor Nathan McMahon Business Manager Kori Bowns IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Copy Editors Travon Cooman Kristal Copeland Shireen Gul Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Rachael Affenit Swasti Khuntia Distribution Manager Emilie Woog Financial Advisor Vickie Tolbert Faculty Advisor Gregory Pulliam MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to promote student discussion and bolster the IIT com'm'unity by providing a newspaper that is highly accessible, a stalwart of journalistic integrity, and a student forum. TechNews is a dedicated to the belief that a strong campus newspaper is essential to a strong campus community. GENERAL INFORMATION TechNews is written, managed, and edited by the students of. and funded in part by, Illinois Institute of Technology. The material herein does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Illinois Institute of Technology or the editors, staff, and advisor of TechNews. There will be no censorship of TechNews publication by the faculty or staff of IIT. Sole authority and responsibility for publication and adherence to the values set forth in this policy rests with the TechNews staff. This paper seeks to bring together the various segments of the Illinois Tech community and strives through balance and content to achieve a position of respect and excellence. TechNews strives for professionalism with due respect to the intellectual values of the university and its community. All materialsubmitted becomes the property of TechNews, and is subject to any editorial decisions deemed necessary. S U BM | SS I O N S TechNews is published on the Tuesday of each week of the academic year. Deadline for all submissions and announcements is 11:59 pm. on the Friday prior to publication. Articles, photos, and illustrations must be submitted electronically to the TechNews website at technewsiitcom. EDITORIAL POLICY The editors reserve the right to determine if submitted material meets TechNews' policy and standards. For more information about our editorial standards, please email assteditor@technewsiit.com. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters to the editor may be submitted by anyone, but are subject to review by the Editor-in-Chief. All letters-to-the-editor become the property of TechNews upon submission. TechNews does not accept or publish anonymous letters or sto ADVERTISING Legitimate paid advertisements, from within or outside the IIT community, which serve to produce income for the paper. are accommodated. TechNews holds the right to deny any advertisement unsuitable for publication. Media Kits are available upon request. Ad space is limited and is taken on a first—come, first-serve basis. Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL & NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad. contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. Tales from the Victory Lap: ‘Unhappy' students elude IIT experience Miriam Schmid TECHNEWS WRITER In November of 2011, the Princeton Review released their list, “The 10 Colleges With the Least Happy Students.” Just down the list from the military academies, at number nine was our own Illinois Institute of Technol- ogy. Sadly, finding IIT on this list was not a shock or surprise to many current students. Why? IIT has frequented this list repeatedly. For me, this ranking does not make any sense at all. My five years at IIT have been the best times of my life. I have had more oppor- tunities than I could take advantage of, met friends from around the world, and grown more than I could ever have imagined. I can’t imagine what my life would look right now if I had not come to IIT. So, why do we repeatedly find our— selves on this list? I believe that there are a number of compounding factors that contrib- ute to IIT being on this list of colleges with un- happy students. The first of these is the IIT student demographic. What do I mean by that? I be- lieve that there are two main populations of students that experience more unhappiness than any other groups during their time at IIT: commuter students and international students. Commuter students frequently come to IIT to take classes, leave when they are done, and work off campus. By doing so, these students miss out on many events, student or- ganizations, and experiences that are crucial to connect with and feel included in the IIT com- munity. If my only experiences at IIT were my classes, I can understand why these students report feeling unhappy at IIT. Secondly, international students from around the world come to Chicago to at— tend IIT. For these students being thousands of miles from home, being in a completely new country, experiencing winter for the first time, and often struggling with courses in English can all contribute to unhappiness in the inter- national population at IIT. IIT is a diflicult university. In 2012, Newsweek ranked IIT as number 24 on the list of the most rigorous universities in the United States. The workload for any major is not easy and can overwhelm students. Many other col- leges and universities that also find themselves on this list share this characteristic. Finally, I believe that many students do not find a connection to the IIT commu- nity. All of the factors listed above can act as obstacles to finding a connection or a place to belong at IIT; I believe that focusing on mak- ing sure each student feels connected to, and a part of IIT will decrease the “unhappiness” in students. In the current version of this list on the Princeton Review website, IIT has dropped to number 16; I believe that this is in fact due to more opportunities for students to connect with each other and the university that have been created in the past few years. One IIT alum (ARCH ‘75) com- mented on the Princeton Review list and summed up my thoughts on this topic perfect- ly, “I had the time of my life,” they commented on the website. “I actually learned something. After school I could support myself.” Navigating social media proves perplexing Shireen Gul COPY EDITOR It has been quite a while since so~ cial media had taken over the world. Every— one is using it according to their needs, but did anyone ever think, “What is an appro— priate way of using this tool which is here to help us,” like other technologies and applica- tions? I know the answer is no, because people are too busy to do so as they already have lot to learn. Yesterday, I randomly asked few people around me, “Is it really useless to follow any rules while using social media.” 90% said yes and I was like “What? Why, why do you think so?” 40% said “be- cause we already are following a lot of rules in our life and don’t want any more,” 20% said “because we use it for fun and time wasting,” 20% said “because it’s not worth any rules,” and 10% said “We never thought about it.” Wow! Now these statics are very interesting to me. Aren’t they to you people? I am sure they are, and after seeing such stat- ics I don’t think I should give a lecture here on the dos and don’ts for social media, but let’s give it a try: I personally do take care of few things when I am using social media, as I am journalist and I have to take care of ev- erything that I say or post that is public, but now-a-days, even if something isn’t person- al, don’t say it because you never know when an employer will ask for your Facebook username and password and won’t hire you for whatever you have on Facebook profile. The very first thing that I person- ally do and want everyone else to do, DO have fun and be funny because you are here to relax. Twitter and Facebook are a great forum for punchy jokes, but if you are bad at jokes DON’T try it. Just relax and keep clicking like button for other people jokes. One thing that irritates me the most is the constant oversharing of things. Please DON’T share every other thing that you see has a share button. Just remember one thing; it’s your account, whatever you are going to share will represent you, so be very cautious when sharing anything. No- body is interested to know what your mom is cooking or how your relationship is go- ing. The ones who are interested in it would know before you tweet about it. The best part of social media is that it can keep you connected with all those people who are out of your reach. So DO fol- low the stars you’d want to be friends with, the newspapers you read, the film stars you adore and the journalists you admire. It’s the most in-the-know way to be in-the-know. DON’T complain about your work here; it’s Twitter not your mom. Don’t forget they can see you so it better you go home and give a call to your mom and tell her what your boss is doing to you. She is the most trustworthy person to complain about your work. DO play nice and use wise and re— spectful words. This is a public forum, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t-say to some— one’s face, or to a TV camera. Even if you can say it on someone’s face don’t say it here because it’s not the right place to do it. DON’T exceed the tolerable four- tweets-a-day limit. Come on, have a life; don’t make people say “Not again.” If there is some breaking news then it can be OK but not on daily basis. Let people wait for you to tweet rather than making them unfollow you within a week after they started follow- ing you. DO use Twitter to its full potential. It’s been the breeding ground for books, TV shows and political revolutions. You decide what’s next. You never know you can be the next revolutionary person. Remember the Arab Spring. DON’T get too personal or nega— tive it will not only affect the other person but it will affect you as well. DO engage and interact. This can be a good place to create personal relations and maintain them. You never know who can be a help or news in future. Last but not the least, if you can’t follow these dos and don’ts then DON’T for- get to make your account private. It’s your private possession until and unless you are using it‘for marketing purpose. I hope I didn’t bore you to death with my few pieces of advice that might be a help for you in the future.