Going to College? Have some Personal Survival Tips on the House.

So you got into College? Cool.

First off, Congrats! I took the first applicable, multi-racial, pointless school task stock photo I could find as filler for this message. Its kinda funny, but don't get wrapped up in it. The real meat of the post is below. Basically I got bored and realized I had a lot of tools I utilized throughout my years in academia that several of my classmates had never heard of.

I want to change that for you guys. You imgurians deserve to know about these tools. Maybe you'll have heard of some of them. Maybe you haven't. Point is I hope I affect some sort of change in someone's life and, at the very least, ease a burden.

Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com

So you're pressed for time and don't have sources for your paper? Here's your #2 resource. (#1 is Wikipedia's sources section on the topic of your choice. As long as they're relatively scholarly you're in clear.) Google Scholar is Google's scholarly works aggregator, pulling everything from academic journal articles to news sources. Be sure to check the links to the side which indicate the article comes in a pdf, otherwise you may end up at a dead-end with a database's paywall. I got through college AND grad school with this method. I'm certain it's still good for you youngins.

Prezi.com

https://www.prezi.com

So you finally found that prof who has it out for you. The one that, despite your sitting up front, engaging in class, and studying your ass off, he's still giving you a C. This may be your ticket to raising your grade.

Prezi operates on the idea that presentations are 10% information and 90% visual effects (what we in the field called the Michael Bay Effect...) Prezi helps you make sleek, visually appealing presentations with only an ounce more effort than you would with traditional powerpoint software. Watch your crippling stage-fright melt away as you realize your audience gives even less of a fuck about what you're saying simply because your slides are prettier than everyone else's.

Libre Office

https://www.libreoffice.org

Fuck Word. Fuck Office 365. Fuck having to pay immense amounts of money just to get through your 4 years of education. You've got Libre Office on your side. Libre Office is THE free office suite, packed with every necessary function you'd find in Microsoft's Office Suite. Word, Power Point, Excel? All covered in this multifunctional program.

My experience is with its Writer functionality which, now with its latest update, exports to PDF, making it pretty much equal to whatever Microsoft is shilling out. Also it's capable of opening and exporting to Microsoft's proprietary formats such as DOCX.

If there's anything you should take away from this post, this is it. Get Libre Office. Unless your school is giving you all 4 years of Office 365 for free, its not worth using it. Libre Office will take care of all of your paper writing needs for the rest of your adult life (as long as its still around of course :P)

Google Docs

https://docs.google.com

So I can sing Libre Office's praises all day long, but here's your #2 in a pinch. If for whatever reason you've lost access to a word processor, and you've still got internet access, you've got Google Docs on your side, a full fledged office suite compatible with all Microsoft proprietary formats.

But that's not all. More than once, and I assure each and every one of you on this, you're going to have to work on the dreaded group project. Let Google Docs be your white knight. You'll have a central meeting place for each of your partners for whatever project you're expected to submit. A paper or a presentation. Each person can do their own write up online or on their computer and paste it into the final document with ease.

Don't set up awkward meetings. Don't expect these people to suddenly be your friends because you all have a grade on the line. Just drop the #1 resource into everyone's laps. Its the ultimate of no excuses. Plus you can even present a log file of who edited when to your professor if you ever run into issues.

I apologize. I assume the worst of people sometimes. I'm sure you can make friends and work together in person no problem, (I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the group projects I've worked on believe me) but even so, this is a resource at your disposal which can save your ass more often than not. Be sure to use it when applicable.

Zotero

https://www.zotero.org

So this is pretty much a God-send. A tad bit complex at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll never look back.

Zotero is a citing tool that integrates with your browser and word processor to help you easily catalog and maintain sources as you research for a paper. When it comes time to cite, it'll help you insert your citations and even auto-build your Works Cited section too.

Its browser integration allows for Zotero to read the meta-data of the pages you've accessed and, on certain sites where Zotero has partnership, will more easily fill in the blanks of content, genre, author, publisher, etc etc

Yes that's the one downside to Zotero. Its no easybib or bib.me. You'll have to do a lot of the work yourself. But the work is meager, just editing or clarifying the information it auto-pulls from the site so it displays your citations correctly. It only takes a moment of your time. And from there its a button press away from dropping your citation and editing your footer automatically for you. When your paper's done, hit the Works Cited button and watch every source you used magically appear formatted at the end of your paper. Hit save. Print. Email. Whatever. You've finished and Zotero did most of the heavy lifting for you!

I finished my graduate thesis last year and I don't know how I could have done it without Zotero. The ease of cataloging and applying citations to my paper was just so astounding... I owe the developers my thanks. I hope you guys give it a chance. Its really life changing once you give it a try.

Amazon Student (And Kindle (And Textbooks))

https://www.amazon.com/gp/student/signup/info

So I know I said this is about saving money and most other posts would be linking you to textbook piracy sites. Listen. I getcha. None of my business if you use those and quite honestly, I agree. Textbook prices are outrageous. So hear me out here. This is from personal experience.

You can't trust those sites to have every textbook you need. More often than not, you're gonna have to suck it up and buy them. My university had a bookstore/buy-back service. It sucked a lot. So I looked around and still couldn't find any decent prices for purchasing or buy-back. Not even the mom and pops.

I went to Amazon. I took advantage of their then 1-year free prime (now 6 months :/) and I bought almost all of the textbooks I needed at a discount, including Kindle editions.

When it came time to sell, Amazon was right there again. Their service will give you the best rate for your books most of the time. You won't be paid in hard cash, instead in Amazon credit, but that goes right into your textbooks for the next semester.

Now Kindle editions you can't sell back, but they do have their advantages. usually I reserved these for books or novels that were required reading or needed papers written. Turns out Kindle's PC edition is amazing for last minute papers. Boasting a powerful search engine, text-selection, and auto-bibliography, expect your Kindle editions to pay for themselves in the time you save.

The $99 a year is worth it. You'll get 2-day free shipping and Prime Video too. Can't beat that.

Ninite.com

https://www.ninite.com

Your parents just bought you that snazy new laptop. 8GB of RAM. 2.6Ghz processor. Probably a nice 500+GB HDD. That's great and all, but you're gonna have to get some applications to make it worth the money right? Ninite's got you covered.

Ninite.com is a program aggregator and installer and pretty much should be the starting point of every newly purchased computer. Just select the programs you want, most likely a browser, an office program (Libre Office guys! Its on here!), music and video players, anti-virus and malware, and maybe a few other tools if you have the need for them.

It covers pretty much all the bases, especially if you're not too technical. Be sure to get your anti-virus and malware programs though. It will make your college life that much easier if you don't have to run off to the campus repair shop or call home for a new laptop every semester.

And for all of you who have the displeasure of owning a mac, there's a Ninite-clone just for you: http://www.getmacapps.com/. Can't say I've tried it, but it looks promising. (Libre Office is here too!)

Snappy Drive Installer

https://sourceforge.net/projects/snappy-driver-installer

This may best be left to the tech savvy folk here. Snappy Drive Installer makes keeping your computer up to date a breeze. Just run it and let it detect what's missing or if you've got out-of-date drivers. Then with a simple click, it sets to work installing them, one after the other. Usually one restart later and you're update.

A computer's a lot like a car. It needs maintenance. And while outdated drivers won't necessarily give you the equivalent of a flat tire, the potential boosts in efficiency may be well worth staying up to date. Again, better to be safe than to have to lug your lappy to IT or make the dreaded phone call home asking for more money.
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And that's it for now. I can't think of anything else useful I ended up using, though I bet there were several I'm missing right now. Be sure to listen to the neckbeards in the comments if this post gains any actual traction I'm sure they'll criticize or provide links to some other great tools. "Trust, but verify" that's what college is all about. Don't take my word at face value, look at what others have to say, question it, ask others, do your own research. You may even find some stuff I didn't know about. People are your greatest resource in the end and most everyone likes to be helpful every once in a while. Good Luck!