Magazine
Collegian Magazine: Finals Issue
Students hungry for snacks during late-night study sessions have plenty of options in State College. Many downtown restaurants are open late into the night and offer plenty of variety for hungry students.
Julia Wilkinson normally drinks about four cups of coffee daily. But, as the semester winds down, her workload has increased, shooting her coffee consumption up to about 12 or 13 cups a day.
Ben Wygant's favorite study spot, next to a fireplace at Irving's Bagels on College Avenue, had an unusual way of helping him stay optimistic during finals week.
A year after the ANGEL Course Management System crashed during finals week, Penn State's Information Technology Services (ITS) is taking multiple steps to ensure the site does not have degraded performance as students study this week.
Get your blue books ready: The semester is coming to a close, which means getting ready for break, completing final projects and studying for final exams.
"My worst finals experience came when everybody was finished finals and started to have a party one night and I had a final the next morning around 9 o'clock and I just couldn't study or sleep. It was terrible."
It's the most wonderful time of the year: Exams, presentations, papers -- and bar specials.
Your endless final exams, multiple papers and tedious projects will soon finally come to an end.
Coming back to school from winter break to find your laptop and iPod stolen and lockbox emptied is not a pretty sight.
While many students head home for the holidays, common travel routes for students -- the Pennsylvania Turnpike, U.S. Route 322 and Interstate 99 -- experience some of their highest traffic flows of the year, said Ida Reams, safety press officer for PennDOT district 2.
If you decide to fly home (or elsewhere) for break, be prepared for long lines, security checks and random searches.
Complete with a 6-and-a-half-foot tall artificial tree, inflatable Santa Claus yard decoration and icicle lights, 135 Thompson is reminiscent of the Griswold family's house in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which displayed "25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights."
With the economy slumping, students may be looking at a holiday season
Students looking for part-time jobs over winter break may be less successful than in previous years because of the economic downturn, some experts said.
Guilherme Barbosa booked his plane ticket to Los Angeles for winter break months ago.
The ballots are in, the numbers have been tallied and only the top football teams in the country are slated to play in one of the 34 NCAA bowl games over the next three weeks.
There's no better way to decompress from a week of mind-numbing Scantrons and blue books than to crowd surf at a rock concert, mosh at a metal show, bob your head at an indie performance, raise your hands and break it down at a rap concert or bust a move at a hip-hop show. Regardless of the music genre, there are plenty of nearby shows to make that exam week a distant nightmare.
There's an extra gift for moviegoers this December. After months of wan romantic comedies and copycat political thrillers designed to fill the lull between summer powerhouses and end-of-the-year awards contenders, Hollywood is taking off the gloves and releasing its big-gun Oscar bait and high-budget FX spectacles.
When most of Penn State's more than 40,000 students go home for the holidays, State College is a very different town.
Read more stories in our back issues.
