My engineer hubby introduced me to Cornell note paper and oh I wish they'd had it when I was in college the first time. That extra wide column on the left is so useful.

I've had Prime since it started and I swear, Amazon looses money on me between shipping, which we use a lot, and the free streaming. Remember, too, that those of you in college or with college kids, Amazon student prime is $39, though I don't think it allows adding extra people like the regular one.

I've re-written notes too for some classes because the professor talked so fast I had to fly to keep up and my notes were hard to read. My freshman year, I was in a math class that had chalkboards down both sides of the class and across the front. The professor would start in the back left corner, writing with his right hand and erasing behind himself with his left. Down that side, across the front and up the other side he'd go. By the time he'd covered the homework and questions, he's be in the opposite corner, all the boards clean, and look at us and say "Now, isn't that easy?" I threatened to bring a video camera to class :)

Re: students not reading the books, I dropped in to see my advisor last week and we were talking about this. She loaned me a book that she used to use for an upcoming class that is a great read, but she commented that while she made extensive use of it and had a detailed list of assigned readings on the syllabus, she found that many freshmen wouldn't read the book. When I was in college in the 80's, I had a professor that cured his freshmen of that quick. Things in the book would show up on tests, even if they were not covered in lectures. After the first test and some of them complaining, he reminded them that the reading assignment was on the syllabus and it was their responsibility to keep up with the work, not his responsibility to spoon feed them.

I love my Keurig, but I am the only coffee drinker in the house. It actually saves me money and coffee as even with making just a little in the regular coffee maker, I was wasting a lot.

I am switching over to prepaid after my contract is done. When prepaid first appeared, it was way more expensive than contracts. Back then Tracfone was around 50 cents a minute (eons ago). Now, so many consumers are demanding no contract phones that it's gotten cheaper. My smartphone with Verizon, with the lowest amount of minutes and 2gigs of of data, was $85 a month.$15 of that was fees and taxes which is ridiculous! I had them switch my contract back over to my older phone a year into the contract and even with a dumb phone, it's still $45 and that is with no data. The only real pro to Verizon for me at this point is that husband and most of my family are on Verizon so calls to them are free - I don't have to watch my minutes.

I've seen reviews run as regentrude said, with rarely a middle ground. I've been checking my upcoming professors there and a thought occurred to me, that may help you too. I'd bet that most of the reviews come from traditional age students, so if your chem professor is rated as hard, you may not find him to be as bad as he sounds from the reviews. Time and experience make a world of difference. I had a professor in college at 19 that I thought was awful and scary. If I had him now, I doubt that would be the case. You'll be fine! :)

It's true that copying them again, whether written or typed into a computer will help get it into your head better. I've debated this too and thought about using my netbook for taking notes in class. However, I discovered here that quite a few professors don't allow the use of laptops and such in class as they think you get sucked in and it hampers discussion and involvement in class. Some specifically noted that they don't allow recording devices either, so it's worth checking on. I was a little surprised by this.

I used to wear then all the time, and the 12 years I was a pro ballroom dancer, I was dancing in 3" heels about 15 hours a day. Shoe quality is a big one and the curve of the heel, where it places your weight, is huge. Ballroom heels are curved inward so that the end of the heel is exactly in the middle of your natural heel. High heeled shoes where the heel goes straight down really mess with your body alignment. Now I am retired :) and living in Montana, where dressing up means wearing the 'good' jeans and the 'good' boots and hat. And with snow about 9 months of the year, heels are kinda useless.

Have you had your iron checked? I've had noticeable thinning lately and though my thyroid was fine, my iron was so low that the doc has me taking two iron pills a day. The thinning has slowed and hair seems to be coming back in as those thin spots don't look as thin as they did.

It helped gradually, but after a couple of weeks, his mood had settled back down to the mostly sunny, easy-going kid we were used to. He still has his moments, but they are pretty rare.

My son is on Keppra too and he had real problems with the variance in the generics. That was when I discovered that generics are not exact copies but can vary considerably in the amount of the active drug in them. Bad news for those with seizures. I can relate though, I am in Montana. We had exactly two neuros that dealt with epislepsy. The first was two hours away (he's since moved away) and the second is three hours. The first one we say and were not at all impressed with his handling of our case and neither was our son's pediatrician. His doc here referred us to the other and things have been much better. ETA: I saw your update! Yes Keppra can cause mood issues, which we noticed immediately. We started our son on a high-potency B Complex every morning and it made a world of difference. Good luck!

No chiggers in my part of Montana either but they were bad growing up in South Carolina. I don't miss them.

I'll second memrise.com. I'm using it to review a few things and like the system. Textkit.com also has a ton of info and forums for Latin and Greek. If flashcards would be useful, try Anki.com It's a (free) downloadable program and you can load flashcard sets that other users have made.

We use it for snacks too. Sliced thin and sprinkled with chili powder and lime juice. It was a LOT cheaper in Texas than it is here in Montana (when we can find it) :)

Good luck!

We've been gone from Austin ten years now, sadly. We used to go to Oil Can Harry's back then and it was nice. Friendly folks, great music. They had a bartender there who made the best Bombay Sapphire martini you could get in Austin :)

I am using Duolingo to refresh my French and I like it a lot but I have come across some things that are awkward (not really what you'd heard IRL) and in one case, a word that was technically correct but is used more as a lewd slang term. The reader comments on the lessons are worth looking into too.

This has become my first morning stop every day :)

Hey as far as I am concerned, where spiders are concerned, ANYTHING goes in getting rid of/away from it/them. Speaking of stripping in crowds, right after college I was modeling. Backstage? When you have about 30 seconds to change outfits? You'll strip anywhere that's out of sight of the audience :)

Speaking of my Austin days...Hippie Hollow anyone?

This! And yes, it seemed that during my labors/deliveries, there were so many people I'd never seen coming in and out and since they were all in some sort of medical-type uniform, I figured it was a good thing since they should know how to catch :)

It's so true! I can look at drafts so much that eventually, I don't see typos, etc. I think that by that time, when my eyes see it, my brain corrects it for me and I just go on. That said, I am amazed at how often I find lots of typos and wrong words in mainline, NYC published books. It happens a lot and not long ago I bought a book that was missing 40 pages in the middle.

Our son was just diagnosed last year, so I know, pretty freshly, where you are. I was afraid to let him get out of my sight at first but little by little, we have adjusted. We did our very best from the beginning to keep his life as normal as possible so that he wouldn't view himself as damaged or helpless or anything of that sort. It seemed really important so that he'd carry on, be a kid, enjoy his friends, etc. I think that helped him adjust faster than anything. It had been a strange time for us but we are getting to the point now that I don't worry about it every single day. We had quite a bit of trial and error with his medication, since his particular brand of epilepsy seems to be all over the place, but what he has now is working for now. I'll admit though, in the beginning I was terrified. Hang in there and remember that you have to keep your own strength up too. I found some cool videos on YouTube of kids discussing having epilepsy and how they deal with it and how they are still just normal kids like anyone else.

Best laugh I've had all day...many stars from me too (and been there). Actually nmoira's list would be pretty conservative back in my Austin days too :)