My aunt used to babysit me after elementary school and my mom always had this rule that if I didn’t have a page written to give to her, she wouldn’t pick me up or take me home. Those pages began as wide-ruled paper covered in six to seven oversized, disconnected words written in agonizing torture (“BIG CORN JUMBO COB YUMMIE GOOD”). But by high school, I was writing for my own pleasure, making me realize that somehow, whether it was due to my mother’s unusual mandate or my own manifestation, I loved to write — and that I loved corn too.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

There’s nothing better than a perfect burger. A properly prepared one is comprised of plenty of pleasurable mouth feels from warm crusty ground beef, velvety melted cheese and lightly toasted bread. When done badly, however, burgers can quickly descend into an unappetizing mess of ingredients that barely go together. As simple as putting some meat, cheese and vegetables between two pieces of bread may seem, putting together burgers presents some interesting problems not normally present in other dishes.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the statistic that people with college degrees will earn at least $1 million more in their lifetimes than those without college degrees. So what does that mean for people who go to college and drop out? Are they automatically going to be worse off than those who graduate? If you think the answer is yes, you should consider that some notable college dropouts include Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus once wrote, “You must spend money to make money.” Growing up we have all been encouraged to be innovators and entrepreneurs, to invest time and money into promising businesses and careers, but it seems that lately this idea is a little too old-fashioned. With the economy at one of its all time lows, America is experiencing its lowest rate of U.S. mobility since World War II. Everyone from the young to the old is refraining from moving out. College students are no longer chasing their elusive dream job in New York, and the older are not able to seek refuge in their luxurious lakeside retirement homes anymore.

Like education, medical care in the U.S. has been enduring cuts after cuts in the budget, and consequently hospitals are struggling to survive in this time of hardship. Nevertheless, hospitals are still able to provide the one thing they are designed for: efficient and quality medical care to the patients of the community. But with a new rule proposed by the Affordable Care Act that will allow patients’ reviews to influence the way hospitals are funded by Medicare, hospitals across the nation have to start worrying about providing quality and decent care to their patients.

The United States is known for its generally apathetic electorate and low voter turnout. Compared to other democracies, we just don’t seem to care all that much about self-governance. To counteract this, some advocate compulsory voting.

Let me start out by saying that it’s very rare of me to support “big government’s” laws forced on the little guy. Legislation telling me how much of a tax I should pay, or how much carbon my car can poison the Earth with, or what drugs I can and can’t use for my mild insomnia are not my favorite.

As a teenager, and especially as a college student, I don’t think I’m alone in having a one-track mind that travels directly to food. Whether I’m cramming for midterms, hanging out late at night, waiting to go home or waking up late for class, food is constantly in the back of my mind — or at the forefront.

Facebook’s importance in the day-to-day lives of millions of people is no trifling matter. Although there are numerous other social networking and media sharing sites, Facebook occupies a singular place in the Internet’s collective imagination. Twitter, WordPress, Youtube, Flickr, Blogger and other social networking and media tools are all open for anyone to use, but they each occupy a specific place and serve specialized functions.

Game of Inches Freshman goalie Jennifer Randazzo reaches for a penalty kick. UCI vs. USD == UCI Welcomes Veterans' Discussion UC Irvine hosted the Veteran Forum Thursday Nov. 10th...