Maintaing good health on cam­pus can be dif­fi­cult. Taking care of your­self by mak­ing smart choices can keep you in good spir­its and in good health this semester.

Stay Rested

A sparatic sleep sched­ule or sleep depri­va­tion is a com­mon occur­rence among stu­dents. A study pub­lished in the Journal of Adolescent Health on Aug 10 found that less than one-third of the 1,125 stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing got the sleep they need for their age.

Inadequate sleep is not unique to col­lege stu­dents and can seri­ous affects at any age. . Lack of sleep may be related to obe­sity, dia­betes, and immune sys­tem dys­func­tion accord­ing to Harvard Magazine Article, Deep into sleep.

Though the func­tion of sleep is still unknown, it has long been thought to be inte­gral to the process of learn­ing and mem­ory. A study from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. found a cor­re­la­tion between grade point aver­age and sleep depri­va­tion amoung par­tic­i­pants. Pamela Thacher, who wrote the study exam­ined the sleep­ing pat­terns and tran­scripts of 111 stu­dents to see the cor­re­la­tion between sleep and their GPAs. Thacher was later quoted by USA Today say­ing, “Many stu­dents believe that it’s a “rite of pas­sage” to stay up all night dur­ing col­lege and that “it’s kind of fun” but “if you use all-nighters, your GPA is slightly lower on aver­age.” “Pulling all-nighters com­pro­mises your (over­all) sleep” and makes it dif­fi­cult to reach full aca­d­e­mic potential.”

Sleep Tips for College Students

Most adults need at least eight hours of sleep each night, though some may need up to ten. Getting a bet­ter night’s sleep may be eas­ier said than done, but small steps go a long way towards bet­ter, more rest­ful sleep.

• Review your class, work, study, and play sched­ule. See what changes need to be made to ensure you get eight hours of sleep each night.
• Avoid stim­u­lants like caf­feine and nico­tine. The stim­u­lat­ing effects of caf­feine in cof­fee, colas, teas, and choco­late can take as long as 8 hours to wear off fully.
• Have a good sleep­ing envi­ron­ment. Get rid of any­thing that might dis­tract you from sleep, such as noises or bright lights. — Stick to a sleep sched­ule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day — even on the weekends.

**Courtesy of the United States Center for dis­ease con­trol and prevention

Stop Procrastinating

Putting things off to the last minute should be a last resort and not a reg­u­lar habit. Procrastination may lead to unnec­es­sary stress, which can have seri­ous effects. Stress has been linked to a slew of health con­di­tions span­ning from acne and pso­ri­a­sis flare-ups, to more severe prob­lems like high blood pres­sure and blood clotting.

The “I’ll do right after I…” men­tal­ity, is one most of us are guilty of from one time to another, but sim­ply sched­ul­ing your day or using a weekly plan­ner can go a long way to fight off the temp­ta­tion to pro­cras­ti­nate. For projects with far out dead­lines, try mak­ing an “unsched­ule,” work­ing back­wards from the dead­line and decid­ing what por­tion of a project you will have done by what date.

Another way to fight the urge to “do it later” is to rec­og­nize when you actively search for things to do instead of the task in ques­tion. Checking your email or Facebook page and get­ting the sud­den inspi­ra­tion to do some long neglected spring clean­ing will not help you make head­way on that 50 pages of assigned reading.

Eat health­fully, this includes eat­ing breakfast

Breakfast is not just for kids and the Mayo Clinic can dis­cuss why. According to an arti­cle by nutri­tion­ist and reg­is­tered dietit­ian Katherine Zeratsky, eat­ing break­fast helps to restore blood sugar and can help increase daily phys­i­cal activ­ity levels.

“Eating break­fast reduces your hunger later in the day, mak­ing it eas­ier to avoid overeat­ing,” says Zeratsky .

Healthy options in din­ing halls at Ferris State are avail­able and may help per­suade even the most veggie-averse of diner-goers. Taking advan­tage of the salad bar as well as The Rock’s new Mongo-Grill may help “health­ify” your cam­pus din­ing experience.

One of the most seri­ous tests of will though, occurs out­side of the din­ing halls. Frozen din­ers, fast food, and trips to the vend­ing machine offer imme­di­ate and inex­pen­sive options that many find too tempt­ing to resist. Planning meals and pack­ing healthy snacks like fruit for between meals can help pre­vent a poten­tially dis­as­trous drive through run.

Get your exercise

The recre­ation facil­i­ties on cam­pus are a great way to get your daily dose of phys­i­cal activ­ity. Students pay an activ­ity fee each semes­ter to use both the UREC and the Raquet facil­ity. With all fees paid for in tuition, there is lit­tle excuse for stu­dents to not take advan­tage of this amenity.

If a time crunch is a prob­lem, try incor­po­rat­ing a trip to the gym into your daily class sched­ule or as part of a lunch break.

Lacking moti­va­tion? Try drag­ging a friend along with you. A work­out buddy can help to keep you account­able for and on-track with your fit­ness goals. For adults the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention rec­om­mends at least 150 min­utes of moderate-intensity aro­bic activ­ity every week along with muscle-strengthening exer­cise that work all of the major mus­cle groups at least twice a week.

The fight over new health care leg­is­la­tion pro­longs while Congress wages war amongst itself.

The debate over health care and President Obama’s pro­posed bill, has spurred one of the most hotly con­tested polit­i­cal bat­tles we’ve seen for some time. The Democratic con­trolled gov­ern­ment aims to cre­ate a pub­lic health insur­ance option and pro­vide health insur­ance to all Americans, not just those who can afford it.

The Republicans view the fed­er­ally funded health insur­ance option as yet another Democratic attempt to turn America down the road of social­ism and exces­sive gov­ern­ment con­trol, while the Democrats blame the Republicans for stag­ing unre­al­is­tic cit­i­zen protests and out­rage at the con­gres­sional town hall meet­ings that attempt to inform the American peo­ple about the health care issue.

The Republican mem­bers of Congress are stand­ing firm in oppo­si­tion to this type of health care reform and even some mod­er­ate and con­ser­v­a­tive Democrats have invested their resis­tance as well, whether in dis­agree­ment with gov­ern­ment funded health care or in fear of los­ing reelec­tion in con­ser­v­a­tive areas.

Although both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum and every­one in between have their own set of views on the health care issue, one thing is cer­tain, America and all Americans are def­i­nitely in need of health care reform.

While I may not sup­port the Democratic ini­tia­tive to cre­ate gov­ern­ment con­trolled pub­lic health insur­ance, I do acknowl­edge the fact that there are def­i­nite flaws in our cur­rent health care sys­tem. However, I do not believe that it should be left up to the gov­ern­ment to gen­er­ate the proper and afford­able reform that the American peo­ple truly need.

A gov­ern­ment funded health care leg­is­la­tion would be the largest gov­ern­ment under­tak­ing since Social Security, a gov­ern­ment con­trolled pro­gram that, in my opin­ion, has not been oper­ated prop­erly over the years. Medicare and Medicaid, two more gov­ern­ment funded pro­grams, each have their own set of imper­fec­tions as well.

Perhaps the great­est con­cern in the minds of the American peo­ple how­ever should be the fact that the pro­posed bill that would cre­ate a fed­eral gov­ern­ment run health insur­ance option, H. Res. 615, exempts the mem­bers of Congress and their fam­i­lies from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pub­lic option and allows them to con­tinue to par­tic­i­pate in their Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

Clearly, the American peo­ple aren’t being informed the truth about what the pro­posed health care bill entails and would ben­e­fit in tak­ing a closer look at why the gov­ern­ment funded health insur­ance option is good enough for the American peo­ple, but not those who run their government.

No mat­ter how Congress and the U.S. Government attempt to approach the issue of new health care leg­is­la­tion, two things are for cer­tain: the American peo­ple need health care reform and the mem­bers of Congress should gov­ern fairly and not exempt them­selves from legislation.

Organissimo will bring music to your ears with their wide vari­ety of music styles.

They will play at the Big Rapids band shell on Wednesday, Aug. 26 at 7 p.m.

There will be free admis­sion for all and Pepper’s Café will have a small con­ces­sion stand for those in need of food or drinks.

All dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple enjoy Organissimo’s music. Their Web site says; “from young and old, black and white, hip­pies to cor­po­rate pro­fes­sion­als, their music skirts over fences and sat­is­fies a diverse range of tastes.”

Organissimo, accord­ing to their web site organ​is​simo​.org, incor­po­rates ele­ments of funk, gospel, blues, pro­gres­sive rock, and fusion into a solid foun­da­tion of jazz after focus­ing mainly on orig­i­nal and tra­di­tional organ-based trio material.

“An American cul­tural critic, Elvis Mitchell, wrote after wit­ness­ing a show at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge [in Detroit], ‘The group’s toned, mus­cu­lar play­ing keeps the crowd rapt, a con­di­tion notice­able by the fact that almost no one is talk­ing,’” as stated on their web site.

According to their web site, Organissimo formed in late 2000. Guitarist, Joe Gloss, and organ­ist, Jim Alfredson, met at Michigan State University in the late 90s and “rec­og­nized a rare musi­cal chem­istry” and ini­ti­ated the search to find drum­mer, Randy Marsh.

This vibrant band has been all over the coun­try and parts of the world: Michigan to Philadelphia, Chicago to Indianapolis, and also to Israel for the 2007 Tel-Aviv Jazz Festival.

Organissimo has won many awards for their albums includ­ing the WYCE Jammy award for Best Jazz Album for their debut CD “Waiting for the Boogaloo Sisters…”

“Combine Alfredson’s knack for choos­ing just the right color and tone in any given com­po­si­tion with his col­leagues’ abil­ity to match his ges­tures, and you have one of the most promis­ing organ trios in jazz,” said in the Chicago Tribune.

For more infor­ma­tion on the band, visit organ​is​simo​.org. For more infor­ma­tion on the con­cert, con­tact 231−592−4036.

Chinese acro­bats take over Williams.

The Golden Chinese Acrobats have a vari­ety of to show their won­der­fully bal­anced talent.

Their Cirque D’Or will take place Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. in the Williams Auditorium.

“The Golden Dragon Acrobats (GDA) rep­re­sents the best of a time-honored tra­di­tion that began more than twenty seven cen­turies ago. [We are] directly from Hebei, China; our com­pany has trav­eled around the world to all 50 states and to over 65 coun­tries on five con­ti­nents,” accord­ing to its web site gold​en​drag​o​nac​ro​bats​.com.

The GDA has won sev­eral major awards for their tal­ented mem­bers and well-performed shows. Some awards include the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) Entertainer of the Year Award and the Campus Activities Today’s Performer of the Year Award.

All 16 cast mem­bers go through intense train­ing for each of their shows. All started doing acro­bat­ics since an early age. Since acro­bat­ics have been an ancient art form in China for over 2,000 years, it’s hard to believe these mem­bers haven’t been improv­ing their tal­ent since youth.

As its Web site states, acro­bat­ics have proved to have been devel­oped as far back as the Xia Dynasty (4,000 years ago), but it did not become widely know until about 2,500 years ago when pow­er­ful emper­ors took inter­est in the art form.

“Acrobatics have evolved into many var­i­ous forms of pop­u­lar per­for­mance includ­ing dance, opera, wushu, and sports. However, the impact of Chinese acro­bat­ics goes beyond the bound­aries of the stage as it plays an impor­tant role in the cul­tural exchange between China and Western nations, such as the United States,” accord­ing to its web site.

The GDA will give a show of a life­time here and plans to show us how calm, bal­anced and peace­ful acro­bat­ics are to the eyes of the audience.

It’s some­thing peo­ple should not try at home.

For more infor­ma­tion on the com­pany, visit gold​en​drag​o​nac​ro​bats​.com. For more infor­ma­tion about the event con­tact eu@ferris.edu or x2610.

The Rec Center starts rockin’ when the stu­dents come knockin’ after the game.

This big wel­come party will take place on Saturday, Aug. 29 at 9 p.m.

No admis­sion required; Everything is free, includ­ing “ice cream, nov­el­ties, wax hands, air­brush t-shirts, and more,” said Cindy Horn, University Recreation Director.

This event has been around since 2001 and was orig­i­nally held at the Rankin Center, said Horn. It was first called the Rankin Rave, then Rockin’ in the Rankin, and now Rockin’ in the Rec.

During the three hour event, Horn hopes to see more than 1,000 atten­dees. In her words, “good crowd makes a great party.” “Lots of stu­dents, lots of inter­ac­tions; it’s a great way to break the ice for all stu­dents, mak­ing it eas­ier to have fun.”

“This event is held in order to allow our new and return­ing stu­dents and oppor­tu­nity to have fun and build social rela­tion­ships,” said Horn.

The party changes each year, more specif­i­cally the nov­el­ties, but the main idea of the event, being a big wel­come party, will never change.

Horn said this event has always been one of the more pop­u­lar events to kick off the school year. She encour­ages all stu­dents to sup­port our Bulldogs in their first home foot­ball game and come to the Rec Center for some rip roar­ing fun.

Many events take place to wel­come stu­dents, but this one helps stu­dents to really con­nect with oth­ers in a way they can all enjoy.

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Horn at hornc@ferris.edu or x5309.

Ferris Recyclers, an RSO (Registered Student Organization) group cre­ated in 2007 ded­i­cated to address­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues, are insti­tut­ing a new recy­cling pro­gram on cam­pus to inform other stu­dents on how they can take part in help­ing cre­ate a cleaner, health­ier environment.

Janelle Turino, trea­surer of Ferris Recyclers, said that since the pro­gram is going to begin as a trial run, it is cur­rently under plans of being installed in four dorms this fall, which include Henderson, Puterbaugh, Brophy and McNerney.

She also explained that if stu­dents want the recy­cling pro­gram, they will have to peti­tion their hall and the coun­cil will have to vote on the deci­sion. The stu­dents will have to help by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gram as well if they are inter­ested in hav­ing the pro­gram insti­tuted in their hall, Turino explained.
“We hope we just get more peo­ple involved,” said Megan Truskoski, for­mer Vice President of Ferris Recyclers.

During Welcome Week, mem­bers of Ferris Recyclers will be hand­ing out fly­ers with infor­ma­tion regard­ing the new pro­gram.
“Having places on cam­pus would be ideal,” said Truskoski.

She said if we can make it eas­ier, more stu­dents would get involved. While Ferris Recyclers is a great place for stu­dents to get involved with recy­cling, it is out of some of the stu­dents’ way, she explained. Truskoski said the mem­bers worked with Grounds and Housing on cre­at­ing the program.

The recy­cling pro­gram is a great way for stu­dents to lend a hand in help­ing out the envi­ron­ment and cam­pus and the community.

“There will be bins with nice big signs con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on what to recy­cle,” Truskoski said.

Currently, the fol­low­ing recy­clable items are col­lec­table: cor­ru­gated card­board; big boxes that have ridges and must be flat­tened, fiber­board; this con­sists of cereal boxes, tis­sue boxes, shoe boxes, no heavy wax boxes, box tops; these are located on many com­mon house­hold prod­ucts, tin cans (rinse clean and remove the label), plas­tic; num­bers 1 and 2 only (all col­ors except black are accepted, rinse clean and remove tops), news­pa­per and sty­ro­foam, which con­sists of take-out trays (please rinse) from restau­rants and the din­ing halls.

“It’s going to be a lot eas­ier because it’s on cam­pus,” said Truskoski. “We just want to keep it simple.”

More infor­ma­tion about Ferris Recyclers and how stu­dents can help the envi­ron­ment is avail­able on their web­site at freewebs​.com/​f​e​r​r​i​s​r​e​c​y​c​l​ers.

A new year has begun, rife with oppor­tu­ni­ties as promised by uni­ver­sity founder Woodbridge Ferris over a cen­tury and a quar­ter ago.

As my time spent here has been con­sid­er­able, I can say with some author­ity that the time you enjoy, and con­trar­ily dis­like, on this cam­pus is solely your own responsibility.

This is a chance for a change, if you want it. Regardless of what you’ve done in the past, all you really need to con­cern your­self with is the present… and maybe a lit­tle bit of your future.

University life rep­re­sents a type of micro­cosm of actual life. The strug­gles and suc­cesses are all your own and the knowl­edge gar­nered isn’t always from a text­book or class­room. This flame is a sig­nal, like a flare, to illu­mi­nate oppor­tu­ni­ties and serve as a guide in darker days. Cut the cord from Mom and Dad (save for cer­tain care pack­ages and unso­licited finan­cial gifts) and strike out on your own. Mistakes are okay, just don’t keep mak­ing the same ones. Keep the drama to a min­i­mum. This is too much fun to be sour about some­thing that won’t be impor­tant three weeks from now.

You can con­trol your own activ­i­ties. We’re talk­ing no bed time, break­fast in the after­noon and never mak­ing your bed ever again, unless you want to.

There is a time and a place for every­thing. It’s called col­lege and you are here.

But the amount you enjoy your time at Ferris State University this year is directly pro­por­tional to the amount of time you put into avoid­ing being a bed­room slug. This Ferris State stu­dent endorses a sam­ple of every­thing if you’re new to the cam­pus. There will always be time for the entrée in your later years.

Dig in.

I’ve been an avid user of the social net­work­ing Web site Facebook since the end of my senior year in high school, but I never thought I would be Facebook friends with my own mother.

It’s an inter­est­ing tran­si­tion fil­ter­ing my face­book and chang­ing pri­vacy set­tings for the even­tual and hope­ful suc­ces­sion into pro­fes­sional rep­re­sen­ta­tion of myself. News reports have recently stated that as many as 45 per­cent of employ­ers scope out appli­cants on face­book before con­tin­u­ing inter­view pro­ce­dures. I’m active in mov­ing infor­ma­tion and pho­tos to appro­pri­ate aspects of my social net­work­ing per­sona. My new twit­ter dis­plays no mate­r­ial that may be viewed as offen­sive or less than exem­plary for this very rea­son. I wouldn’t want any­one get­ting the wrong impres­sion of me.

But, face­book reports that there are more than 250 mil­lion active users and the fastest grow­ing demo­graphic is peo­ple 35 years of age and older.

My mother is 35 years of age or older and now she has a face­book. Her jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to me was that she wanted to stay in touch with her friends. My mother’s friends are on face­book too?! Regardless, I am con­fi­dent her jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to her­self was likely some­thing relat­ing to want­ing to keep tabs on two of her sons, one of whom(not me) is in Spain for a semes­ter abroad.

The idea of block­ing cer­tain con­tent, like my fac­book sta­tus, from my mother feels like I am keep­ing a secret from her. She prob­a­bly doesn’t need to know that I am watch­ing “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at 2 a.m. when I should be sleep­ing or study­ing or doing any­thing else.

But it’s pos­si­ble that my mother is help­ing me indi­rectly to pre­pare for my future. With 45 per­cent of employ­ers scop­ing out their appli­cants on face­book before con­tin­u­ing the inter­view process, it’s impor­tant to put your best dig­i­tal foot­print for­ward. Suddenly, Mom has helped me do more then wipe the schmutz from my face. She has helped me to wipe the schmutz from my face­book. Those pic­tures of my friends and I in our inap­pro­pri­ate Halloween cos­tumes have van­ished and I am the up and com­ing pro­fes­sional that all of the bosses want to hire.

My mother might actu­ally be the rea­son I get a job in the future. She may be a bit too intru­sive and she might con­tinue to ask me why I don’t have a girl­friend, (not that she doesn’t do that already any­way), but she might have prompted me to reeval­u­ate what con­tent my friends and I decide is web post worthy.

She is my mother and she is my face­book friend, but she might just be an excel­lent career adviser too.

Because you don’t have to be alive to show Ferris pride

Textbooks and trade books alike are being slowly trans­formed into a dig­i­tal format

One of the lat­est tech­nolo­gies that will have stu­dents on col­lege cam­puses buzzing is the eText­book. This new for­mat involves a dig­i­tal ver­sion of the mon­strosi­ties that most col­le­giate age peo­ple are seen lug­ging around campus.

Course Smart, an eText­book com­pany that uses a web­site to make texts acces­si­ble to stu­dents via online order­ing, offers over 7,000 titles that are com­monly used across the nation. They also claim that the price they offer for eBooks will save stu­dents an aver­age of $62.99 when opt­ing for the dig­i­tal version.

This trend is right in line with the recent grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of Amazon’s Kindle, a dig­i­tal read­ing device, and the up and com­ing Barnes and Noble tech­nol­ogy that plans to rival the Kindle’s suc­cess. There are other read­ing devices out there but as of yet, the Kindle has cre­ated the most buzz.

The Kindle has the abil­ity to store around 345,000 books, can access many daily news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and with their new DX model, text­books. This tech­nol­ogy will no doubt come with a reac­tion from many who will cling to their book col­lec­tions and shelves filled with read­ing mate­r­ial col­lected over a lifetime.

While the time hon­ored tra­di­tion of fill­ing shelves with books may be tram­pled on a bit here, the dig­i­tal age will no doubt con­tinue its dom­i­nance over more sec­tors of daily life.

In a review for the Kindle on Amazon​.com, one user said, “One of the unex­pected great things is not hav­ing to deal with my book­mark falling out and hav­ing to find my place again.”

When look­ing at this issue from the bookseller’s point of view, it’s not all bad news. Barnes and Noble claims to have entered the dig­i­tal age more than ten years ago, and seem to hap­pily embrace this transition.

In a newslet­ter cir­cu­lated to all Barnes and Noble cam­pus book­stores, eBooks were described as, “…(eBook) is an elec­tronic text­book that can be down­loaded onto a per­sonal com­puter (or elec­tronic reader) or accessed daily from the inter­net. Depending on the pub­lisher and for­mat, dig­i­tal books con­tain dif­fer­ent fea­tures and options.”

Bookstores may look dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent in the com­ing years if this tech­nol­ogy is truly going to become the pre­mier for­mat for books, but this may offer stu­dents more options and pos­si­bil­i­ties in the areas of study.

College stu­dents will also have a less expen­sive col­lege bill if their cost of books is dras­ti­cally reduced. This rev­o­lu­tion will no doubt affect con­sumers and pro­duc­ers alike.