money management

Pets in College

Posted on by Kelly Craig

While in college, its normal to get a bit homesick.  Personally, the only piece of home I truly miss is my dog since I have everyone else I talk to.  Pets are the only relationships we can only maintain in person nowadays.  So why not bring your cat, dog, fish, or other pet with you to college?  Guys, its no question that walking around with a dog will draw girls to you like moths to a flame.  Plus, everyone likes to feel unique and you could be the only one on campus with a pet iguana or what have you.  There is a reason people don’t bring their pets to college.  There is a reason why pets are prohibited from dorms.  Here’s why:

What are two things you don’t seem to have enough of in college?  Time and money.  Having a pet takes up a lot of time as you need to make trips to the pet food store and veterinarian, exercise and play with your pet, clean up after your pet, etc.  All of these things also cost a lot of money.  Although the love of a pet is priceless, if a person does not have the time and money to properly care for an animal, you are doing the animal a disservice.

Pet hair isn’t so sexy.  Going to class covered head to toe in pet hair isn’t so attractive.  Inviting friends over to play with the new pet might be fun for a week or so, but eventually no one will want to come hang out when they know they will be covered in pet hair within seconds.

AskMen.com released an article about the importance of smell when it comes to attracting a person.  Pets can make your room, your bedding, your clothes, and you smell.  Adding this pet smell to a dorm room with piles of garbage, crushed up Arizona cans from weeks ago, bad milk in the fridge, and old pizza on the common room table is a horrible mix.  Even if you keep your dorm room perfectly clean, you will end up spending extra efforts to take care of that pet smell, which reinforces the time and money point.

Pets can trash your room.  If you think your roommate is a pig, imagine what an actual animal can do.  Even if caged while your out (which can be inhumane if you are always out of your dorm room) animals can break out of cages and pee and poop all over your room, dig through your things, and damage your things.

In some cases, an RA finding an illegal pet in a dorm room due to noise complaints or general room checks is grounds for kicking you out of housing.  A person could end up out of the money you or your parents spent on housing plus dealing with finding a place to live.  Not fun.

I am not against pets by any means.  My Border Collie Jack is my favorite family member (sorry Mom).  I just don’t think it’s a good idea in a dorm room.  Better wait until you have a place of your own to get a pet.

-TravelBug

I’m reading Healthcare Finance

Are Unpaid Internships Ethical?

Posted on by Wonderbread

It’s an employer’s market out there but is there any excuse for employers getting free labor from interns?

Interns have great ideas.

Sure, they might not be able to pull a project together by themselves and they’ll make gaffes in meetings that will make Joe Biden look like a suave speaker, but they’re eager and they’re fresh.  Employers are definitely doing interns a favor by showing them the ropes, but employees who have been plugging away at the same job for a while can definitely benefit from an intern with new ideas.

Interns will do anything you want.

Remember when you were little and your parents made you do dumb stuff for them?  I remember my dad would ask me to get the remote for him because he was too lazy to get up.  My sister and I were also the resident dishwashers, dusters, footmen, butlers, and when we got older, lawnmowers.  Like kids, interns are like personal slaves, in a good way.  They take the load off the more experienced employees so that the big dogs can get important stuff done.  Increased productivity?  That’s worth a few bucks an hour.

Interns are poor.

A lot of kids in college these days are living life on credit with a hope that it will pay off one day.  Asking anyone else to work for free would be ludicrous, not to mention illegal.  Employers are allowed to do it under very specific criteria, criteria that aren’t widely known to the students who work for them.  Here’s the low-down on unpaid internship restrictions.  They must be:

• A “work experience;”

• A training activity;

• On-the-job training; or

• A “work experience” or training activity coupled with supportive services.

Most of us think “work experience” and think that covers just about all internships, but the specifications are much narrower than that.  In fact, the employer must provide a structured training program for the program to qualify for “unpaid” status.  If you’re getting coffee and filing (and not much else), be aware that your hiring company may be violating labor regulations.  As if that wasn’t scary enough (interns aren’t exactly in a place to complain) those entry-level job positions you’ll be looking for post graduation are being worked by unpaid interns.

One-quarter to one-half of all internships are unpaid.  Ironically (or perhaps expectedly), many of those interns are working for the United States government, who are exempt from the above guidelines.  To me, that seems patently unfair.  Do you agree or disagree?  Sound off in the comments!

-Wonderbread

I’m reading Introduction Chemistry