I’ve been snowed in for about two hours. That’s what I call it in Baltimore: “snowed in.” With two and a half inches on the ground, it’s folly to take any chances. In southeastern Pennsylvania, where I grew up, this paltry amount of the powdery stuff would’ve prompted feats of strength—“Let’s see who can walk a mile without shoes on!”—until you hit age 15, at least. Now I see that even my high school has closed its doors today. This can’t be good. Hey, wasn’t it supposed to not even begin snowing until this afternoon? Nonsense talk. Staying snowed in is clearly the best option right now. As …

Well, I'm off for a month. Normally a sentence like that should be followed immediately with explanatory details about some exotic vacation or some treasure-hunting spree among the pyramids of Egypt. But I'm just going home. At least Mom will be there to cook for me. Yes, I'm going home for my final winter break as a college undergraduate. And while I'm still a student and can relish in such fantasies as "winter break," I'm going to take full advantage. (I even cleared it with my editor . . . after she suggested it . . . so, yeah, my boss is great.) I'll be writing again in January, and 'til …

Disclaimer: The author does not condone cigarette smoking. Period.  OK, now that I'm covered . . . One of the more enjoyable ways I pass the time is by smoking my pipe. That's right—my pipe. I swear I'm still in college. Perhaps I exhibit the behavior of a 60 year old . . . living in 1890. But nonetheless, I'm telling you the truth when I say I'm 21. I just happen to have a pipe. My devolution into pipe-smoking was a gradual endeavor. First I told myself I'd never smoke cigars. And then my dad handed me an Ashton Cabinet No. 6. Then I told myself I wouldn't become a regular cigar smoker. And …

There has been a lotta hullabaloo over Facebook changing—again—its layout—again—to something that becomes mildly upsetting for most of the Facebook-using populace for about a day and a half. And then we all get over it—again. But whenever Facebook does one of these changes—now they've got us on some tricky new profile page—everyone reads Mark Zuckerberg the riot act over how he is stealing our precious privacy. Yes, that same privacy that apparently doesn't prevent most college-age students from posting albums upon albums of themselves getting blacked out at bars. It's very simple. In fact, …

Last Wednesday, I was stuffing my face with ham and twice-baked potatoes. No, I'm not a competitive eater. For the literature nerds at Loyola—you know, English majors—there is an annual, end-of-fall-semester feast held, which entails the senior seminar class planning for and hosting the rest of the department, professors and students alike, in a night of music, food and games. So, obviously, the proper way to cap off a semester of reading nothing but T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, is to ask your professor to join you and the rest of your …

This is a shameless plug. On Sunday, Dec. 12, I will be signing books at Daedalus Books on York Rd., just across the street from the famed Senator Theatre. In fact, I, along with a handful of other students and one professor, will be signing books there Sunday. In the spring of 2010, nine of us—eight students and Mark Osteen, a professor of English at Loyola—researched, wrote, edited and published Music at the Crossroads: Lives and Legacies of Baltimore Jazz, which itself is composed of chapters from other local writers, including Geoffrey Himes and Mary Zajac, in addition to the student-…

The Washington Post reported last week that George Washington University is the latest school planning a switch to coed dormitories—so, males and females rooming together, not just on the same floor. In doing so, GWU joins about 50 other colleges and universities that offer coed dorms, including Dartmouth, Cornell, UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan. From what I've read, GWU will institute coed rooming first as a pilot program. Students must specifically request their coed roommate by name. All incoming freshmen who don't specifically request a roommate, male or female, will be placed…

 Here's why I despise the last week of classes before final exams: 1.     Everything is due. 2.     Everything is due. 3.     . . . Everything is due. Quite honestly, I find finals week the most liberating week of the entire semester, primarily because I'm not caged in by a rigid class and reading schedule. My first two finals are Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, respectively, and then I have an entire week until my next final. Which, by the time you hit senior year, means an entire week of sleeping. Or drinking. But I don't fall into the latter category. For me, it's going to be sleep. …

I don't have much room to talk. I'm 21 years old, and I'm sure I've exhibited self-importance and narcissism at various times and to various degrees during my, thus far, short adult life. But I'm wondering if observations of my personal behavior, as well as the behavior of other college students, confirms any sort of pattern or trend. I'm speaking, of course, about Generation X, Generation Me, the Millenials—whatever name they're calling us these days. A while back, the Copy Chief for The Greyhound brought to my attention a forum titled "Have College Freshmen Changed?" on the New York Times …

Since fall  of 2008 I've been an avid reader of John McIntyre's You Don't Say blog over at the Baltimore Sun website. His post from November 19, Just issue a diploma already, began as a commentary on a first-person, pseudonymous article The Chronicle of Higher Education published, written by a person who sells college students term papers and makes more than 60 grand a year doing so. The most interesting element here, according to McIntyre, is that the writer of these term papers "doesn't go to the library to swot up subjects of which he has no knowledge." The writer, instead, Googles his way…

With the end of November comes the end of No-Shave November, a self-explanatory endeavor that, at its most basic, is just a month of straying far from that can of Barbasol in your bathroom cabinet. At Loyola, there is a deeper meaning that adds punch to the facial stubbly-ness: many guys have donned beards in symbolic display for awareness of and protest against sexual assault. According to the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report, issued in 2001, about 13 percent of the college-age women surveyed had been stalked since the beginning of the academic year. The report also showed …

For my other gig—editor in chief of The Greyhound, Loyola's student-run newspaper—I've been working on a series of stories about Loyola graduates in the working world. Who's finding work, who isn't and how difficult it is to find employment in your chosen or preferred field. The statistics depict a dismal situation. Right now in the United States we're at 9.6 percent unemployment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While some of the students I interviewed are doing well—they're working for Morgan Stanley in Baltimore, or Northrop Grumman or have public-school teaching jobs—others …

Two weeks before I began my freshman year at Loyola, my family moved to Elkton, Md. For 18 years, I had known only Chester County, Pa. And while at first I didn't think moving away from what had been home for me was going to prove a problem, especially given that I and all my friends were now in college, as the initial few months of freshman year elapsed, going "home" for Thanksgiving was the last thing I wanted to do November 2007. Even just three years later, I can't remember what I did that Thanksgiving break. I know I was home Thanksgiving day, but I'm fairly certain I retreated back to …

For two years I worked as a service coordinator in Loyola's Center for Community Service and Justice. I organized what we called one-time service events—blood drives, bingo nights at local senior centers, and the like—and worked in tandem with another coordinator to make sure these events were staffed with volunteers. Other service coordinators were responsible for recruiting and training students for volunteering with tutoring programs after school, meal programs, clothing drives, public health clinics, and a whole slew of additional projects and initiatives. Last Wednesday, Loyola held its …