Someone needs a little more 'bux in her cram sesh.

College. Sigh. It’s unlike any other time in your life. It has its own set of rules, its own unique circumstances. And it’s not always easy to navigate. Enter…me!

Every week I’ll be tackling your questions about college. From classes to keggers, I’ll do my best to respond and be your Pez dispenser of collegiate wisdom. Got questions? Unsure of a decision? Just wanna talk to a pretty cool lady (if I do say so myself)?

Hit me up in the comments or shoot me an email at melanie@collegecandy.com

How can I cram for a test effectively?
Okay, first of all, cramming and effective should not go in the same sentence. But if you lost track of time (or couldn’t pass up a week-long Beer Pong tourny the week of exams…) and you must cram, pick a place that’s quiet and distraction free. Preferably the library or a Starbucks. Load up on caffeine, make an outline of the most relevant points that are going to be on the test, make flashcards, whatever; just writing down the information will help you learn it. If you’re in a time crunch, skip the excess and read (and read again and again ) summaries and Sparknotes.

Cramming is different for everyone. Personally, I crack open a red bull and hide in a deserted classroom and make absurd nmenumic devices. If Redbull’s not your thing, snag the most expensive drink at Starbucks. It’s a 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel. $13.76 (with tax). Gross, right?

I need a roommate next year! Who should I pick?

Okay, well I don’t know everyone you associate with, but my advice is to pick someone who gets on your nerves the least. I’ve roomed with a friend from high school, a girl BFF, randoms AND boys. Personally, I adore living with guy friends (though they can be somewhat sloppy and don’t have cute dresses to share) and I had success living with my college bestie as well. Even a few random roommates became close friends of mine. I would suggest picking someone you know very well and that shares similar living styles. Similar sleep, work, party and class schedules are great too. You definitely don’t want to share a bedroom with an early bird if you hit the hay at 4 AM. Look for chicas (or chicos) who are laid back, respectful and aren’t overwhelming. If all else fails, do the random roomie thing. Sometimes it can suck, but most likely it’ll work out!

If I go home with a guy, do I have to sleep with him?
NO. If you don’t want to, don’t. Don’t feel guilty or obligated to do more than you want. Just because you invited him to be a guest in your home (or vice versa) doesn’t mean you’re obliged to do anything that you don’t want to.

When am I going to start feeling more at home here?
I’d say typically towards the end of your first semester, but it’s different for everyone. I never felt at home at my first school, so I transferred. If you’re super miserable? Look into transfer options. In my heart I knew that my first college wasn’t the right fit for me, so halfway through freshie year I applied to transfer and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m not suggesting to transfer the instant you feel out of place, but if you’re so uncomfortable at school, don’t be afraid of the option! Make the most out of college.

Yeah she's cute, but could you handle all the responsibility?

Occasionally on college campuses you will spot a student walkin’ a pooch, but those incidents are few and far between. Since college is mostly about studying hard and partying along the way, most students don’t want the responsibility of caring for someone other than themselves – especially a four legged friend. That will poop in their shoes.

My boyfriend recently adopted a mutt from the local pound. He knew he could give her (Shyla) a good home with his off-campus house, and since then the two of them have been on adventure. While part of the time (OK – most of the time) the antics brought on by Shyla seem like they were written straight out of Marley and Me, it is hard to deny the cute, active sweetness of an eighteen week puppy playing fetch and snuggling up next to your feet.

Just as anyone who has ever had a dog knows, pups are all-encompassing hard work. There is the whole process of getting the dog acclimated to living in a house: potty-training, keeping them out of the trash, getting them used to walking on a leash… Honestly, getting a dog to “sit” isn’t as easy as it seems, so patience and a little bit of loving care is important too.

Oh, and if house-breaking a puppy isn’t enough, there is also the importance of grooming and professional pet care. You thought getting a manicure and pedicure at the local nail salon was expensive, try $15 for a dog groomer to just cut your pet’s nails. When you’re not grooming your dog, it is crucial to its health (especially as a puppy) to have regular vet visits – costing up to $100 or more at a time. Having a dog takes a lot of focus away from yourself, which means a lot less money for the seasonal (or daily) shopping tips.

But even though it is expensive and trying at times, having a dog can be a rewarding experience. Yeah, even if it leaves a little puddle by your bed.

Not sure if a dog is for you, at least while you’re in college? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.

Good: You have a bed buddy every night, and you know for sure they don’t have STDs or Swine Flu! And they won’t sneak out before you get up in the morning and be there when you get u,p providing you undivided attention with a wagging tail.
Bad: That Tommy Hilfiger comforter you just bought is going to smell like dog, and if you don’t keep Fido’s nails short enough, it might suffer a rip and tear.

Good: You always have something to look forward to at home. Imagine having a crappy day on campus and coming home to a precious puppy excited to see you.
Bad: Dogs shouldn’t be left alone for more than four hours a time, so you will need to prioritize your schedule and social life around taking care of your new-found responsibility.

Good: Having a dog will make you more active. You will be going on more walks and once you get your little friend outside, it will be hard to bring them in, making you want to stay out as well. You can keep yourself more in-shape this way!
Bad: Dogs can be too active sometimes, forcing you to constantly watch them. If they have a lot of pent up energy, they may get into things around the house. For example, Shyla likes to explore the house and with her extra puppy energy, it means she gets into everything she can, whether it is my boyfriend’s economics homework or the bathroom’s endless stash of toilet paper.

Good: Dogs make great introductions in a social setting. In a sorority? Bring your puppy with you for a low-key function. Everyone will dote over how cute your dog is, and you can play the proud, happy dog-loving parent as she gets passed around.
Bad: Taking a dog to a public function could cause problems. Some people aren’t dog-friendly, and others don’t take having a dog seriously. Think about it: How many frat boys are going to try to give your dog beer?

The bottom line is that dogs are a huge responsibility; in fact, they are a life-time commitment. Do you think you could handle one in college?

When I first saw “Going Bovine” on Amazon.com, to be honest, I was a bit scared of the cover. A creepy cow carrying an equally creepy garden gnome? Needless to say, along with feeling frightened, I was also intrigued.

“Going Bovine” tells the story of Cameron Smith, a 16-year-old loner and somewhat loser at his high school. Cameron starts seeing visions one day of fire giants and other things that clearly aren’t there. His parents think he is “disturbed” and bring him to a therapist, but when that doesn’t work they finally cave and go to the doctor’s office. Cameron is diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. For the majority of you going “huh,” it is also known as Mad Cow Disease.  A terminal illness.

Cameron is immediately admitted to the hospital, where his hallucinations continue, including visits from a punky angel named Dulcie.

One of Cameron’s classmates, a little person named Gonzo is also admitted to the hospital and placed in the same room as Cameron. Shortly after this, Dulcie comes to Cameron and tells him that he must go on a roadtrip to find someone named Dr. X. He has created a time machine and is the one who brought the fire giants and all of Cameron’s hallucinations back to Earth. Dulcie tells Cameron that Dr. X also has the cure for his disease and that when they find him, he will be saved.

Cameron convinces Gonzo to go on this roadtrip and they embark on a journey of a lifetime. Along the way, they pick up Balder, a Norse god in the form of a yard gnome; 3 rowdy college students going to the YA!TV party house; a group of evil Snow Globe makers; a band named after physics principles; and a trumpet-playing hero.

OK, so the trip is clearly a hallucination, but the entire journey was entertaining, thrilling and hilarious!

Libba Bray is a funny, thoughtful and accomplished writer. She seamlessly integrated Cameron’s life into his (mental) adventure and the entire thing really drew me in. In addition, she created a character that is at once both hard to love and hard not to. This book definitely pulled at my heartstrings and made me grateful for my life (a mark of a good novel!).

All in all, I was completely impressed by “Going Bovine” by Libba Bray and LOVED it. Despite it being 480 pages, I plowed through and enjoyed every minute. The ending, as well, is simply magical and made me tear up. If you’ve read it, you know what I mean.

Kudos to Bray for writing such a fabulous novel and I hope everyone will pick it up, regardless of the fact that it resides in teen section.

When I was growing up, my dad always told me, “Caitlin, be prepared.”

I’m pretty sure he was referring to things like school work and job interviews, but I took that advice to heart….with beauty supplies.

Thanks to my dad I never leave the house without my big bag of beauty essentials. You never know what could happen on your way to class – blisters from your shoes, a sudden monsoon, laughing so hard you cry off all your mascara – so it’s best to bring along a few things to save you from a makeup meltdown. I’ll share with you all of my must-brings that have gotten me through all of my beauty emergencies and then you can customize your portable beauty bag to hold whatever you like (yeah, stacks on deck, Patron on ice…).

The Jackson family reality show is a…reality.

Please don’t let this Josh Duhamel stuff be true.

Divas unite at the Europe MTV awards.

Can his hands tell you if he’s a jerk?

Jennifer Lopez is a little bit naughty.

Is it just me or does Kristin Cavallari have a really big head?

Oh, sweet November—overnight, Starbucks has switched to holiday cups, Christmas-themed commercials are beginning to air, and I’m starting to get a serious hankering for turkey. I can’t wait to get a spiffy new pair of mittens—maybe designed by Lady Gaga?—and enjoy my last winter in college.

In the meantime, though, this week has given me a lot to think about. Here’s what’s been on your favorite CC writers’ minds over the past seven days:

- Even though getting old might mean that Halloween gets a little less fun, it doesn’t mean that you have to get any less awesome. Unless you join the National Parents Council.

- Hot men covered in cheese? Sounds surprisingly delicious.

- We hope our girl Rihanna isn’t opening up now for less-than-noble reasons. Either way, we’ll still listen to her music—even if there is more ridiculous stuff out there.

- There’s no better time than now to get over your lipstick-phobia, put on a pair of heels (or not), make the first move on the first hottie you see, and take him back to your place for a little one-on-one that’s sure to please. Just don’t be that girl. Please.

It’s 2009. Who doesn’t support a strong woman, am I right? Whether you want to assert yourself by wearing jeggings or teaching your guy how best to push your buttons, we’re behind you a hundred percent. Especially if you’re old and fragile.

But Elizabeth Lambert, a junior at the University of New Mexico and a defender on their women’s soccer team, takes assertiveness to a whole new level. Lambert was caught on tape acting like a big scary ogre  toward other players during a New Mexico/BYU game. Strength is one thing, but this chick is ridiculous.

If there’s anyone at University of New Mexico reading this right now, we sincerely hope that you never accidentally cut in front of this girl in the cafeteria. Or step on her foot at the bar. Best case scenario: a giant bald spot where your loose bun once perched. Worst case: well, we can only hope some big, burly bouncer guy has your back.

While signing my life away last year… I mean, my apartment lease… many things crossed my mind:

1)   No more crappy cafeteria food!
2)   Yay for bonding! We’ll be all up in each other’s business all the time.
3)   We’ll have so much in common – we all have boyfriends!

Now this has become two (sorta) truths and a lie. I went from cafeteria food to massive amounts of frozen food shipped from my loving mother. (What can I say? She refused to let me live on Ramen.) And being all up in each other’s business turned out to be more than I bargained for. Think assigned chores, paying rent, and dealing with cockroaches when we moved in (still makes me shudder!). And as you may have already guessed, the boyfriend and I broke up. So that leaves (put your hands up!) a single, independent woman who apparently makes references to Beyonce songs when she talks about herself.

Yes, I’m single and living with three other girls in relationships.

At first it wasn’t such a big deal, but after welcome week ended and classes began, the boyfriends became frequent fixtures in the apartment. Or maybe I just started noticing then because I was no longer intoxicated… But I digress. Soon I started wondering how I’d deal with their constant presence for the rest of the year. Don’t get me wrong – roommate love abounds in our apartment. I look forward to Project Runway marathons and love notes via whiteboard. And we are proud to say that the rapidly expanding empty bottle collection atop the kitchen cabinets will no doubt qualify for the 8^th wonder of the world soon.

But it can get a little frustrating. I can no longer walk around half-dressed while getting ready. I’m not that self-conscious, but having your roommate’s boyfriend right there makes walking around in a towel a bit uncomfortable. And, while I’m definitely not the type of girl to get dolled up every time I’m around some guys, it gets tiresome to have to put on real clothes, brush my hair, and put in the contacts because the boyfs are around (because no matter his relationship status, chances are he has some cute, single friends, right?).

And if I’m playing music and dancing around (not in my underwear like the old days before the boyfriends moved in), I feel compelled to change up my musical selections when the guys arrive since “Party in the USA” apparently doesn’t appeal to the brethren… Who knew?

Being surrounded by couples is a dangerous position to be in. You never know when you’re going to walk in on something “in progress.” In fact, with the overwhelming amount of PDA happening in my living room/kitchen, it’s impossible not to. There is love and kisses and foot rubbing (ew, seriously?) happening everywhere I turn.

But ultimately, my one complaint and biggest pet peeve about my current sitch comes back to the ladies themselves. There is always the ever-present dilemma of who to hang out with: boyfriends, friends/roommates, or both? And somehow I always end up losing out. I distinctly remember being there for these girls while they were lonely and longing for a boy. I recall trying to decipher his ambiguous text messages when they first started dating. And I am now trying to cope with the fact that the next time we will spend real quality time (sans the men) together is when they’re blowing their noses into my shoulder while telling me what a good friend I am because I’m driving us on an emergency ice cream run at 2am the night they get dumped.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy that they’re happy. And I’m also quite happy in my current single-dom. And there are even some bright spots to all this: since my roommates are with their bfs pretty consistently, I can bring friends back to the apartment at wee hours of the morning without worrying about waking anyone up. And since my roommates are way past the dating scene, they always enjoy hearing my exciting, hilarious, or terrible dating escapades.

But I miss my single friends. I miss hearing their stories. I miss having spontaneous impromptu late-night parties with the new dudes we meet at a party. I miss the girls-only morning-after recaps.

The only thing I’m not really missing is my own boyfriend…

[Photo courtesy of moviecritic.com]

We all agree that Lindsay Lohan is a train wreck. But can we really blame her for being so messed-up when she’s had to deal with parents like Michael and Dina Lohan?

Michael has been acting especially awful lately—he keeps leaking recordings of phone calls with Lindsay and her mom to the media, supposedly because he’s worried about her. Right, because the best way to help your strung-out daughter is by releasing calls that you recorded without her knowledge to the national press, who have always been nothing but kind to her.

What a douche.

Thinking about Michael Lohan reminds us of other Hollywood dads who are certified d-bags. Jon Gosselin, Alec Baldwin, the Hoff… all of them are rich, famous, and majorly jerky. But which one of them deserves to be named the Douchiest Hollywood Dad of all? Tell us what you think in the poll below.

Jon Gosselin: Do we even need to list the reasons why this father of eight deserves to be named Douchemaster of the Century? His crimes against humanity are only made worse by the fact that he and M.Loh are apparently BFF. Shudder.

David Hasselhoff: Remember the video from 2007 of The Hoff wasted out of his mind, eating a hamburger on the floor as his daughter begs him not to drink anymore? We do. Douchetastic.

Alec Baldwin: We love Alec on 30 Rock, but that doesn’t change his awful parenting—he screamed at his daughter on her voicemail, saying that he didn’t care if she was “twelve years old, or eleven years old,” because she’s a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” Classy!

Jude Law: Don’t you just love how the British tabloids once called the Oscar-nominated actor “Rude Law”? Having an affair with your children’s nanny while dating the smoking hot Sienna Miller is definitely not polite behavior; we’d expect more from a Brit. Plus, rumor has it this dad hasn’t even met his newest love-child. Good work, champ. Even Lil Wayne is less of a dead-beat than you.

Billy Ray Cyrus: Oh, Billy. First you pose creepily with Miley in Vanity Fair, and then you let little Noah Cyrus leave the house looking like a common prostitute. We don’t care how achey and breaky your heart is—that’s just wrong.

So which dad is the douchiest? You decide:

It doesn't matter what you wear. This bag will make the outfit.

Going out 3-5 nights a week is a lot of pressure. You have to learn to pace yourself so that you can go out again the following night, you’ve got to learn your limit so you aren’t throwing up in class the next day, and you’ve got to look cute.

The “going out top” has become an often-used phrase in the shopping vocabulary of college girls nationwide, but oftentimes we forget about the rest of the outfit. Like the bag. Stacy London will tell you that a bag is just important to a complete look as your top. It makes a statement and not just “I’m hiding this girl’s tampons.”

That being said, using the same clutch 5 nights in a row is not only a big fashion mistake, but it leaves your trusty black “going out bag” covered in beer stains, marks from the dirty bathroom floor and some sticky crap that landed on the side after you dropped it on you walk of shame home. That’s a good look on no one.

But how does anyone justify buying a new clutch when they’re so damn expensive? Seriously? $200 for something that barely fits my cell phone?

Well, not anymore!

Now you can complete your “going out” look – bag and all – without breaking the bank! I found some of the cutest clutches around (big, small, ruffled, leather…)and all of them are – wait for it – under $30! At that price you can snatch them all up, or at least grab two that make a bold statement and rotate. You’ll look good and still have a little money leftover to store in one of these clutch clutches.