Best products from r/OSU

A list of random things I brought when I lived in dorms, hope it helps:

• cheap/small printer is good (most dorms have printers but they're sometimes broken right when you need them but don't have time to go to a library). Also paper/ink.
  
• small desk chair maybe. I used to always just put a throw pillow on the shitty chair they give you. Just don't bring anything too huge, dorms are small.
  
• If you're in the older dorms, a cheap floor lamp is awesome. Rooms in Taylor/Drackett etc. get really dark. also a bedside lamp or little lamp that clamps onto your bed isn't a bad idea.
  
• If it's an ancient dorm without AC: definitely a tower fan.
  
• some sort of sturdy laundry basket/bag. laundry soap/etc.
  
• I liked those over the door hooks for coats, very very useful.
  
• combo lock, either for the gym lockers or for lock-drawers in some dorms (e.g. Taylor)
  
• cheap microwaveable bowl/plate/spoon/fork/cup for dorm snacks. Also dorm snacks (popcorn, easy mac, granola bars). Can opener. maybe like 1-2 small tupperware. Plastic ziplock bags. Paper towels.
  
• I brought those tiered plastic drawers on wheels for my Taylor Tower bathroom. Thought it was useful storage but that's probably just because I lived with 3 girls.
  
• If you have a hallway bath: something to carry your shampoo/etc in (a plastic or mesh tote). Also shampoo/conditioner/soap/etc. Towels, shower flip-flops. Cleaning supplies.
  
• The obvious bed stuff: Twin XL sheets, pillows, blankets.
  
• A foam pad for the mattress was nice. Dorm furniture sucks so pillows-- like those chair back ones --make everything more comfortable.
  
• Normal school/desk stuff: paper, spirals, sticky notes, pens, sharpies, pencils, tape (different kinds), folders/binders, stapler, highlighters, note cards. Ethernet cord. HDMI cord (if TV). Maybe a desk organizer (cup for pens, etc).
  
• Headphones/earbuds and back-up ones. Plenty of chargers. batteries.
  
• a medium to small white board or cork board is nice although not super necessary. Plus magnets/tacks. Lots of people put little dry erase boards on the outside of their doors.
  
  P.S. they give you trash/recycle cans (and garbage bags), so I wouldn't bother buying one.

I also had him for 3470 last semester and everything this guy said is on point. Donges has some really awful reviews on RateMyProfessor but I am genuinely convinced that he has taken that criticism to heart and improved the class from it because last semester it was not nearly as bad as people seemed to claim it was.

He more of less tells you exactly which topics will be on the exams, he tells you where to find practice problems, and let's you have a front/back sheet of handwritten notes on each midterm and 2 pages on the final.

I'm convinced that people hate his class for two reasons: The first is that stats is just a difficult class. Students who are extremely competent at math go in to their first stats class and get a C and are convinced that the only way this is possible is because the professor is bad, but that isn't true. I also think people dislike him because he more or less forces you to attend without actually offering attendance points for it. People like to skip class and instead read the textbook or do the online homework but that just doesn't work in his class, his lectures and note templates that he puts online are the best study materials.

Speaking of textbooks, he will frequently mention an alternative book to the one that he is required to recommend to the class. It is Statistics for Engineers and Scientists by William Navidi GET THIS TEXTBOOK. I was able to find it online for free, but it is only $17 to rent on Amazon if you want a physical copy. This textbook is absolutely amazing and I swear Donges teaches directly out of it. There are also these youtube lectures that a different 3470 professor uploaded if you ever miss the notes to something, they're very useful when studying for exams.

I love this question!

To me, being yourself means being completely honest with other people about what you think and believe, and also having the courage to act on what believe. If you are unsure about certain beliefs, then I believe one should also be unafraid to preface what they say about their certain thoughts/beliefs with "I may be wrong about this, but..." or "I'm still thinking about this one, but...".

For example, Ray Dalio's Principles: Life and Work begins with the following line: "Before I begin telling you what I think, I want to establish that I'm a 'dumb shit' who doesn't know much relative to how much I need to know. Whatever success I've had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know."

I think the condition of not knowing as much as you need to know in order to make a decision is relatively close to the condition of all of us. There is always more for us to know, and we don't have enough time to learn everything we need to know about the world. Accordingly, I think the most productive outcome and strategy for everyone is one in which we are all honest about what we believe. I also believe that what is most beneficial for humans is often rewarded in the long run, which is why strategies like reciprocal altruism, tit for tat, forgiving tit for tat, and tit for two tats have been proven to be more evolutionarily beneficial than those in which we repeatedly stab each other in our backs.

Neuroscientist Sam Harris also wrote about this in his book Lying, in which he very strongly defends the idea and importance of persistent honesty.

So, you can do this yourself. I don't think it's going to work all that well though. I lived through the late 80's and early 90's personalization of all the things craze and for this task, I'd use paint pens. I'm not terribly familiar with the hydroflask brand, but from a google it looks like it would work. A rougher texture to the outside would hold paint better.

I'm assuming you aren't planning on putting this in the dishwasher, merely rinsing it out. If you're planning to do that, or put it in the sink with other dishes, to soak, doing anything outside of simply rinsing the inside, don't do that. This is not food safe paint and unless you're doing ceramics and baking all that in, there's no such thing that will do what you want it to.

You can get the paint pens at Michaels or Hobby Lobby probably 2 bucks a pen or so. You can also get some on amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-EKKONG-Permanent-Markers-Resistant/dp/B07L6H6CRN/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=paint+pens&qid=1571532160&sr=8-6

I don't have any experience with the latter, so I'd read reviews.

As to the artistic point. You can print out clouds, tape them to the water bottle and trace them. You could do some parting clouds over your name/initials/monogram a la the Simpsons. Maybe a rainbow? I'd love a rainbow aesthetic in kind of a 70's way- like it winds itself around the bottle being funky. We made 70s funky letters back in the day by writing bubble letters and then tracing around them with all the colors.

Or, you could just buy some cool stickers like the Nalgene contingent and call it a day. I really don't think the paint is going to hold up.

If you get high marks (3.7+) it's not really that hard to get an internship as a freshman. Just be prepared to deal with a ton of reject. But you will get one. Doing your own projects is the real winner, but if you are sufficiently charismatic you can talk your way into research or take some project based courses at ACCAD. Obviously don't bullshit--just show off how passionate you and that you can learn (nobody expects you to already know). I did the research route but a friend of mine went ACCAD and got a much better internship than I did.

If you are planning on going for one of the very selective internships (Google freshman engineering practicum/Microsoft explorer etc) then you should probably buy yourself a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and just do them all. High rank on TopCoder will also help. Go to a lot of hackathons if you want to get really into the tech atmosphere (but you may just not like it that much).

They're all pretty much the same. Don't buy the expensive one they recommend from Barnes and Noble. You can get just as good of a set from Amazon for like, $20. This is the one I used

I started out using a bike to get around campus, but quickly figured out that my classes weren't far enough apart to warrant moving it around throughout the day.

I'm a commuter student, so the best system for me was to park my car up on 4th Street, ride it down, lock it up somewhere highly visible (like outside the 18th Ave Library) only with a metal-bar lock, never with a crappy chain one... and go back for it at the end of the day.

Now after a few semesters, I'm 100% walking everywhere. Burns more calories, tones up the butt, makes playing Pokémon GO easier, etc.

There are some great reasons to bring a bike to Columbus, like the Olentangy Trail, and also avoiding parking nightmares during events like during Red, White, and Boom -- but as far as on-campus travel goes, you're not going to get as much utility out of it as you think.

You can get a pretty inexpensive camera that triggers and records on motion.

Something like this:

Wyze Cam 1080p HD Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera with Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, Works with Alexa https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076H3SRXG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YDP5CbP4K78ZK

You might google the make and model of the keypad on your door to find the manual online. Since you know the code you may be able to change the code yourself and that manual will tel your how.

So, depending on how technical you are, I'd go with this plan:

Buy a couple of these suckers: Ubiquti Unifi AC Pro These are semi-enterprise grade wireless access points: convert wired Ethernet to Wi-Fi only. One might be enough, or you might need two or three, depending on how well the signal travels.

To use this, you'll need a couple things, some you might have, some you might not:

Cat6 cable and connectors: the Ethernet cable to connect these APs. This link is for bulk cable, to make your own cabling. Keep in mind you'll want to mount these APs to a wall or ceiling. I have mine taped on the wall in the middle of my house.

Router: just use a router you already have, just turn off the Wi-Fi broadcasting on the router. Leave the Wi-Fi to the APs. The box WOW gives you will either be a modem only or a gateway (modem + router). If that's a gateway, you can use that, otherwise, just use an old router, or buy a cheap one if you don't.

Switch: if your router doesn't have enough LAN Ethernet ports to send to the APs, connect the switch to the router via one Ethernet line, and plug the APs to the switch. This is a 5 port gigabit switch, so you'd have room for 4 APs or devices. Make sure you buy Gigabit Ethernet or 10/100/1000. Don't buy Fast Ethernet or 10/100: at these speeds, you'd be limited to 100Mb/s, instead of 1000Mb/s (this WOW plan is 600Mb/s, faster than the Fast Ethernet spec).

I just wanted to emphasize that you should get a U-lock and lights. The majority of bikes that get stolen had cables locking them.

This headlight and tail light are extraordinarily bright and well priced. It's worth your safety to spend thirty dollars for these, they're durable and easily attached and removed.

Can't tell for sure if you're kidding, but just to be safe this is what I'm giving away.

I bought this pair of headphones recently:

http://www.amazon.com/NVX-Over-Ear-Headphones-ComfortMax-XPT100/dp/B0093PVTPS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462804041&sr=8-1&keywords=XPT100

Better isolation that M50s, but significantly more comfortable in my experience. I can easily wear them for 4+ hours and just forget they're on.

If you don’t mind spending a few dollars, what I do is I have my MacBook just like normal and boot Windows off of a USB SSD. You generally want at the least 60-80 GB for running Windows with Solidworks or Visual Studio, and I wasn’t willing to give up that much space on my built in drive.

Here’s a link to the USB SSD I use. It’s pretty cheap at $34 for the 128GB drive, but it’s worked very well all school year. (Unfortunately it looks like the 128GB size may be sold out atm)

This YouTube video will guide you through setting it up, since it’s a bit janky as Microsoft probably doesn’t want you booting Windows from a USB drive. Note, you’ll need a slightly older version of WinToUSB for it to work, and I had to use WinToUSB on an existing Windows computer for it to work, not on a virtual machine.

Also, I have all my files backed up on BuckeyeBox using Box Drive so if I lose the SSD I don’t actually lose any files

I stand by my statement. Buy a second thermos with a screw top. either fill it with boiling water or premake your tea. you can put it in you backpack and it wont leak. or buy this and boil the water on campus in a cup. I <--- use this and it works well. this really isnt that hard. good luck in school.

A 2,500 dollar bike is a bit much, but if you really want to bring an expensive bike on campus, get a nice U-Lock!

This is the best one I've ever used. I have a pretty nice bike, and somebody tried to cut through this lock to get to it once. They only got through the few mm thick outer rubber layer, and then gave up. It's a bitch to cut through this thing.

I had something that looked like this under my bed to store extra sheets and things. I also had a duffle bag under there.

You may not have to loft your bed but sometimes they have bed risers available. I would recommend those if they are there.

Sounds very familiar. Turned out I had chronic depression. Operating my mind was like driving a car with the parking brake on.

Counseling Services will hook you up with a one-two punch of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and antidepressants. They work together better than alone.

If you're shy about that, you can CBT yourself online instead. I recommend supplementing it with mindfulness meditation (there's also lots of info about this online for free). Or use CCS's excellent self-help.

I just took 1250 and 1251. What the bookstore tried to sell me is not a traditional book but a stack of three-ring punched sheets. It's cheaper than a bound book and you can carry in a binder only the chapters you currently need. It comes bundled with WebAssign access codes and those are only good once.

You can purchase WebAssign separately and after you do that you can download the book as a pdf. In my class some students used their laptops during class to access both the book and homework.

I prefer a traditional textbook. They were using the 8th edition last year but I bought Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics 9th Ed.; it cost less at the time. The page and problems numbers were the only difference I noticed. Your homework will be online so the changed problem numbers (not different problems, just changed order!) won't be a problem. The book is huge but I still like it better than the sheets.

https://www.amazon.com/Protection-Cancelling-Disposable-Earplugs-Hearing/dp/B000NP79YM/ref=sr_1_14_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1539216157&sr=8-14&keywords=earplugs&th=1

Those little badboys are lifesavers for people who need to block out noise to sleep. You'll hear nothing and be out like a light if you're tired. The ones above are much better than other brands I've tried. I just recently bought 100 pair. ha