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By Amanda DeLuise

Here’s my high school GPA.  Like most students, this was what stressed me out the most about high school.  Sure, I had the extracurriculars and took the SATs three different times, but seeing the GPA ranges at the schools I was looking to apply to was the worst.  The thing about GPAs is once you ruin them, they’re excruciatingly hard to make them better again.  A lot of people I knew in high school slacked off freshman year, got C’s and sometimes D’s in their classes and generally didn’t think about the consequences.  Then, junior year they realized they wanted to go to Harvard and were stuck with a 2.4 average.  A girl in my AP Euro class senior year said freshman and sophomore year she failed a math class and got nothing over a C in any of her other classes.  She didn’t do any clubs or sports.  Then, junior year rolled around and she started looking at colleges and realized her GPA didn’t qualify her for any of the schools she was looking to go to.  So junior and senior year she took all honors and AP classes and got A’s in most of them, yet she couldn’t bring her GPA above a 3.0.

But enough about high school.

Here’s my college GPA.  A little banged up, but still generally in good spirits.  It’s still above average (which is usually considered a 3.0, I believe), but definitely not as great as it was in high school.  I came to college with the mentality of “Oh good, I’m here! Looks like I don’t have to worry about my GPA anymore!”

Last night, as I was scrambling to figure out the work I had to make up after missing a week of school and going on spring break, I was worried about my GPA.  I had a sudden panic attack about not getting a job because my GPA was no longer a 3.9 and I knew a lot more students in my major with higher GPAs.

But then I remembered everything I learned in my “Interview Strategies” class (which I know I have previously talked really badly about) about what it takes to get a job.  My mind was at ease knowing that my professor (who works for a major firm as a recruiter/HR manager) told us not to worry.  Interviewers know that there are only so many hours in a day.  If they see your resume is stacked with jobs, internships and tons of outside activites, they won’t pay much mind to your 3.3 GPA, even if the next interviewee has a 3.8 (but nothing aside from that).

Also, remember that they’ll look at what classes you took to see how challenging they are, and how you did in the classes that reflect your major.  Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about the B I got freshman year in Environmental Science because I’ve made up for it in the A’s I’ve gotten in all my German classes so far and all of my Journalism reporting classes.  So as long as I keep my head above water in the classes that matter most, I’ll be fine.

And so will you!

By Amanda DeLuise

One thing I love to do and think I am very good at is complaining about NYU.  Whether it’s the cost (well, mostly the cost), their policies about having to take a math class, their policies about double majoring, the overwhelming amount of hipster doofuses who fail to see how incredibly lame they are, or the cost, I do it often.

Things I will never complain about: the incredible, talented and extremely successful professors and adjuncts (my Journalism Ethics professor is the lawyer for the NEW YORK TIMES), the opportunities I will have just from being in New York City, the resources I have access to and guest speakers.

Not to mention the commencement speaker for this year was announced.  Guess who it is!

Bill Clinton

And guess who it was last year?

Alec Baldwin

I can only guess who it will be next year, when I graduate.  There’s some Facebook petition group about having it be Lady Gaga.  If it is, I will die (and not in a good way).

I’ve had the chance to listen to, ask questions to and speak with so many different people through guest lectures.  Tonight I had a guest in my Journalism Ethics class–it was Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels (a sort of vigilante crime fighting group that started to keep the NYC subways safe and now exists in 82 cities around the world).  He told us he’s been arrested 72 times, been sued multiple times for libel (which is exactly what the class is about!) and had a hit placed on him by JOHN A. GOTTI.  Where else in the world would I get to listen to Curtis Sliwa talk to us about real life applications of libel law for an hour?

I think my favorite guest speaker I’ve gotten to talk to this semester was in my Women in the Media seminar (which is small, compared to the ethics lecture) and it was Marlene Sanders.  We had just read her book, Waiting for Primetime, and she came in and talked to us about her experience being one of the pioneer female news anchors and the first woman in to report from the battlefield during Vietnam.  She’s also the mother of Jeffrey Toobin!  Which I did not know, but now I do.

So, whenever I complain about money, I need to come re-read this post and think about how the people I get to interact with thanks to NYU.

By Amanda DeLuise

The majority of my friends (and myself) have or will have turned 21 by the end of 2011.  Thankfully, the days of trying to scramble to find something to do or somewhere to go on the weekends are no longer a problem.  Now we’re free to hang out at a bar, go to 21+ shows at Mercury Lounge and basically experience the city in a whole new way.

Last Thursday, I met up with two of my roommates and our friend Will for some dinner at a BBQ place on campus.  I have very fond memories of Thursday nights freshman year–hardly anyone has class on Friday.  By junior year, the story is much different.  All four of us had class or work the following day, so we were by no means out to party.  We were sitting and enjoying a meal and some drinks when all of the sudden in walks an obvious group of freshman (I don’t say it this way to be condescending–we’ve all been there, we can all remember trying to wrangle up a group of 10+ kids from the floor to go out and how we acted in public) that sit down at the table behind us.

The waitress walks over to them and they all order a round of shots and a round of drinks.  She asks for IDs but they all explained they forgot them at home (….okay…) so she fetches the manager of the place who then tells them (and I quote): “It’s okay, we’ll card you next time” and proceeds to serve them.

It’s ridiculous what some places are willing to risk to make a few bucks off some freshman.  I thought maybe it was just in New York, but when I took a trip to visit a friend in Baltimore this weekend, the same thing happened.

My friend is a freshman, so I asked her how they got liquor when she needed it (since another friend of mine at Rutgers was frustrated about always having to ask her friend of age’s boyfriend) and she took me to a place not too far from her dorm building that simply NEVER carded people.

No matter how old you looked, they didn’t card.  Her roommate even said once there was a cop in there and they STILL didn’t ask for anyone’s ID.

Why don’t I remember it being this easy two years ago?  Have college towns around the country given in to the fact that they can greatly increase sales by becoming known as “the place that won’t card”?