The skills employed to study politicians and their platforms are similar to the skills used in the classroom. 

In case you haven't heard, there's a big election coming up in November. For many Cramsterites in the U.S., this is the first presidential election in which we've been eligible to vote. It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Most people generally agree that voting is one of the most important (if not the most important) duties of a citizen. The 18-24-year-old age group is often criticized for poor showings at the polls but let us not forget this same age group has been responsible for swinging elections. See: Clinton '92.

While we might not have the voting experience or old-age wisdom of generations born before us, we still have an arsenal of tools we can use to size up the candidates. Foremost among these tools is our studying habits. Confused? Let me explain.

When you consider the skills needed to be an effective studier and a responsible, informed voter, you might find more overlap than you'd expect. To begin, here are a few habits that can help students out during Campaign 2008:

1. Do your homework early. When October rolls around and the race is nearing its end, you don't want to be spending this time scrambling to learn about each candidate's platform. This is the time you want to be asking yourself who you feel can lead the country, and you can't do that if you don't know what they stand for.

2. Ask pertinent questions. In class, if your classmate or teacher is going down a path you don't quite agree with, or a path you think is patently false, it's your job to steer the ship back around! If you know your stuff about the election, you can call out friends (or foes) when they make misinformed statements.

3. Seek Proofs. For any engineer/statistician/journalist/scientist out there, you know that facts presented to you can't be accepted at face value – research or further examination is required. Everyone knows the mudslinging is coming. Candidates will be tearing each other apart in TV commercials better shot during Wrestlemania. Be able to sort through the junk.

4. Pretend it's a test. So you support Hillary? Possibly McCain? Obama? All right, that's great, may I ask why? Everyone can vote, but not everyone has the answers. Supporting a candidate and then being frustrated when they make a decision that doesn't align with your beliefs is akin to receiving a C- when you thought you had a sure A.

That's enough from me. What do you think? What is the most important thing to keep in mind when sorting through candidates? Make your voice heard!

Why attending class is the simplest step toward getting the grade you desire.

I was giving a tour around campus to a class of elementary schoolers last week as a "first exposure to college." Surprisingly it was a real fun tour to give… astronomically better than touring around a grossly disinterested middle school group.

I'm still smirking about the point in the tour when the kids realized attending class wasn't mandatory. You would have thought five UFOs just did a fly-over, Blue Angels style. At that point, their teacher made sure I reiterated why going to class was important.

It never gets old listening to classmates brag about their abysmal attendance record. I still can't think of an "accomplishment" that requires less action than missing class. But when kids brag about it, they make it seem as if it was a Duke Nukem-esque effort to oversleep five days in a row and not care.

Truth is, there isn't an easier variable to solve in the equation of achieving good grades than attending class. There's a popular saying that the brain must be exposed to something three times before it becomes truly "locked in" or understood. When you apply this theory to academics, it makes a boatload of sense.

You hear your teacher lecture about a completely foreign topic in class. For unity purposes let's pretend this topic is integration by parts (my guess is most all of us have taken or are taking Calculus). When the teacher goes through it for the first time, the concept is still fairly foreign, but at least you know what the goal of the process is.

That night you attempt some homework problems dealing with integration by parts. They are tough, so you go back and reference the chapter reading. Exposure No. 2. You complete the homework and now know enough to tell your parents what exactly it is you are doing in class. 

Finally, review time comes around and when your teacher or TA goes through integration by parts again, it all makes sense. There wasn't a lot of effort involved and you certainly didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary to understand it – you simply took the easy route.

Now imagine all of the kids sitting around you in that review session who were learning about integration by parts for the first time. You'll be catching up with TiVo that night while the lucky ones will be on Cramster making up for lost time.

Bet you aren't regretting struggling through that 9 a.m. class now, huh?

Are there certain subjects where attending class is more important than in other subjects? What are the biggest benefits of regularly getting yourself to lecture?

Ten things to help you start the semester off on the right foot.

Ah, the smell of a new semester. What? You aren’t excited. Yeah, me neither.

There are a few tips, however, that will make the start of every new semester a little more bearable. I have 10 for you, and if you think I’ve missed any, make sure and post them for everyone else to see.

1. Don’t buy your books until you attend the first class. Unless a teacher e-mails you to tell you otherwise, often you’ll find that a book or two on the list isn’t really needed. Or you might go to class and realize studying won’t be necessary. Either way, it’ll save you some much-needed cash.

2. Go out and have fun the weekend before the first day of class. Your first week back at school sets the tone for the rest of the semester. Cutting out some time to have fun right off the bat will make you realize that school doesn’t have to be all drudgery. Remember, though, that class will start regardless of your state of being… so don’t go overboard.

3. For the first week or two, arrive early to classes. No, this isn’t my inner bookworm speaking. Hardly any professors have seating charts, but you know that people settle in to a general seat or general area as the weeks go by. If you don’t want to be stuck in the front (or given a weird look if you “take someone’s seat”), make sure you grab a desirable chair right away. 

4. Make yourself a real, quality dinner. After midterms are over and you’ve eaten 10 frozen dinners in 12 nights, you’ll remember the start of the semester and what real food tastes like.

5. Go to the gym. Remember that “setting the tone” schpiel? Yeah. You’ll be happy you did, I swear, even if it only lasts a week. Flex those muscles while you can.

6. Register for more classes than you are planning on taking. If you are unsure whether you’ll like a certain class, go ahead and register for an additional class you think you’d like if the first class doesn’t work out. There’s no harm in registering for 18 or 20 units, then dropping a class after a few days.

7. After you’ve finalized your schedule, post it on Facebook. Cramster’s app for sharing your course schedule is the best one of its kind. Think I’m exaggerating? Check it out for yourself at apps.facebook.com/cramster. I told you so.

8. Start reading the books you know will be important. The first few weeks of every semester contain more free time than any other week. Take those weeks off, and you’ll likely never catch up. C’mon, you know I’m right.

9. Ask that guy or girl out on a date. You know who I’m talking about, and you know it’ll never happen if you don’t do it now. No better jumpstart to a semester than a boost of confidence. Plus, if you do something cool now, staying in to study won’t seem so lame to your boyfriend or girlfriend later in the semester.

10. Find out how Cramster.com can help you get through your classes this semester. When it comes time for midterms and finals, you’ll be happy you did.

Laptops are increasingly popular in the classroom, but are they best for taking notes? 

Alright, so here’s a topic that I admittedly don’t have much to contribute to: Is it better to take notes the old fashioned way (in a notebook) or is it better to take notes on a laptop?

For the purposes of the classes I took freshman year, a laptop was great. I type four times as fast on a laptop as I can write on paper. Being a freshman I also thought it necessary to take an exorbitant amount of notes to cover my bases. Thus, laptop note taking was the way to go.

But, alas, as I returned for my sophomore year, my laptop’s battery life was a whopping 48 minutes. That gets me through half of a class if I’m lucky. By spring semester my computer had juice for 29 minutes. How my laptop still operates, even when plugged in, is beyond me.

So paper notes it was from that point on. And although I could not surf ESPN and Facebook while in class, paper notes suited me just fine.

My hunch is that different areas of study are more conducive to different styles of note taking. What’s the best style for you? Why?