A jug of Febreeze. I'm quite sure the guys in my son's dorm never did laundry the way you and I think of laundry...they Febreezed--EVERYTHING--shirts, jeans, sheets, towels, probably their armpits...lol I second the OTC med/first aid kit. Send the minimum until you know the kiddoes your son will be rooming with. Things like Sudafed can be abused. Still...I wish we'd done this. There was one very miserable night when my son (no longer in the dorm) called to tell me he was sick. Based on past experience, I knew immediately he had strep...probably 103 fever, raging sore throat, chills, in short he was alone, several miles from a store and miserable. I can guarantee you I spent a miserable night as well. While he was at the pharmacy the next day, I made him stock up on Tylenol and such. Extention cords and power strips. My son's dorm room had two outlets. Boys seem to need their electronics...Xbox, DVD players, Speakers system. Hopefully you can coordinate with the roomie so they don't overlap too much. Personally, I'd love to see game systems banned for dorms, but I'm sure schools fear no young men would come to school. lol Remember, you can't prepare for every instance. What you hope to see when your son or daughter goes away to school is some of the resourcefulness you've taught over the years. Do they know how to find information? Do they seek out the best way to do things? Can they face a challenge and deal with it? (Like getting a ride to the store when they don't drive. It's perfectly do-able.) Have fun and remember to enjoy these next few months.

Birth control pills may help mask menopause symptoms By TOM VALEO Published March 28, 2006 All women can expect to enter menopause sooner or later, but women taking birth control pills may not notice, at least for a while. In the meantime, they can expect several benefits from the pill beside avoiding an unwanted pregnancy: They will avoid some of the most conspicuous signs of menopause, such as hot flashes, night sweats and irritability. "A woman on the birth control pill is getting hormones at a level above what her ovaries would produce,'' said Dr. Catherine Lynch, director of General Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. "When a woman goes into menopause, the ovaries basically shut down and no longer produce estrogen or progesterone in any significant amounts, so a woman taking the birth control pill in the standard fashion of three weeks on active pills, followed by one week of inactive pills, often won't have any symptoms of menopause until that pill-free week. She may not even realize she's in menopause because she's getting adequate estrogen and still cycling.'' During the week when she is not taking active birth control pills, the woman may even have a "withdrawal bleed" caused by the sudden drop in estrogen. A withdrawal bleed is easily mistaken for a normal period. And if the woman is taking continuous-use birth control pills, she will take inactive pills only one week out of every 12 instead of every four, so she will have a withdrawal bleed no more than once every four months. "So a woman who's, say, 51 and taking Seasonale one of the continuous-use birth control pills isn't going to have hot flashes or night sweats for 12 weeks, because she's having estrogen provided for her by the pills,'' Dr. Lynch said. "She may experience symptoms during the week she takes inactive pills, but just as symptoms start to climb, she starts taking active pills again, and she won't appreciate that these are symptoms of menopause.'' But that's not all. Taking birth control pills also seems to reduce bone loss. In fact, if the woman is also doing weight-bearing exercises and getting plenty of calcium, low-dose birth control pills may even help build bone density. Women on the pill also experience less iron deficiency anemia, and some studies suggest that the pill protects against benign breast disease, endometrial cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer. The Cancer and Steroid Hormone Study, the largest to investigate this last issue, found a 40 percent decrease on average of ovarian cancer in women who had taken oral contraceptives. The risk decreased as the amount of time on the pill increased, so women who had taken the pill for seven years or longer experienced a reduction in the risk of ovarian cancer of 60 to 80 percent. Some Women on the pill also experience less iron deficiency anemia, and some studies suggest that the pill protects against benign breast disease, endometrial cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer. studies suggest that oral contraceptives might even protect against colorectal cancer, uterine fibroid tumors, Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Taking the pill has always meant an increase in the risk of blood clots, which can cause a stroke. But a woman who does not smoke, does not have high blood pressure, and takes a low-dose oral contraceptive can almost eliminate that additional risk. So why not just stay on the pill and enjoy all the benefits of hormone-replacement therapy, known as HRT? Because even low-dose birth-control pills deliver five to seven times as much estrogen as HRT. HRT simply gives the body back what the ovaries were producing before they were shut down by menopause. The birth control pill delivers a dose of hormones large enough to shut down the ovaries, and it's pointless for a woman to keep taking hormones after menopause has begun and she has stopped ovulating. She would be better off with hormone-replacement therapy, which would provide her with the same benefits but a lower dose of hormone. "The trick is figuring out when she is in menopause,'' Dr. Lynch said. "There are a couple of ways to test this, but they're not 100 percent reliable. She can go off the pill and see if she's still cycling, but if she's sexually active, there's an outside chance she could get pregnant. "While it's rare for pregnancy to occur at the age of 50 or 51, it can happen if you're still ovulating.'' Tom Valeo is a freelance writer specializing in medical and health issues. Contact him c/o Seniority, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail features at sptimes dot com. [Last modified March 28, 2006, 08:52:07] Here is a link that might be useful: from a Florida online newspaper

Yes, Mom lied....she told the school that she had to relocate for a job. She was unemployed (fired from her last job) and didn't begin work until December -- so clearly, the move had zero to do with a job. The boyfriend didn't help at all, in fact, she was paying his rent, so she just figured it would be cheaper to have him live with her. He leached off her for a long time -- even after she bought a new house and told him he had to move out. He threatened suicide so she paid 2 mortgages for another 8 months or so until she could get him to leave the house (I couldn't make this stuff up!). For all I know, she offered to pay him rent to get out -- I know she supported him the entire time he lived with her. Perhaps that money is her retirement money, but her kids knew that she paid a lot for her BF (even lent him $10,000 to start his own company....didn't work out so much, duh!). You have to realize, this is not just about the money. We can pay towards her college, but we believe that she must also pay -- take a financial stake in her own education. And, make up for the scholarship that she let go. This isn't punitive, as her mother likes to spin it. It is about trying to get this child to understand that money does not grow on trees, and that college is not to show off that you can hang with the "pretty rich kids" (her words), or about drinking whenever and wherever you want (again, she gained a ton of weight last year -- no doubt from drinking so much) but it is about making a future for yourself. It is also about teaching her that you can't give a parent "the finger" with one hand, while holding out the other for tens of thousands of dollars. It is simply not right.....and not the message that we want her younger brother to get!

So my 2 cents. First, on the importance of good schools. As a professor I hate to admit that I have too little impact on the education my students receive. For a few students I make an incredible difference, but for the majority of students their education is determined by the capabilities, motivation and abilities of their peers. Most instructors, even adjuncts and graduate students, will teach to the level of the class over time. Every teacher sucks their first time teaching, there is simply no other way to so clearly expose the gaps in your understanding than to stand in front of a room full of smart college students. I worked harder to close those gaps than I ever did working, most instructors do the same. The benefit of good schools is that it surrounds good students with good students, and allows a higher level of teaching. Now having said all of that - what is a good education? On the surface it may seem easy to define, but it is really not. For a smart, motivated student a good education might mean exposure and mastery of complex concepts and skills. For a smart but unmotivated or uninterested student a good education may also require a personal connection and/or inspiration. For a not so smart but incredibly hard working student a good education may also need personal attention or patience. In all of these situations an education is transformative but they all have different requirements and there are many more student types. Second, on school choice. As a whole parents are bad judges of both schools and their kids. I am sorry to say that on a visit to a school, your kid will have a much better idea how they fit into a school than you do. Parents in general all think better of their kids than is true, and that is not bad, it is one of the great things about being a parent. Parents also often look at the end result of a school and forget the path to get there. To Snidely I submit there is no need for your kid select from a few pre-screened schools, if you have done a good job for the first 17 - 19 years, then he is already going to pick a good school he fits into. If you screwed up those years then limiting the selection is the least of your worries. Next, on faculty jobs. I find this often gets painted with a broad brush when, in fact, the truth is pretty simple. Oddly enough, the degrees that struggle to find gainful employment in their degree have an abundance of PhD's. Many of the highly employable degrees don't have anywhere near enough PhD's who are searching for jobs. There is an incredible shortage of Accounting PhD's, I suspect that the same holds for the engineering disciplines, architecture, etc. The truth is that people tend to hide out in education when they can't get a job, that can go a long way to explaining why there are so many PhD's in certain areas. Finally, on instructor qualifications. There is a giant problem in education today at many of the research institutions (but the effects are felt system-wide), and it has nothing to do with the qualifications of the instructors. The problem is that professors are driven to research, that the only path to permanency is research, it drives your pay and gives you credibility or notoriety. Students become an afterthought at best, and at worst students are distraction from our real goals. I went to an awards banquet when I first started teaching, where I was lamenting the fact that at times my job was absolutely heartbreaking, to watch good kids try incredibly hard and still fail is rough. The guy sitting at the table with me, who is a fairly prolific researcher, shrugged and said he didn't care at all. He doesn't even attempt to know their names, and said that he taught because somebody told him in order to get paid he had to teach a few times a year. So he teaches, he doesn't grade the homework or the exams, someone else does, he just shows up and lectures so he can get back to the research that is his real job. He is the problem in universities today. In accounting we value ethics above most other things. I don't understand how we can ethically take money from students and then refuse to even care if they get a value for it. It is a huge sore spot with me, I fight this fight all the time, and yet I know I am tilting at windmills. Private schools can avoid this problem but often they are not seen as the best jobs. It is sad because it should be the other way around. Oddly enough, I think we overvalue PhD's. A PhD doesn't help me teach students, in fact, if people were allowed a close up view of study in PhD program, most would question the usefulness of anyone having a PhD to teach. Most PhD specializations are so esoteric or at such a deeper level of understanding that they are simply unrelated to the classes taught. Also, PhD programs focus on research methodology far more than deeper knowledge of the material. Just to see what I mean I will link the University of Texas at Austin PhD program, this is not my school and it is a very good school but look over the classes in the PhD and tell me how that will help me teach either undergraduates or graduates. Accounting PhD So again - just my 2 cents.