Swami’s Stress Relief Tips Fail Students Who Need Real Help

by Jessica Kramer

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If you’re feeling stressed out and are looking for laughter, a self-described swami’s teachings may be a diverting but ultimately fruitless use of your time.

Students who are feeling pressure due to midterms and major papers may feel like they have few options to deal with their anxiety. But many dorms offer various stress relief activities that are supposed to expose students to novel ways to cope with life’s frustrations. One such activity this week was the reprisal of a Welcome Week program that attempts to teach students how to use laughter as a tool to lift their spirits and relax.

Titled “Laughter: The Best Medicine,” the event promising music, meditation, and laughter was held in the Hayden Library Tuesday at 8 p.m. Laraaji Nadananda led the hour-long session of 12 people, surrounded by the quiet atmosphere of tables, chairs, and books in the large room.

Nadananda, who is also a musician, tried to find the best words to describe himself. Some call him teacher, others a “laugh master.” Still others call him a “workshop facilitator.” But, he said, perhaps “swami” could best “sum it up and explain why I do what I do.”

The night began with plenty of mirth, both in the exercises taught as well as the leader’s unique sense of humor. Nadananda showed everyone various ways to practice laughter on their own and how to best enhance their sensation of delight. The pituitary gland in our brain was said to be a tool they could use to laugh, and the swami made fun of his speech when he turned it into a mock slogan you could use: “Touch your pituitary today!”

While they were doing exercises, he was dispensing advice. “You can’t take a laugh pill like you can take a headache pill,” he said. He told them, “Laughter is energy work.”

Tamara Whitehouse, a CAS freshman who attended the program, said that her current greatest source of stress is school. She said she was skeptical of the methods at first, but that it was really cool. Though she enjoyed the program and said it was helpful at the moment, she doesn’t think she’ll use the techniques shown in the future. “I’m not going to laugh by myself,” she explained.

While everyone was practicing exercises, Nadananda joked, “Don’t you think of yourselves as yummy? You could walk around after this saying, ‘I’m in a yummy body!’”

Other advice he gave people included grounding themselves. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘get grounded’?” he asked them. “It’s like when someone is in a bad neighborhood and then pulls out his wallet full of money,” he explained. “Someone will come up to him and say ‘GET GROUNDED!’ You need to become aware of the situation."

He also told them a “therapeutic smile” can lift their spirits. They rated theirs on a scale of 1-10 and practiced varying degrees of smiling and they then unwound with some relaxation activities where they laid down and closed their eyes, to the sound of an accompanying gong and gentle sounds.

The event was organized by Lindsay Tadych, a Hayden RA and nursing student graduating in spring 2008. She is currently most stressed about graduating in May, and everything that comes with that, including getting a job and apartment. Even with this stress, Tadych said she doesn’t use the techniques shown at the program that often.

Normally the laughter event is just during Welcome Week, Tadych said. But she brought it back.

All of this started when, in 1985, Nadananda read a meditation book, The Orange Book: The Meditation Techniques of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho), that suggested laughter meditation. He tried it on himself and liked it. Then he shared it with his concert audience (he described his music as “ambient inspirational non-traditional sound music”) for about five minutes at a time, and then it “mushroomed into its own workshop.”

He explained, “I developed techniques [with] people sharing observations.” Osho was a “spiritual teacher” for him.

The laugh master is not without stress. His greatest stress now is musically “performing with someone whose technique is not fluid or spontaneous.”

“I have to cover them,” he elaborated. “I have to stay present in a certain way.” Another big stress for him is going through the airport check-in.

As for using his own techniques on himself, he said, “I do it myself, inwardly,” in places like car rides before a performance.

“I touch into it briefly during the day,” he said. “I find I can get the results by just dipping back into it.” He also participates in “laughing fits” with a group, making laughter more therapeutic, incorporating his own practice into it.

He’s currently trying to develop laughter as a performance art, and have it be an “infectious energy moving experience.”

The stress event itself could be classified as that. The RAs always try to have some kind of stress-relief activity during exam weeks, Tadych said. There was a similar stress relief event last week, a Peer Educator organized workshop on the eighth floor of Hayden. It included meditation and smoothies for “stress-free midterms.”

Gallatin freshman Brianna Sahagian attended that program and said she learned deep breathing techniques she now practices for stress relief.

“[T]his past week I’ve had a lot of papers and tests and stuff, so I’ve been really stressed,” she explained. “I haven’t been doing as well coping with stress this semester.”

The meditation and breath control are now part of her newfound coping process, along with muscle relaxation techniques, listening to music, and dancing in her room when no one’s around.

While the meditation workshop techniques are put to use, the laughter ones are not. Both attendee Whitehouse and organizer Tadych said they won't use them much in the future. If there's any point to the event, it’s to have a secluded time to let loose instead of any genuine, constructive methods to “de-stress,” as was advertised.

At the laughter event’s end, the participants repeated the phrase “play is the spontaneous exploration of sensation,” and ended the session with a rousing trip around the room skipping and declaring their various body parts “happy.”

Nadananda then proclaimed everyone “radiant yum yum[s].”

And really, if that isn’t helpful, what is?

Hard to Veg Out at NYU

By Piper Wallingford

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Fluorescent lights flicker above wilted lettuce and oozing tomatoes at New York University’s Rubin Dining Hall. A student stops at the shabby salad bar to get dinner – a handful of carrot sticks and hummus smeared across a wrap. While this meal would leave most stomachs grumbling, these scraps of subsistence are all vegans and vegetarians can eat at NYU.

The university champions its vegan and vegetarian dining programs, earning recognition from PETA as one of the nation’s Most Vegetarian-Friendly Colleges. But vegans and vegetarians at NYU think that dining halls lack sufficient protein alternatives. The limited variety frustrates students trying to eat meat-free, balanced meals.

While vegetarians do not eat meat, vegans avoid animal by-products of any kind, including dairy and even honey. Because of their dietary restrictions, vegans and vegetarians find little variety at NYU. They often eat the same meals throughout the week, simply because there are no other options.

Hannah Hodel, a sophomore, is a vegan who was required to have a meal plan her freshman year. Hodel felt limited by what she could eat at NYU. “You get stuck with a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and salads,” she said. “You’re just going to eat broccoli for every meal.”

As a freshman Alex Neinast, a vegan, also ate at NYU dining halls. “I got tired of eating carrot sticks, hummus and salads, which is pretty much all I could eat,” she said.

With the opening of Hayden Dining Hall, NYU has tried to present a more welcoming attitude to vegan and vegetarian diners. Hayden offers three vegan options a day and they rotate each week. Students who do not enjoy Veggie Indian Curry, Asian Sesame Pasta, or Stir-Fried Tofu can eat a soy burger or a salad.

In other residence dining halls, these few options are not available. Junior Lauren Dunivant, a vegetarian, lived at Rubin as a freshman and felt that the school catered to meat-eaters. NYU’s monthly Vegan Night and weekly Vegetarian Night offered a wide variety of meat dishes, said Dunivant. NYU Dining canceled both events last year, while weekly events like Steak Night and Seafood Night continue, offering only a salad for those who do not eat meat.

“Seafood Night at Rubin smelled horrible,” said Dunivant. “It’s probably cool for some people, but I’m definitely not a fan.”

But Owen Moore, the Director of Dining Services at NYU, said that every dining hall has vegetarian and vegan options for all three meals of the day. According to Moore, NYU still has vegetarian and vegan nights, which is not obvious from an online menu. Entrees for this week at Hayden are Beef Stroganoff, Rotisserie Chicken, and Roast Lamb. Hayden’s traditional vegan night offers the very un-vegan Baked Ham, with the bone still in.

Moore said that vegetarian and vegan options are readily available and easily recognizable. Students can always speak to a staff member, and signs identify vegan and vegetarian options. “Some are obvious like the salad bar,” said Moore.

Not quite so obvious, according to Neinast. At the salad bar, Neinast has seen students use the same scoop for vegetables and bacon or cheese. Not all foods marketed as vegan really are, like the vegan pancakes, which cooks make next to regular buttermilk pancakes. Neinast has also had her soy burger grilled next to hamburgers. “I’m forced to get something I hope is vaguely vegan,” she said.

Neinast eats vegan, and saves money, by eating off campus or making her own meals. “Eight dollars on campus gets a salad and a water bottle,” she said. “It’s cheaper to go to Whole Foods and load up at the salad bar.”

Some students cannot afford to eat off campus, however. Sophomore Kelly Sielert, who is vegetarian, also lived at Rubin, but could not afford to eat off campus. “I didn’t have a job and pretty much stuck to my meal plan and eating at dining halls,” she said. Sielert did not mind eating at NYU and felt that there were enough vegetarian options, although she opted out of a meal plan this year. “Some days I still eat on campus,” said Sielert. “It’s not so bad when you don’t have to eat there every day, three meals a day. You just get sick of eating dorm food.”

For some students, they got sick from eating dorm food because they were not getting necessary nutrients. For vegans, the lack of alternative sources of protein can be dangerous to students’ health. When Hodel ate at NYU, she could not find enough sources of fatty proteins. “I didn’t go off campus, I just tried to get by,” she said. “I had trouble with my health. Over the summer, I was finally able to get the nutrients that I needed.”

Moore says that the campus dining halls offer the nutrition needed by vegan and vegetarian students. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t be getting the nutrition they need,” said Moore. “There are plenty of proteins and B12s in fruit.”

Besides B12 vitamins, vegans and vegetarians need to make sure they consume the recommended amounts of protein, iron, and calcium, said junior Chi-Ser Tran. As a peer educator, Tran informs NYU students about the best ways to get their nutritional needs. According to Tran, the first step is to make existing options more vegan and vegetarian friendly. “Separate vegan-only stations, with sterilized serving utensils, would make sure students can eat without worrying about what they’re eating,” said Tran. “Another option would be to list food ingredients on the on-line menu.”

Adding more options would also benefit the entire NYU dining community, said Tran. “It would be great to see more nuts and avocados or meat alternatives like tempeh or seitan,” said Tran. “Eating the right amounts of protein-rich foods isn’t only for vegans, it’s just good nutrition.”

In 2007, PETA ranked NYU No. 7 in its top-ten list of the Most Vegetarian-Friendly Colleges, considering the university’s proximity to off-campus restaurants and canceled programs, but not nutritional value. “Not only does NYU have the benefit of being close to many of the nation’s best vegetarian restaurants, it also promotes Weekly Vegetarian Nights and Monthly All Vegan Meals,” the organization’s website said.

Sielert agrees with PETA’s ranking, but points out that NYU could work harder to support vegan and vegetarian students. “Other schools don’t pay as much attention to vegetarians, but that only says how bad other schools are, not how good NYU is.”

Even students like Sielert who do not mind eating at NYU still want to see variety in the dining halls. Until NYU addresses students’ frustration, vegans and vegetarians will be opting out of a meal plan instead of vegging out in a dining hall.

NYU Students Frustrated with Core Curriculum

NYU Students Frustrated with Core Curriculum
Mary Jane Weedman

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"Our adherence to the difficult testifies to why we are here."

That's what NYU expository writing professor Bruce Bromley says to students who complain about the difficulty of Morse Academic Plan (MAP) courses.

Still, some students say that difficulty isn't the problem with most MAP classes. They often complain that the writing styles professors teach aren't always applicable to later writing courses, or that the classes just shouldn’t be required. And it's not just an isolated complaint here and there: MAP curriculum revision was a hot topic at a recent CAS town hall, when some students sharply criticized the class.

CAS freshman Kari Lindegren is one student who is struggling to find a way to use what she’s learned in Writing the Essay outside of the class.

“I think it is pointless,” said Lindegren. “It would be better to write essays that we will have to write for other classes.”

Some students are frustrated that MAP courses are a requirement at all. Stern junior Henry Yonge said he thinks having a structured curriculum only hurts a person’s individuality.

“I hate map courses and map requirements and I think they're stupid,” said Yonge.

Still, said Bromley, MAP courses are worthwhile because they expose students to writing in various essayistic forms that can help them build and develop original thinking.

He said he believes most students can learn to appreciate MAP courses.

“Even for those of my students who have complained, early on, about being obliged to take MAP courses, at the end of the term they tell me that our difficult work has enriched them,” said Bromley.

And many students say they already do. Steinhardt freshman Briana Santiago said she thinks work overload may be a problem with Writing the Essay, but overall, the class experience has been a good one.

“I know a lot of people complain about it. But for the most part, I think we learn helpful writing techniques. The course just seems too intense…for a basic level class,” said Santiago.

Bromley said he believes students should challenge themselves, even if they don’t find MAP courses interesting or meaningful.

“How, precisely, can you judge here if, at 17 or 18, you simply haven’t read enough or experienced the thing you deem unworthy of your time?” said Bromley.

While Bromley has some student supporters, enough students are upset for the coursework to be evaluated for change. Should the curriculum change, perhaps undergraduates in the class of 2012 and beyond will be satisfied with their introductory classes.

The Real Cost of Attending New York University

By: Kimberly Anglin

The Real Cost of Attending NYU

A chilly Friday evening air greeted Kimberly Ballinger as she made her way down the hipster-ridden streets of St. Mark’s Place. As was her habit at the end of every week, she made her way down rows of seedy tattoo parlors and hole-in-the-wall eateries in search of a great place to unwind that night. “We should have sushi tonight. That should be a cheap dinner,” she said to a friend accompanying her that evening, as the two ducked into an unsuspecting Japanese restaurant. That night the girls spent a whopping $30 on appetizers and refreshments alone.

A bill of this size is not uncommon at restaurants in New York City’s Greenwich Village, the neighborhood that serves as a backdrop for New York University. For many students, unexpected expenses like the cost of a night out are just another financial sacrifice they must endure during their time spent in the city. Savvy students, however, are finding ways to deal with these steep costs. With a little planning and a lot of penny pinching these students are finding ways to enjoy the city without breaking the bank.

The average tuition per semester for an undergraduate in the College of Arts & Science is around $17,000 before adding room and board, meal plans, and other registration fees. After that, a semester at NYU can cost over $25,000.After incurring all of these costs, there is little money left at a student’s disposal to enjoy his or her time in New York City, noted by many as one of the most exciting and most expensive cities in the world.

The high cost of living in New York comes as more of an annoyance than a shock to most students. Many had an idea of what it would cost when they applied to the university. “I kind of expected it was going to be expensive. It’s New York!” said freshman Joanna Lau, a native of Singapore. Many students note that if the cost of living were cheaper, they would feel inclined to do a lot more “I would go to a lot more theaters and museums. A lot of museums are really interesting, but you always have to pay for the best ones,” said sophomore Alyssa Lapan, an art student.
Though some might be unaware of it, there are many activities that students can enjoy for free in the city. A quick internet search provides a number of websites that list plenty of great activities for students at little or no cost. One website in particular, http://www.freenyc.net, frequently posts low-cost activities going on at locations around the city. “There are so many things you can do for cheap, you just have to look for them,” said Kimberly, a college sophomore and native New Yorker.

Students also have the option of planning ahead by using guides like the annual Zagat Survey. The Survey rates New York City restaurants, theater, nightlife and shopping, among other things, on a point scale, and evaluates tastes, décor and prices. The Survey’s website notes that the guide is the world’s “leading provider of consumer survey-based information on where to Eat, Drink, Stay and Play worldwide.” Its reviews are based on those of over 300,000 surveyors from all over the world. For about $16, students can have their own personal guide to the city. At that price, the Zagat Survey may seem like yet another expense, but students should consider it a wise investment, as students often use the Survey as a tool for saving time and money, their most valuable commodities.
Some students have devised a clever strategy when dining out, choosing to share meals, a habit that tends to bring down costs. “The last restaurant I went to was Carmine’s in Times Square. It was family style, so it was cheaper. It [cost] about $25, but the plate fed three of us, so it wasn’t that bad,” said sophomore Brittany Gischner.

Another useful opportunity that students are taking advantage of is using “Declining Dollars” to pay for food at participating dining establishments on campus, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. When any New York University student purchases a meal plan, he or she is allotted a varying amount of credit, called “Declining Dollars,” which can be redeemed at dining halls and participating eateries. Thought this program sometimes limited to out-of-the-way locations and the lines tend to be long, due to the amount of students taking advantage of the program, using declining dollars had a number of cost. Most notably, students are able to use the credits they have already received from purchasing their meal plans. This strategy can save a student upwards of a hundred dollars a semester. Similar practices are spreading among universities and according to David Puner, a representative for Dunkin’ Donuts, many of the brands franchisees work independently with colleges and universities to establish similar plans for students.

Though the cost of city living may seem steep at first glance, a little bit of know-how and a watchful eye for bargains can save a student a lot of time, stress, and money when planning a city outing.
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NYU's General Studies Program Leads to Transfer Woes

By Cathryn Horwitz

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Twenty-two year old Lael Laderman said she plans on applying to veterinary school. Having excelled at New York University for four years, leaving the General Studies Program for the College of Arts and Science with great enthusiasm for her major, Laderman hoped to be in vet school now.

But somewhere between GSP and CAS, someone missed a beat.

Laderman is taking her final required class as a fifth year senior.

NYU’s General Studies Program—a two year liberal arts core curriculum—gives its students an associate’s degree, after which they transfer to the school housing their intended major. However, some students have been encountering obstacles, from changing major requirements to poor communication with advising—whether GSP’s or their chosen school’s. Students have been left hanging, unsure where to go next, as the semesters tick by. But these students’ complaints may be part of larger problems in organization and communication in GSP, and perhaps NYU.

Though GSP certainly has many important and useful resources for its students—a thorough curriculum, personalized advising and a favorably small instructor to student ratio—which the students appreciate, at times they are not enough to balance out the negative experiences.

Jennifer E. Gottlieb, 20, a Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies major in the CAS, made the transfer out of GSP when most do: spring of her sophomore year. The process, however, was difficult for her as she was studying abroad in London that same semester.

Gottlieb explained that a GSP student is supposed to talk to their intended major’s department head at NYU’s campus in Manhattan.

“I had to do it all by email and it was really hectic,” she said.

In the end, she successfully transferred, but trouble with the advising department brewed ahead.

CAS requires one math course for the Morse Academic Plan (MAP)—the core program of the College of Arts and Science. Gottlieb said she was concerned about fulfilling this Quantitative Reasoning requirement (QR) with NYU, because she struggled with math. As an alternative, she hoped to take a summer math course during at the University of Massachusetts and transfer the credits.

Gottlieb contacted both GSP and CAS advising, as she was still in GSP, but it was CAS’s math requirement. But Gottlieb only became more stressed, confused and frustrated.

She said GSP advisers told her they could not advise her on CAS requirements, only on internal issues with GSP.

Gottlieb did not yet have an official CAS adviser to inquire about the specifics of the QR requirement, so she attended walk-in advising hours and met with a CAS adviser, Jennifer Bell, from whom she said she didn’t get any information.

“She pretty much flat out told me she couldn’t help me,” Gottlieb said. Bell explained that there were too many variables involved in determining whether the math credits would transfer to CAS: which school, what professor, what the syllabus was like, and what her final grade was.

Caught in limbo for the summer, Gottlieb said she worked very hard to achieve an A in the class at UMass. Though the credits did transfer in the end, Gottlieb found the situation incredibly stressful and frustrating.

But meeting a school’s core requirements, such as the QR requirement, is not a problem that GSP students alone experience, said Fred S. Schwarzbach, 58, an associate dean at GSP.

He explained that if, for example, an intended English major took an easier QR course to fulfill the requirement with minimal stress, and then decided to switch majors to psychology, it is possible the QR course that student took will not fulfill the major’s QR requirement.

“So I’m sure in that case the student may feel that the quality of advising was poor,” Schwarzbach said, “but it’s not really an advising issue so much as there are lots of complex requirements, and a lot of them will change depending on the student’s course of study.”

Certain requirements are consistent within NYU’s schools. For example, CAS’s language requirement calls for four semesters of the same language to fulfill the core requirement.

Laderman’s adviser for her Medieval and Renaissance Studies major told her that she needed three semesters of a modern language and two semesters of an ancient language in order to graduate with her major degree. Laderman took three semesters of Hebrew as her modern language, and two semesters of Latin as her ancient language.

Senior year crept up on Laderman, and her adviser did not address the issue that CAS would require her to finish another semester of Hebrew in order to graduate.

When her adviser made her aware of the issue, Laderman was already past the point where she could register for Hebrew in her final semester of senior year. She did not graduate with the rest of her senior class.

After fighting the decision for a semester, insisting she had completed all other requirements, and had taken not four, but five semesters of languages, even if they were two different languages, she gave in. She is now taking Intermediate Hebrew II in her fifth year at NYU and is struggling to recall information from its prerequisite courses, now almost two years displaced.

Laderman said she felt that GSP prepared her very well for CAS from an academic standpoint—for classes, intensive writing and studying techniques.

“But to prepare me to go into CAS for what I needed to do to graduate, they didn’t tell me,” Laderman said. She said she there were no informational meetings for incoming CAS students advertised.

Laderman also cited that she did not have an assigned GSP adviser. “They just kind of sent me to whoever was free,” she said.

But with dozens of majors in CAS, where most GSP students transfer, GSP staff must deal with unique advising issues.

Schwarzbach explained that when he began his tenure at NYU three years ago, one of the largest departments within CAS, which he declined to name, had radically restructured its program and requirements. GSP students account for about 15 or 20 percent of the majors in that particular department, and because of the changes, GSP advisers had been telling their students incorrect information.

“Looking back it’s easy to say, well that department should have given us advance warning and easily could have done so,” he said. “But it requires people working hard to think about every step of the process and to recognize that things change and it changes for our students, too.”

Schwarzbach said GSP faculty is working on ways to improve communication flow between its advising and that of the other schools, primarily CAS, to avoid problems such as these.

“One of the things we’ve also done is that we’ve advanced the timing of our students’ sophomore admission,” Schwarzbach explained.

GSP students used to transfer by April 1, only a couple weeks before CAS advising or fall begins, but this year, students transferred by the end of February, giving them more time to seek departmental advising before mid-April registration.

Svetlana Keselman, 20, a CAS junior majoring in English and Italian-Linguistics, found the GSP program very personal and rewarding.

“If GSP was a four year thing I would just stay in GSP,” Keselman said.

Keselman spoke highly of her GSP adviser, Martin Reichert, and said she had classes with him twice. She explained with the small classes, the professors knew everyone’s name, and could get to know their students better.

Schwarzbach also emphasized the favorably small instructor to student ratio.

“It’s…important that GSP has its own faculty and we’re a teaching faculty,” Schwarzbach said. “Students don’t encounter graduate assistants in our classes. They’re taught by full time faculty, in small groups.”

However experiencing up to two years in a school where professors give individual attention carries its own detriments. Ilona A. Margiotta, 20, a Gender and Sexuality Studies major, said she almost chose Psychology as her major, but GSP’s small classes did not prepare her for the major’s 200 person or more lectures.

Margiotta selected her major based on a GSP elective she took first semester of her sophomore year, after which she transferred into CAS a semester early, because of extra high school credits.

While she valued the GSP experience, and is happy that she discovered her passion for her major within the program, Margiotta said she did not see a difference between CAS and GSP beyond the name.

“I know they [GSP] like to coddle you but I don’t think I would have sunk down into the floor of the ocean if I had gotten into [CAS instead of GSP],” Margiotta said.

Schwarzbach sees distinct differences between CAS and GSP.

“We’re both liberal arts programs,” he said, “but the MAP is really nothing like a core curriculum. There are really only two classes in the MAP that every student will take: expository writing and Conversations with the West. Other than that every student is choosing from fairly large lists of different courses.

“Our curriculum is one coherent program of study, and every single student in the program will do it,” he said, “and I feel that’s a pretty important difference.”

GSP will continue to make improvements, and Schwarzbach said the school is already better than it was even two years ago about communicating with the CAS advising staff and directors of undergraduate studies and many large departments at CAS.

In the meantime, GSP’s academics are putting students on track to be in stellar standing with their new schools. Schwarzbach says GSP’s writing intensive curriculum prepares the students for their major classes.

Gottlieb felt GSP prepared her in many ways. Like Margiotta, an elective course offered at GSP inspired her major—“Near Eastern Cultures”—and she received credit towards her major from the class. She felt GSP laid the foundations for her to continue studying in CAS.

“I think that it just, like most organizations, has a few [traps] that I fell through,” Gottlieb said, “and that I know other people have fallen through.”

A New School Student Doing Something Odd Is Not New

by Walter Ancarrow

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In the future, everyone will be pleasured for $15. Until then, as one New School sophomore knows, it’s going to cost something closer to $1500, and that’s not for anything kinky.

Perry Gregoire, who chose her pseudonym to match her company’s French theme, works as personal assistant for the owner of an upscale New York city-based escort service. Gregoire doesn’t escort herself, but knows that, even when filing paperwork, her job is far from ordinary.

Traditionally, the collegiate crowd clamors for internships, or jobs as barista or salespeople. But some college students are taking a different path and snatching up unusual positions at odd jobs in order to stand out from the crowd and avoid cookie-cutter resumes.

For Gregoire, a typical day includes writing saucy bios about the escort (a personal favorite: “allow her legs to lead you for a night out, or let them keep you warm on a night in”), or doing background checks on clients, or interviewing people to find out what they can do with a prostate. While the whole thing has become second nature to Gregoire, starting in the business was a bit of a shock.

“As I went in I was like, ‘Am I really doing this?’ but eventually it was no big deal and [I] stopped thinking about it,” she said about her initial reaction.

But no matter how comfortable Gregoire gets with the job, the lives of escorts (and the men who love them) never get humdrum.

“One day a woman couldn’t do a photo shoot on the scheduled day because she had bruises all over from a wrestling match with one of the customers. And she just acted like it was no big deal,” recounted Gregoire.

She could go on and on with bizarre anecdotes and, in fact, she’s planning on writing a novel which does just that. A writing major, Gregoire knows her job gives her insights into a business most people know very little about. And that’s what makes her often times ridiculous job so valuable, Gregoire believes.

Cheryl Mazlen, an administrator at the Wasserman Center for Career Development at NYU, said that students looking for creative jobs might benefit from unusual experiences, as they help students stand out to employers.

“Take the transferable skills – the skills that could be marketed to the mainstream and put that on the resume,” she said.

As personal shopper for a 5-year old, Charlotte Simmonds hopes to somehow market her current job to future employers.

Simmonds, a sophomore at NYU, buys clothing for the girl, whose name Simmonds didn’t want to mention, approximately every month, though it’s usually less frequently. Because the girl’s parents work full-time and the girl’s nanny is older and foreign, Simmonds was hired to take care of the girl’s wardrobe. Simmonds is told how much she’s allowed to spend, but otherwise she’s free to make her own choices and bases her selections on personal tastes with an eye towards upcoming trends.

Simmonds would like a career in art, either as a curator or gallery owner, and believes her current job relies heavily on design.

“Basically, this job is about design and I’m designing an image for [the parent’s] child. The parents want the girl to project a certain image,” she said.

Although Simmonds loves what she does, she’s aware of the absurdity that comes with it.

“I find that kids have tendency to be really materialistic if they’re allowed. It’s such a naturally seductive thing for children. They don’t have a sense at all really of what it’s worth and why some people can have these things and others can’t,” she explained.

She added that some people might not agree with what she does.

Mazlen suggested leaving anything potentially controversial off the resume, instead, highlighting the good that comes with any job. However, before taking the job, students should decide for themselves if an odd job is beneficial by questioning their motives and considering the consequences.

Gregoire said she would stress the responsibility, multi-tasking, and people skills that come with her job and would just list “personal assistant” on her resume.

The stories about escorts will have to wait until her book.

Can't Afford NYU? Try Harvard

Tanya Burnett

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As NYU gears toward consolidating its staff and departments and plans for international campus expansion—amidst major tuition increases, other schools, like Brown University, are working to make education more affordable for their students through the Academic Enrichment Plan.

Private universities are known for their academic excellence and pricey tuition. But today, universities like Brown, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Dartmouth are making an effort to lower the cost of private education for students who receive financial aid. The Academic Enrichment Plan, approved by Brown University, is one example of the many endeavors of these universities to increase financial aid. The plan will eliminate parental contributions from most families earning less than $60,000 and will eliminate all loan requirements for students from families earning less than $100,000 a year. It will also reduce loan burdens for all other students who receive university financial aid. Such projects are making it possible for undergraduate students to attend Ivy League colleges and graduate with little or no debt.

On the other hand, America’s No.1 dream school, NYU has raised its tuition 5.5 percent in the past five years and is believed to continue to increase in the near future. At the same time, NYU’s Executive Vice President Mike Alfano announced a plan to stop hiring administrative staff and consolidate school departments last month. These efforts are said to save NYU $25 million dollars a year, which Alfano said could go towards financial aid and funding for the international expansion of NYU’s campus. Although the university has not released any plans for financial aid, they have disclosed plans to open satellite campuses in other countries and branch out to Governor’s Island, Downtown Brooklyn, and Midtown Manhattan. The enormous increase in tuition should force the university to tackle this issue first and then discuss the costly plan of expansion. However, that has not been the case.

Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor at Cornell and author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, explained that increasing financial aid has little to with the funds that NYU is currently raising through the administrative cuts. “Brown University has much larger endowments per student that NYU, which enables them to be so generous in financial aid.” The funds that Brown University receives from its alumni total close to $3 billion as opposed to NYU’s $2 billion. Ehrenberg also stated that Cornell has taken a similar approach to that of Alfano’s consolidation plan, which he believes will “make the non-academic side of the university more efficient.”

Others have their doubts. Steve Fletcher, a teaching assistant for the Concepts in Social and Cultural Analysis course and a graduate student who participated in the NYU graduate student strike three years ago, explained that Alfano’s plan to consolidate departments would greatly affect students. Fletcher stated, “Students rely on administrative staff for advice and help navigating their majors, their housing, their healthcare, and everything else that happens on campus. There’s no magic tech fix that can replace the high quality work and personalized attention students deserve, so the real result is to squeeze more work out of the already over-worked administrative staff that remain after the reorganization.” In addition, Fletcher is not convinced that any surplus of funds would actually go to financial aid. “It’s disingenuous for NYU to use its financial aid problem to justify spending cuts in administrative staff should bear the consequences of NYU’s failure of leadership on tuition and financial aid.”

While there has not been much pressure from students to further investigate NYU’s budget, they do express concern about their tuition and how their money is spent. A College of Arts and Sciences sophomore, Tenisha Cole, would like to know the “actual breakdown of NYU’s budget and how much of the endowment goes to tuition?” Cole’s financial aid package was covered mostly by her acceptance into the Higher Educational Opportunities Program (HEOP). HEOP is a state-funded program, which gives economical disadvantaged students the opportunity to attend and afford universities like NYU. This program, among other things, evaluated her mother’s financial status and covered a substantial amount of her tuition. Cole stated that NYU’s financial aid package was better than the other schools that she applied to, which included SUNY Albany and Binghamton, due to HEOP. However, Cole did not understand why there was such big disparity in the financial aid of both NYU and Brown. “Brown is also a private university like NYU. I do not understand why NYU cannot have a similar program to increase financial aid.” While Cole expressed that she had always dreamed of going to NYU, had she known about the financial aid plans of other schools she would have considered them. “It makes me sad because I am paying so much money to go to my dream school, when I could actually go to a better acclaimed school for less.”

Jewelle Bruce, a CAS sophomore, does not feel that NYU has been putting student’s tuition to good use. She said “You’d think that for the amount of money that I’m paying, books and meal plans would be cheaper, there would be a better quality of food in the dining halls, or even the residence halls would be nicer.” Furthermore, she felt that cuts in administration were not necessary to pump more money into financial aid. Bruce explained that the real culprit is NYU’s infatuation with expanding the campus which requires a large amount of funding.

Despite NYU’s costly tuition, the institution continues to get record numbers of applicants each year. Students are attracted to the constant action of NYU’s metropolitan campus. However, if the tuition continues to skyrocket, NYU will continue to be only a dream for many students.