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College and my paranoia...I need some advice

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    #1

    College and my paranoia...I need some advice

    In the fall I am going to be going to college, it's a community college but still college nonetheless. The thing is that I'm really excited, but also scared to death because all my experiences with schools have been bad. I have an old laptop because we can't afford anything else, I'm not sure if i'll have the money before school starts for a new one. It's a Dell Latitude D610, it still runs on windows XP and it has Microsoft 2000, which I think will become a problem. Even more so since I have to use my moms computer to print things because we don't have the CD so I can use it with this one. I'm really afraid I'm going to be made fun of for having this old laptop, plus it almost always has to be plugged in because the battery doesn't last very long.

    Does anyone have any advice on what I could do about being so afraid of being made fun of?
    Check out my blog, it's a good way to stay entertained if you get bored.
    http://fallenangeli.blogspot.com/
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    #2
    Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

    College is not the same as high school. You will be dealing with a large enough pool of people that of someone is that juvenile you can easily avoid them. Not only that, chances are many of your classmates will take notes the old-fashioned way, and use the campus computer lab. I know you're heading into unknown territory, but I'm fairly sure a hand-me-down laptop will be the least of your worries once you're actually in classes.

    Good luck!
    Great Grandmother's Kitchen

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      #3
      Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

      I agree with Dez; don't sweat it. You're going to have a handful of dicks everywhere that you go, but you can probably avoid them.
      "Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children." - Khalil Gibran

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        #4
        Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

        Explain to anyone who sniggers that you are keeping your old laptop because it works, and thereby protecting the earth's precious resources. Sieze the moral high ground. And make fun of them for being a bunch of materialists. And good luck. Mr Penry always told our children not to come home for at least six weeks so that they wouldn't be homesick... and it worked too.
        www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


        Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

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          #5
          Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

          Thank you guys! You were really helpful and I am hoping things can go well for me.
          If I stay true to my path I should be fine.
          Check out my blog, it's a good way to stay entertained if you get bored.
          http://fallenangeli.blogspot.com/

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            #6
            Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

            You know most business still run on XP. Nothing wrong with that!
            Satan is my spirit animal

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              #7
              Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

              As someone intimate with community college culture, you should know that to me, you sound like at *least* 40% of the population of my 26,000 student campus. But even at my <1,000 student liberal arts school, where some kids are just plain stupid friggin rich, there's a visible and respected part of the population facing all manner of economic and other disadvantages, notably the international student population, transfers, and students on scholarships as well as just run-of-the-mill students with, say, an old PC in their dorm.

              Plus, good professors will work with you concerning any problems you may be experiencing not for lack of effort. For example, students who buy used books that aren't the correct version for a class are generally not frowned upon, assisted whenever possible, and often helped, in my experience, by sympathetic classmates.

              Anyone falling below the standards of respectful behavior I loosely described aren't worth your time to think about.

              Good luck. And (forgive me, I found this the single best piece of advice though trite), go to class *every time*. Unwritten papers, lateness, pajamas, one-night-stands, and hangovers aside, jus to. It's always better that way.

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                #8
                Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

                Stick an Atari sticker on it, say its retro ;-p

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                  #9
                  Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

                  I wouldn't sweat it too much, honestly. I'm a junior (almost a senior, woot) in college right now, and I can tell you that on the list of things that college kids worry about, your laptop probably won't garner too much attention, and in some classes, you may even be asked specifically not to bring it. I'm a creative writing major, and I have several classes within my department that ban laptops from the classroom. That said, my advice is to get yourself a thumb drive. I'm assuming that even your community college will have access to computers or some form of a library for student use, and if you're worried about toting an older laptop around, do your assignments at home, save them to the thumb drive, and you can print them at school or something if printer usage is an issue.
                  It's a really, really cool thing, to be able to show people that you can be yourself, and you should be proud of yourself, and you should own who you are and what you're about, and never make apologies for it.
                  -Adam Lambert


                  Created by MyFitnessPal.com - Free Weight Loss Tools

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                    #10
                    Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

                    I never actually have my laptop in class. Either I'm in a lab with school machines or I'm in a class that doesn't use computers in the room. You might get stuck using an open lab or the campus library if your system won't support software used in the course but that's the largest problem I'd expect.
                    life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                    Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                    "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                    John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                    "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                    Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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                      #11
                      Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

                      Even an old computer should be fine for college unless you're studying programming or something like that. If it can run some sort of version of word and has a web browser, you're good to go! If you need it to run a bit faster, you can defrag it and delete your temp files. If you're running XP that should give it a bit of a kick If you need something to occasionally do more, there will be computers at the college you can use.

                      Everyone else is right that college is not the same as high school. I can't see anyone really making fun of you for stuff. People grow up a lot at that point and everyone has better things to do than to focus on petty stuff like that. Also, since the only people there are the people who WANT to be there, it tends to weed out a lot of the crap that goes on in high school

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                        #12
                        Re: College and my paranoia...I need some advice

                        To reassure you a little, maybe- i was bullied badly through school and college has been a MASSIVE improvement. Most folks seem to mind their own, if they don't like you they just ignore you for the most part. Save a couple isolated incidents all has been well and that seems to be what most people i've talked to have experienced. My friends and i all joke about each other's stuff and prod and poke but it's in good fun. It's easy to find people you fit in with in college in most cases and folks you fit in with will probably not mind the laptop. Besides the financial backgrounds of folks in college seems to vary widely in general. You'll be fine.

                        ☽ selume proferre ☾

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