Hi everyone,

With less than 12 hours until my first class, I decided that instead of giving advice or sharing some things about my day that I would instead write this post to all of you potential students.

Firstly, lets talk about our 101 classes. Like any other college in the country, your 100 level classes are your most basic class. They range from "Intro to Psych 101" to "Beginners Mandarin Chinese 101". However, a little known fact about these entry level classes are the supplies. If there's anything the school tells you as far as supplies goes is that you will need a little remote called an iClicker. Now what's an iClicker.. Well, to make things simple, it's essentially a little remote on it that is typically used to either take attendance or show your participation in a class. I would go into more detail but considering my first classes aren't until tomorrow that's all I can share on the iClickers. However, if there's one piece of advice I could give you than it would be don't buy from the bookstore. If you have $60 that you're okay with throwing away for a little remote than the bookstore is perfect, but if you want to be a little more frugal than see if you can buy one secondhand. In my case, I found someone on Facebook that was able to meet on campus and sell me a remote for half the price of the ones in the bookstore. Trust me, the professors are going to (typically) tell you the bookstore is the cheapest way to go, but listen to me when I tell you it's not. 

Meal swipes. A little known fact about them is actually also a very hard to explain. At UH meal swipes, AKA your meal plan, can range from 7 meals a week to (I believe) 20. However during your first week, the one before classes start, chances are you aren't going to use all of your meal swipes. When this happens, you're going to find yourself wondering, "But what am I going to do with the five meals I didn't have this week?" The answer, which took my friends and I two whole days to find out, is actually quite simple: The Market. Closest to Hale Aloha Lokelani, The Market is a little on-campus convenience store. Whenever you find yourself with extra meal swipes at the end of a week, simply go to The Market and buy the equivalent of your meals in food. Here's an example: Out of my 10 meals a week, I only had 3. With the extra 7 meals, each meal being $5.50, I was able to buy over $35 of food! In addition to your meal swipes, The Market also takes debit/credit and food cash (essentially dining dollars). A word of advice- do not go on a Saturday. As their busiest day Saturday at The Market is crowded, bought-out, and competitive. Just try and picture 30 college kids trying to do the math as to how many meals equal an entire case of ramen. And don't forget that there's only one case and 30 kids. It's insane. Have you ever seen an episode of "The Walking Dead"? Pick any scene from inside an abandoned, empty, cluttered grocery store and you've got The Market on a Saturday night. It's absurd, but since this is the only place that will take meal swipes, it's all you've got.



So that concludes this post! I hope those two things helped in some way. If not, at least you now know a little more about Manoa! 

Until next time,
Aislinn