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(05/22/14 2:00pm)
Deciding on a major is just the first of the many difficult decisions there is to make in college. I began my time at Auburn as a nutrition science major, hoping to go to medical school upon the completion of my undergraduate degree. I quickly found, after taking three science classes (two of them honors) my first semester, that medical school wasn't for me. I switched to the nutrition and dietetics major, which was similar to my initial nutrition major, just without all the medical school prerequisites built in. Even still, I couldn't make myself enjoy all the science classes. Since I liked to write, I switched to journalism my junior year, a discipline that couldn't have felt more opposite than what I had previously studied. It's unfortunate many universities force freshman to immediately declare a major, because often even the most assured students don't know what they want to do. There's a lot of pressure for freshmen to declare a major, and Auburn has more than 140 to choose from. While it's hard to know what you want to do, there are ways to graduate on time even if you change your major to something in science to something in liberal arts. I am able to graduate almost on time - in four years plus a summer semester. I'll be done with classes in May and will get my diploma after I intern in the summer, which is not an uncommon thing to do if you have a full-time internship in your curriculum. I consider myself lucky. I know handfuls of people who have similarly changed their major and are graduating more than a summer semester late. Here are two key ways to avoid this:
Focus on core classes for your first year. Auburn requires courses in English, history, science, math and social science, which can easily fill hours for your first two semesters. This can also be a way to discover interests you may not have known about before.
Take one class that pertains to your declared major to test the waters. You don't want to be a junior taking your first major-related class and then realize you don't like it.
(04/25/14 4:00pm)
People often question the validity of modern artwork and wonder what exactly makes a piece of art have value and a place in the art world.
This is particularly true for minimalistic pieces, like the work of Ellsworth Kelly or, for abstract pieces, Jackson Pollock.
I am neither an art historian or an artist, but merely someone who has an appreciation for the history, ideas, practices and people behind art. I'd like to present a few ideas to those who wonder why some art is considered art.
Consider Fauvism, a style of art that emerged in the early twentieth century characterized by strong color palettes and painterly strokes. (Think of Henri Matisse.)
Critics wrote the artists off as "fauves," which translates from French into "wild beasts." If you can manage to transport yourself back to that time, from 1904-1908, this criticism makes sense. Patrons of the art were used to looking at the more moderate impressionistic works of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, so the bright coloring of Fauvist work was jarring.
This sort of criticism happens all the time in everyday life. People are naturally averse to change and radical ideas.
To cite an example from history, Europeans initially mocked Orville and Wilbur Wright for their innovations in flight. Streaming online video was at first ignored by many, but now Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Instant Video have closed down traditional video rental stores, such as Blockbuster.
New ideas and techniques are the cornerstone of the art world, pushing it forward to create something that is entirely new, because who wants to look at the same thing over and over again?
Perhaps it might be helpful to think of art not in just terms of aesthetics, but in terms of emotion as well.
I like to apply Ernest Hemingway's iceberg theory with art: what you see at the surface is only a small part of what lies underneath. The tip out of the water is what you see - the painting on the wall, the sculpture in the garden - but what lies beneath the water is much more.
It consists of the story behind the work, the life of the artist, the world at the time, the emotions of the viewer.
Art isn't something you just look at. It's like a novel in that you enter a world that is altogether unique; a place with history, culture and characters.
Don't just look at the tip of the iceberg. Art, in any form, is the most beautiful and complicated combination of aesthetics, history, politics, skill and culture.
(03/17/14 6:15pm)
The official start of spring is Thursday, March 20, but the state of Alabama rarely follows regular seasonal weather patterns. We are all too familiar with a pleasant 70-degree week followed immediately by the threat of an ice storm.
But since we are on the brink of spring, it might finally, thankfully, be time to ready our wardrobes for warmer weather.
So, while it's technically winter for another few weeks, it's time to pack away tights, coats, chunky scarves, sweaters and boots to save for next fall.
Airy fabrics, bright colors and loose layers will be the keys in your wardrobe to transition from winter to spring.
When putting together this issue, I wanted to give readers something they couldn't get anywhere else. That means you won't find news from the runway, but instead fashion as it pertains to Auburn University and its students.
Style coverage is often geared toward women, but we didn't want to leave the guys out. Becky Sheehan tapped some of Auburn's most stylish men, including one who interned at Alexander Wang in New York City, to give to tips on how to dress your best.
Also on the topic of interning in NYC, Amber Franklin talked to three Auburn apparel design students who are or will be interning the big city at designers Oscar de la Renta, Nicole Miller and Theory.
Online shopping and e-commerce have become a huge business over the last decade. It's changed the way we shop. Anna Claire Conrad examines how local stores have kept up with online shops by amping up social media presence.
To showcase a few ways to transition your wardrobe into spring weather, we teamed up with downtown boutique Behind the Glass and headed to the Overall Company for a photo shoot. A special thanks goes out to the Behind the Glass team who modeled, styled and took photos for shoot.
If you're looking for more style inspiration, look no further than the university campus. Photographers Emily Enfinger, Sarah May and Raye May went around and took pictures of student style on the street and asked about personal style essentials.
But for every guy or gal who is dressed up for class, there's a handful of girls who are wearing oversized T-shirts and leggings. I've examined why college girls, with closets full of nice clothes, decide to dress down for class.
This issue is no definitive guide to navigating the spring season in style, but I hope it's served it's purpose: to inspire and motivate personal expression through fashionable choices.
(10/21/13 2:00pm)
Many of the world's great ideas are born in high-rise offices of bustling cities or in the minds of scholars working away at research in institutional laboratories or technology campuses. For Stacy Brown, the founder of local restaurant success Chicken Salad Chick, the best ideas are simply born in the kitchen.
In 2012 the Auburn Chamber of Commerce named Brown, an energetic blonde from Rome, Ga., and Auburn alumna, because of her successful 63 Chicken Salad Chick franchises all over the South. Her recipe for success began with a modest plan and a bit of patience.
She began humbly: the mother of three, recently divorced and in need of a source of income.
"For their stability, I said, 'I've got to figure out something to do from the house,'" Brown said.
Limited to the confines of her home, Brown headed to the kitchen and was struck with an idea, or rather, a craving.
"I happened to be obsessed with chicken salad," she said. "I thought I was a connoisseur of chicken salad. I didn't make my own, I just tasted everybody's. I thought I was like a fine wine steward."
Brown started her "science experiment" in the kitchen, cooking pounds of chicken in trial and error batches of what eventually became the Classic Carol, her regular chicken salad sold in stores today.
Initially, Stacy passed around the tubs of her creation to friends, neighbors and her hairdresser. Word quickly spread about the chicken salad, and she recruited her current husband, Kevin Brown, for business advice. Kevin jumped on board, and the business was born.
Before she began to sell her creation, Brown customizing batches for friends by throwing in unique ingredients.
"This idea started to unfold and evolve. Everybody makes chicken salad differently because everyone likes it a different way," Brown said. "It's not just a one-recipe thing. Why not make one for everybody?"
Brown created four flavors, a logo and a name -- Chicken Salad Chick -- and set out door-to-door, with tubs of chicken salad in hand.
To name the flavors, Kevin suggested playing off the "chick" theme and naming them after special ladies in his and Stacy's lives. They made batches for their mothers: Stacy's mother, Nutty Nana and Kevin's, Mimi's Mix.
"Looking back, I think (the customers) thought I was pitiful," Brown said. "The important thing is, they bought it once, so whatever their reason was, I'm OK with that. They bought it again. I never felt sorry for myself and never felt pitiful. I thought I had a great idea, and I was going to go out there and sell it."
The turning point for the business came when she took a bowl of chicken salad to the teacher's lounge at Ogletree Elementary School, where her children attended. The teachers loved it, and that's when the phone began ringing off the hook with orders.
"How could you quicker get a word spread throughout a community than through the teachers, who are connected to every family?" Brown said.
Brown began making huge batches, sometimes more than 20 pounds at a time. Now, Brown said Auburn consumes an average of 500 pounds per day.
Despite that Chicken Salad Chick had a logo, Brown insists it was initially only supposed to be for a bumper sticker on her car with a phone number for people to call in orders.
Brown recalled a late-night grocery-store run when she received a phone call while sitting at a stoplight.
"It (was) someone in the car next to me, drunk as all get-out, saying, 'I want some chicken salad,' like I was Willie's Wings or something."
Suddenly, the health department called after an anonymous source revealed Brown's in-house chicken salad business. The department explained it was illegal for her to cook something in her home and sell it. Brown put production to a halt.
This fact didn't seem to deter hungry customers. Brown said people would call her, begging her to make them just one order.
"I felt like I was bootlegging chicken salad," Brown said. "It felt like a dirty thing in the back parking lot."
Despite the apparent success of her product, the health department shutdown left Brown deflated. After all her hard work and the option to stay home with the kids, she feared returning to a full-time job and disappearing from their daily lives.
Kevin, fortunately, had a plan. He figured there was enough success for them to open a small, inexpensive takeout-only location to cook and sell the chicken salad - a place that Brown, who had no business experience, could easily manage. They purchased a modest space on 555 Opelika Road - a location still open today.
After renovating the space themselves, Kevin was let go from his software-sales job.
"He has no income, I have no income," Brown said. "We both have families to support. We were scared. We had put every penny of our savings into this chicken-salad restaurant."
They powered through concerns and opened on Jan. 7, 2008, christening the new place with friends and family. No customers showed up.
"And I was like, they were right, this is stupid," Brown said. "I cannot believe I put all my money into this. Then, the first customer came."
Since that first customer, Brown said business has been nonstop.
They prepared 40 pounds of chicken salad for the first day and sold out in two hours. The second day, they made 80 pounds and sold out, again in two hours.
In November 2008, Brown and Kevin took their partnership a step further, parted for a few days from Chicken Salad Chick and flew to Jamaica to get married.
Much has changed since that year, but Brown said making food and serving customers has always been her top priority.
"The only thing we take seriously is the chicken salad and our service," Brown said. "We understand that we are a chick-y place, and we understand that the names are silly, and we understand that it makes people feel silly to say the names. People will come in giggling and saying, "I want the Fancy Nancy because I'm fancy.'"
Brown cites the support of her staff, which is quickly growing, and her husband, as major components in running the rapidly expanding company.
"The reason, internally, we're able to keep going like this, is every person in here has an absolute passion for their position," Brown said. "The momentum and the atmosphere in here are unbelievable, because nobody is in a position that they don't love. It feels good to come to work because everybody is happy."
Ali Rauch, the business' director of marketing, began working in December 2012 and praised the positive atmosphere Brown creates for employees.
"It's so much fun," Rauch said. "I say fun a lot, but it is. She's a very fun-loving person, and I think she realizes how blessed and lucky she is to be where she is, because it didn't start like this. It's all taken on a life of its own, and she's just along for the ride. This is where her passion is, and she didn't even realize that until five years ago."
Jessica Claussen, who graduated from Auburn in May 2013 with a degree in psychology, has worked for Chicken Salad Chick since her sophomore year. When applying for graduate school, she asked Kevin if he would write her a letter of recommendation, but Kevin had another idea. Instead of going off to school, the Browns wanted to keep Claussen on staff to work as a corporate trainer. She accepted, and said the family-like atmosphere is one of the reasons she wanted to stay on.
"It's such a team effort," Claussen said. "I've worked for them for years, and they're two of the most hardworking and best people who deserve absolutely every bit of success that they're having."
As for working with her husband, Brown said their polar opposite personalities are what keep the business and family running. Brown said Kevin is efficient, organized and business-oriented, while she is focused on the creative side.
Brown said the two constantly talk about work at home, bringing their different viewpoints to one. She likens their owning a business together like having a child - an attachment so dear that it can't be understood until it actually happens to you.
"There's nobody else I could talk to about this that would understand it and have the same feelings about it that I have as Kevin. It's a great thing."
Ultimately, Brown said Chicken Salad Chick has come to be less about food service and more about serving others.
"In the beginning, we thought it was chicken salad, because in the beginning, I just had to pay the power bill," Brown said. "It was supposed to be a car magnet. That's all. I think because of that, how it's all happened, it helps Kevin and I keep it all in perspective. Because it was so clearly not our plan, we want to be good stewards of what the plan actually is. We are just very grateful for every day."
(06/28/13 1:46am)
Like is a word with many meanings. Usually overused and often misused, like is a bad habit that plagues the speech of young generations. It's unprofessional, adds an element of uncertainty to a conversation and makes me internally cringe when I hear it. Still, perhaps the worst part about misusing the word is I do it, and in abundance.
The habit began in Southern California's San Fernando Valley in the 1970s when teenage girls began to speak in a social dialect called Valley Speak. Words including like, totally, whatever and way became fixtures in daily conversation.\0x2028 Examples in pop culture are the movie Clueless, Shaggy from Scooby Doo and Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Although to hear a real-life like misuser, turn your attention to the nearest female (and sometimes male) millennial.
Misuses, for the most part, fly rapid-fire from the mouths of the younger crowd. But the power of change lies in knowledge. After research and consulting a dictionary, I've found identifying correct uses and misuses is helpful when trying to drop the habit. Here is your cheat sheet.
Correct uses of like:
Similarity: saying something is like another thing. Analogies fall under this category, as well.
Example: You look like your mom.
Enjoyment: saying you like something.
Example: I like the color blue. Misuses of like:
Describing speech: using like instead of said, remarked, whispered, yelled, etc.
Incorrect: He was like, yeah, I'll be there.
Correct: He said, yeah, I'll be there.\0x2028
Hedge: using like as an approximation or in un-certainty.\0x2028
Incorrect: I ran, like, six miles.\0x2028
Correct: I ran approximately six miles.\0x2028
Filler: also called a vocalized pause by linguists, which are used to keep the conversation going when you have nothing else to say. In this instance, like can often be replaced with ah, um, uh and you know.
Incorrect: So, like, when are we leaving?
Correct: So, we are we leaving?
These nontraditional uses of like often accompany the words so, really and literally, and often involve exaggeration. Avoiding the misuse of like, as well as the three words in the last sentence, can dramatically increase both your vocabulary and credibility.
Indeed, saying like is a difficult habit to quit.
Talking is infinitely harder when policing every word that comes out of my mouth. It's been an incredibly contradicting journey.
I've found when I'm conscious of avoiding like, I hesitate even when I'm about to use it correctly. I secretly snicker when friends misuse it, but when I hear myself say it, I feel like an idiot. (Note the correct usage in the previous sentence. Avoiding the misuse of like in writing is much easier than when speaking.)
The hypocritical life is the hardest life.
(06/06/13 7:34pm)
It seems there is no impossible task for a smartphone. It can be your planner, book, camera, radio, news source and now, your accountability partner.
(05/30/13 5:44pm)
Without a doubt, the news and media affect people.
(05/25/13 2:14am)
Although hundreds of miles away from Auburn, the tornado that hit Moore, Okla. on Monday, May 20 was far too close to home for Carson Stroud, junior in aviation management.
(05/21/13 11:35pm)
Decisions are something we make every day. Important or unimportant, it's nearly second nature to seek out a second opinion on a decision, whether from a friend or family member.
(04/12/13 4:13pm)
We live in a world where public and private lives have become closely linked, due in part to the meteoric rise in use of social media. While participation in social media is a rite of passage and an expected behavior in, it's important to realize there are repercussions in living such a public life-especially when considering jobs.
(04/01/13 5:48am)
Keeping track of money involves more than subtracting amount spent from amount saved. You've got checking and savings accounts, credit card, retirement funds if you're ahead of the game, loans and whatever else you might need. While money is arguably not what life is about, it's impossible to ignore the importance of personal finances in day-to-day situations.
(03/21/13 10:31pm)
During spring break, many make their annual southbound journey to warmer climates to tan, take a break from stressful classes and party with other student spring breakers. Whether it be in a condo, beach house or Caribbean-bound cruise, the getaway is meant to be a weeklong respite.
(03/11/13 4:42pm)
Fashion has changed. Long gone are the cumbersome rules that have invisibly governed personal style. As of late, the often-rigid restrictions of dressing have mostly disappeared, allowing for true freedom in expression of style.
(03/08/13 4:38pm)
There comes a point when a need for organization requires more than notes on an iPhone, lists on brightly colored Post-It notes and a weekly planner. Some things in life are too important to lose track of. Evernote offers a solution for just that.
(03/08/13 4:09pm)
For Scott Couch, being a photographer is a lifestyle. Despite having a full-time job, the '94 Auburn grad dedicates as much time as he can to his part-hobby part-business venture in outdoor photography.
(02/27/13 7:09am)
As a college student, getting enough sleep is a nightly struggle. A good night's rest is always losing to the ever-present power struggle with classes, studying and extracurricular activities. But did you know there's an app for that?
(02/22/13 7:53pm)
The lines between reality television shows and our everyday reality have long been blurred. It's not a secret that scenes in popular shows are often scripted, centering around creating drama and action that will bolster number of viewers and network ratings.
(02/14/13 6:18am)
Twitter announced their newest social media endeavor, Vine, at the end of January, which allows users to share six-second video clips, including sound, with other users. Perhaps most comparable to the concept and layout of Instagram, Vine adds a new visual element to our online presence.
(01/31/13 5:28am)
Kelsey Cardinal is passionate. As a junior in biomedical sciences and public health, she has worked as a scribe in an emergency room in Montgomery and is currently serving as the national president for Silver Wings, a non-profit student organization that supports the United States Air Force.
(02/02/13 6:11pm)
Many students find it difficult to eat a healthy snack on campus.
"I always have trouble eating a healthy snack when I'm on campus," said Lindsey Heim, junior in biomedical sciences. "It seems like everything is so expensive, and there aren't that many options. It's really inconvenient."
However, Eric Smith, the director of Health Promotion and Wellness Services on campus, said various vendors around the university offer healthy options for students who are looking for them.
"There are some great things, you just have to look for it. It may not be the first bag of chips that jumps off the aisle at you," Smith said.
Smith said there are a number of points to consider when weighing options for a quick snack.
Smith said it's best to stick with natural foods and to try to eat as well balanced as possible between protein, carbohydrates and fat.
"Obviously you're going to want to steer clear of the processed foods like candy and chips," Smith said. "A well-balanced snack, whether it's almonds, whether it's pistachios with a little dried fruit thrown in there, that's a great way to go."
While it's important to have a snack to tie the appetite over until the next meal, Smith said it's also about maintaining energy.
"I do food a little bit differently. I kind of look at it as fuel," Smith said. "To me, it's more of an energy source. So if I start to get a little tired, sometimes I'll grab a little snack to fire up my metabolism and give me a little energy boost. To get through, a little bit."
As far as ideal caloric values for snacks go, Smith said it depends on weight management goals. On average, those who wish to maintain their weight should eat between 150 and 220 calories for a snack.
Smith urges that variation in snacks is key as well.
"I think one of the most challenging things people talk about when they talk about their food choices is people get stuck in these ruts and stuck in these patterns where every day at 10 a.m.
"I have this, this and this," Smith said. "And even if it's something healthy, it may not be the best thing. Just add some variety and pick out something else healthy."
Madeleine Holmes, senior in nursing, said she always has snacks with her because of her busy on-the-go schedule.
"I have to go to clinicals several days a week, so it's important to take lots of snacks with me because we're there all day. I like things like granola bars or the hummus cups that come with pretzels," Holmes said.
Even with seemingly healthy options like granola bars, Smith said it's important to look at the nutrition facts and serving size to check for hidden sugars or fats.
"Obviously campus does have quite a bit of the quick fix kind of snacks. Even quick fixes like CliffBars or stuff like that, those are chock-full of calories, fats and sugars, and those are really designed to keep you out there when you're riding your mountain bike," Smith said.
"If you're choosing something along the lines of a quick fix, realize that portion size is very important and eating half of it may be the way to go."
Here is a list of healthy options that can be found around campus. It's important to note that caloric values are based on one serving size.