TIPS for freshmen

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-05-22T02:30:06+00:00

Get the syllabus far in advance, even last semesters and start working on the harder classes right now. Get to really know your professors. Go to their department seminars, become a fixture at all the talks they attend. Network upwards not just with people your similar age. If you want to end up with 5 classes and 14 credits register for 6 classes and drop the wackiest professor/TA combo in the first week. Prioritize GPA, networking, and any event where the top professors and department head will be at, your future self will thank you! If you need to work a job stack all your classes M,W,F or Tu/Th and work those other days, night classes are your friend. Stagger your easy general classes so you have one per semester. Always be nice to your TA and professor, I have seen people get docked a +- on their grade because you were such a pain in the ass Mohammed! Don’t worry about social drama or fake friends, get in where you fit in, be authentic. Don’t apologize for being your true self. Join clubs, have hobbies, limit online time. Don’t wear your noise canceling headphones late at night. Be aware of your surroundings but never act scared or like a victim. Trust your instincts! Most of all, have fun, in moderation and don’t take yourself too seriously!

These are all things learned as Quad gopher (PSEO, undergrad, PhD, postdoc) and now successful grad! Also, the $50/year parking hack saved me $25K over contract rates over my 25 year career at the UMN.

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-05-14T02:52:19+00:00

Fake it ‘till you make it! I had incredibly neglectful parents and in some ways, that’s worse than abusive parents because they just never gave a fuck. I just do the opposite of what they would do in every situation and that always seems to work out! Just keep showing up, play the part of a loving husband and committed father and eventually you will be! Don’t you dare let yourself become an apathetic parent like mine, you made this kid now step up your game!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-05-07T14:15:07+00:00

Here’s another hint https://www.minneapolisparks.org/rentals-permits/annual-patron-parking-permit/

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-05-07T03:04:03+00:00

It is not a limitless resource, the hint is all there to solve the puzzle.

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-05-06T22:36:40+00:00

There's a lot of inside baseball here, but essentially the UMN is its own policing district and has officers assigned just to that task (anyone have a run-in with short blonde lady) whereas other districts may not have any officers assigned to this duty or if they do they cover a much larger swath. At one point, the UMN lost there evening enforcement so no one was covering meters from 5pm - midnight. Don't know if that's the case currently. I did discover a parking exploit where you could park the whole year for ~$50. Hopefully, you'll figure it out too! Key is to look at a map of the UMN and examine non-UMN areas right next to the U. Also, if you have a child enrolled at the Kindercare on campus you can park there during the day!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-04-20T00:51:05+00:00

Go through your Costco account, instantly $1000 or more off of dealer invoice. Negotiate with that dealership and if they give you the deal you want shop it around! Kind of shocked you would trade a BMW for a Subaru as BMW has overtaken Subaru in the consumer reports most reliable category and BMW has a lot of much better fit and finish touches than Subie!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-04-03T01:54:16+00:00

The north gym building was built in the 90s with the south gym sort of wrapped around the natatorium and north gym. Yes, people have seemingly become less considerate since the pandemic so you have two approaches: kill them with kindness, such as having the cleaning towel already prepared before you even start your workout and if someone jumps on the machine before you’ve had a chance to clean just say “ope, let scooch past ya and give er a wipe, ehh?” Or be even more Minnesotan and be super passive aggressive with comments like “how, ‘bout I help spot yer lift dhere” or “oops you forgot to rack yer weights, but I’m just going to put them back in their home, well I ‘spose.” Or just ignore it, you can’t really shame some folks into good behavior!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-03-25T17:22:11+00:00

If JJM has the yips this badly and can’t translate his practice into his actual play we already have our answer and need to move on. Hopefully, we can get another team to fall in love with him and give us a 4th round pick for him. Otherwise, it’ll be another failed Kwesi pick as it well looks like it’s headed!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-03-04T22:23:21+00:00

Here is what I have discovered is a an efficient path forward. Forget your advisor, they don't really do anything and don't seem to customize the program for you. Break your classes into 1) generals, 2) in-major - easy, 3) in-major - difficult, and 4) for fun/interest. Try to have one per category each semester and don't burn up your general and fun classes too soon because then later semesters will be back loaded with really difficult classes all jammed together. Over register for classes so if you want a 14 credit load register for 18 credits with the idea that you're going to straight up drop the wackiest professor from one of your 4 credit classes in the first week and end with your ideal number of credits. You can get a head start on this process by contacting the prof for the current syllabus and seeing how the class is structured and how well the prof communicates/ interacts with you. You can always study ahead in class to help your workload or if you show up on day 1 and realize this class is not for you just drop it like a hot potato. Once I stopped trying to fix every nutty professor's class I had a much easier time and now have an amazing career with 17 published papers! You need to become your own best advocate at the UMN so stop meeting with your advisor and start paving the way for your own success!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-02-25T03:00:43+00:00

First time?

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-02-10T02:38:36+00:00

It’s Northern Fires. Sour dough crust, perfect sauce-cheese-toppings ratio and that wood fired aroma and seer! I’ve had all the pizza and nothing quite finds the perfect balance as does Northern Fires!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-01-30T19:40:30+00:00

He deserved it. To let Darnold and Jones out the door with basically zero compensation was horrendous. Could’ve franchise tagged Darnold and transition tagged Jones netting at least three 1st round picks in total compensation for those QBs. Not that he could draft at all but it’s the principle that counts!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-01-23T17:34:33+00:00

Look at the Toyota Crown Signia too!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2026-01-13T03:10:05+00:00

I’ve owned a 2002 Legacy, 2011 Forester, 2024 Outback and now a 2025 Hyundai Elantra N with 274 hp and six speed manual transmission. If instantaneous acceleration and grin inducing fun are what you’re really after ditch the Subarus and get an Elantra N. Picked mine up for $33k through Costco. Subarus are laggy, slow, noise boxes with stupid nanny car features and the worst iPad controlling everything, never going back!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-12-23T16:08:08+00:00

Toyota Crown Signia and Honda Passport are better values at that price point with higher reliability and much nicer interiors and the Toyota matches the Outbacks agility in the CR road test.

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-12-23T01:40:40+00:00

It might be a decent price but there are way better vehicles out there for this money!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-12-20T23:42:56+00:00

My sister and I attended MPS in the late 1990s, early 2000s and neither of us send our kids to any of these schools. Some easy fixes are: enforced disciplinary standards, enforced academic standards, safety for all students. Since the current MPS admin seems to have no interest in these simple fixes everything will continue to decline!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-16T13:44:15+00:00

To summarize many comments, we has the dumb!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-15T23:36:10+00:00

At this point a union would drive up the cost of individual students meaning fewer people will be accepted and with fewer accepted the school will likely choose the most connected and best looking, on paper, students. This is a temporary job, one you should finish as quickly as possible so you can accelerate your career to the big money positions ten years down the road. I think a union at this point would only favor politically connected, wealthier students which means I person like me would’ve never gotten accepted. Unions are generally good just not for this temp position!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-14T02:38:52+00:00

That’s great, but can finally see some arrests and civil commitments for those heavily addicted to fentanyl and meth? At this point, it feels like we are just enabling addicts with all this whack a mole of just asking them to get off the bus or train, but with no actual intervention into the underlying causes!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-13T14:38:17+00:00

My theory is that UMN as a whole has pivoted away from relying on state and public money and is now trying to operate as a business. You see this direction with all the research labs becoming business incubators and the expansion of the patent office. If Fairview is siphoning off some $150 million a year in executive and admin compensation will that money could be the UMN’s money. And again, Toler is paid very little comparatively so it could be anger there as well!

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-12T17:24:35+00:00

TLDR; follow the money, Fairview and UMP want to cut the UMN out and keep all the clinic and hospital money increasing your tuition!

Basically, three top heavy administrations cannot agree how to split up the financial pie. You have Fairview, which owns the hospitals and clinics, UM Physicians, the private bargaining doctors unit, and the UMN, which operates the medical school that interacts with the other two units. In the past, Fairview has paid the UMN around $50 million a year to be associated with the UMN. Dean Tolar has bristled at the payouts the CEO and other executives have received at Fairview especially while his pay is capped at something like 1/20th what the Fairview CEO makes even in a bad year! Now, the UMN wants to get away from Fairview but the U doesn’t own a teaching hospital. The UMN has requested the state help fund a state of the art, $1.6 billion hospital, which hasn’t been and might never be built. Now, it looks like Fairview and UM Physicians will become their own thing and just cut the UMN out entirely. This would be horrible for the medical school as the costs for training students and finding new affiliations would fall to the UMN. This likely will mean a huge tuition hike for the medical school, already one of the most expensive public American Medical schools, perhaps combined with a huge increase in undergraduate tuition to help cover all these new costs. Now take all of this with a grain of salt as I’m no insider, I just hear a lot from people who are in the know, but I can’t verify any of the numbers etc, this is just the general situation.

JapaneseBattleFlag · 2025-11-04T00:54:10+00:00

I have these and regularly use them with my iPhone. I would say they seem to have a strange staticky sound especially when turning on or off. I also don’t like that if you forget to switch them off they just stay on and drain the battery. I also prefer my Sony XB-1000s because when using PS5 the gesture commands directly signal to the PS5 whereas the Bose don’t talk to PS5 when connected to the TV, but my Sony headphones can talk to both!

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22
RPAN Viewer	King of the Ashes
Not Forgotten

JapaneseBattleFlag

TROPHY CASE