An Alternative to Parking on Campus

Contributer: Katie Avra

Why Ride the Bus?             

• Money!  I decided to start riding the bus when comparing the cost of a student parking pass and the cost of a student bus pass. Parking passes were nearly 4 x the cost of a bus pass, $300 vs. $75.
• Parking was another factor.  Once you get to campus, finding a decently close parking space is tough and many students end up parking in the Commonwealth Stadium Lot.  For those who venture to park, LexTran has free bus service for UK students from the Commonwealth Stadium parking lot. 

How much is Bus Fare?

• Students with valid ID: $.80
• Adults: $1.00
• Individuals with disabilities and a LexTran ID: $.50 

Should I Buy a Pass?

You have 2 good options with the Class Pass:

• For $50 you can buy a fall or spring pass with your student ID.
• For just $25 more at $75, you can buy an academic year pass. 

Here is the math part:

• The student rate of riding the bus is $.80.
• $75 is the cost of an academic year Class Pass.
• At the rate of $.80, after 94 rides on the bus, you have used the amount your Class Pass cost at $75.
• If you ride the bus 5 days/week to and from home  
• That equals 10 rides/week
• 32 weeks in the school year = 320 rides
• After the initial 94 rides that equal the cost of the pass, you have received 226 free rides.

By October 4^th I had made 94 trips on LexTran so my class pass paid for itself.  I have now had 160 free rides on LexTran.  You can purchase a bus pass online at LexTran’s website http://lextran.com/buy-a-pass or at the transit center at 200 East Vine Street M-F 8:00am-4:00pm.   

Commonly Used Routes

• Route 1- Woodhill travels Euclid.
• Route 3- Tates Creek travels Avenue of Champions and Euclid
• Route 5- Nicholasville Rd bus takes Limestone past Avenue of Champions and Alumni. If you are going to Taylor Ed, Reynolds, Gatton, or the Mall, Route 5 would be useful.
• Route 14- would be used for access to the stadium parking lot and Greg Page Apartments
• Route 15- Red Mile Road provides service to Angeliana Avenue, The Courtyards, Campus Court, and Red Mile Village.
• Route 16- Southland/BCTC is useful for going to WTY Library or The Study!
• Route 30- the UK Cats Cruiser for late-night campus routes.
• For a full list of routes and stops, go to http://lextran.com/routes.  

Which Routes are FREE?

• Route 14- the UK/Commonwealth Stadium route that is free for students to the stadium parking lot, Greg Page Student Apartments, and UK Medical Center.
• Route 30- the UK Cats Cruiser for late-night service for UK students on the Green Colt Trolley route, North and Central Campus Residence Halls, The 90, Euclid, Limestone, and the Apartment complexes of Royal Lexington, Newtown Crossing, Red Mile Village, Campus Court, The Courtyards, 524 Angliana, and The Lex.
• UK shuttle: School year routes run every 15 minutes, night and summer routes run every 30 minutes, on-demand campus service with 221-RIDE.

Commute

• The length of your commute depends on where you live. Most routes run every 35 minutes during the week and begin by 7:00am.
• If you live outside of downtown than likely you will take 2 buses to get to campus.
• If you live near or in downtown than likely you will take 1 bus.

Extras

• Football Shuttle: runs during football season with stops at the Civic Center, Transit Center, Ramsey’s, and to the corner of Cooper Drive and University Drive. The fare is $2.50 per ride or $5.00 round-trip.
• Colt Trolley: runs downtown during lunch and dinner as well as on the weekends with $1 fare.
• Keeneland Trolley: runs from the transit center to and from Keeneland during racing season and you get a $2 food voucher with regular ride fare. 

Tips

• Inbound means the bus is heading towards downtown and the transit center. It is completing its route.
• Outbound means the bus is leaving the transit center and starting its route.
• Transfers are free and unlimited between buses. If you need to take another bus on your trip, tell the driver when you pay, that you need a transfer.
• Take care of your bus pass.  LexTran will not replace lost or damaged passes.
• Consider bringing reading materials, homework, and music with headphones.  

Resources

LexTran’s website: http://www.lextran.com

Route Schedules and Stops: http://lextran.com/routes

Buying a Pass online: http://lextran.com/buy-a-pass

UK Campus Shuttle: http://www.uky.edu/pts/buses-and-shuttles_campus-shuttles

Best Patio Venues in Lex

Contributer: Katie Avra

                                (photo from visitsouth.com and Cheapside Bar & Grill)

Try these great venues for a fun outdoor experience!

• Merrick Inn
• Cheapside Bar & Grill
• Harry's
• Pazzo's
• Cosi

Making The Most Of Memorial Day

Alex Newby, Marketing Intern

Memorial Day is coming up on May 28th and as such, students everywhere are gearing up for cookouts, lake trips, and a sunny four-day weekend! Here are some ideas to make the most of your holiday!

The Food:

Websites like Pinterest or My Recipe have all kinds of ideas to help you make a fun and festive dish. Many of the recipes are simple with only a few ingredients, making it fast and cheap. To save more, check the weekly ads for different local stores to see if any ingredients are on sale.  For instance, Kroger has chicken breasts, strawberries, and corn on the cob on sale this week in preparation for the weekend. If you are hosting the cookout yourself, planning ahead and basing the menu on what is on sale will save you time and money. Here’s a few of our favorites:

15 Red, White & Blue Recipes

Red, White & Blue Potato Salad

Red, White & Blue Parfaits

The Games:

Think about what made cookouts great when you were little, and bring those back! Talk to the neighbors and go-in on a volleyball or badminton net for the backyard. Fill up water balloons or water guns to have a water war or contest. Bust out the twister board and for a fun, messy twist, use washable paint on the colored circles. If you have a pool, make sure its open and ready for people to swim in! Any cookout is going to be what you make of it, so make yours fun!

 Don’t forget to commemorate the holiday! It’s easy to get caught up in cookouts, lake trips, and the beginning of summer, but Memorial Day exists to honor the American soldiers that have died fighting for our country. Whether it’s honoring someone you personally knew or people from your city, it’s important to remember why the day is special.

Klout Scores

Alex Newby, Marketing Intern 

Lady Gaga is at 94, President Capilouto is holding steady at 41, and The Study is ranked at 24. For leaders in Social Media and Networking, Klout scores are the next big thing but what exactly are they and what do they mean for students?

What Klout Is:

Klout is a social media site that tracks users online activity across several social media platforms and converts it into a measurable score between 0-100. Using information about the way you interact with your friends online Klout rates each users level of influence. Re-tweets, re-shares, comments and likes are all types of engagement that count towards your score. In addition to giving you an overall score, Klout also breaks down the information into subcategories.

The Lingo:

True Reach:  Your true reach is the number of people that you influence, both in your personal network and across your friend’s networks. These people are the ones that tend to re-tweet or share something that you posted.

Amplification: If True Reach is the measure of people that you influence, amplification is the measure of how much or how often you influence them. If people often share your content, your amplification score will be higher.

Network: Klout’s network score is an indication of how influential the people in your network are. Are the people in your true reach influential? As a group, do you guys generate a lot of conversations or online activity?  If top influencers respond to what you’ve posted or shared, your network score will go up.

Topics: The topics category shows you what topics you are considered influential about. For example, The Study is influential about Math, Homework and other school related topics. These topics are listed based on how frequently you talk about them using your social media accounts.

Why It’s Important:

Klout can be important for students in any major but is especially important for students pursuing any degree in communications, marketing or journalism.  According to Klout’s website, knowing your Klout score is important because it helps you “understand your influence and how to leverage it. “ With Klout, you are able to “benchmark your success, understand who you influence, and discover who to trust in the topics you care about.” Future employers will be able to look at your Klout score and determine whether or not you have the credibility or reach that you resume says you have. For example, if you’re applying for a Social Media position but don’t actually have the reach or connections online to be successful, you may be passed up for the job. On the other hand, if you’re applying to be the editor of the beauty column, and Klout says your influential about makeup, fashion, and hair, your employer might find that you’re a perfect fit!

How to Improve Your Klout Score:

To improve your Klout score, connect all of the social media accounts that you actually use. Klout is currently compatible with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Wordpress, Last.FM, and Flickr.

If you don’t actually use these accounts, however, don’t bother. Since your Klout score is a measure of your engagement and influence, just having followers or friends on your account won’t raise your score. Klout's creators suggest that the best way to increase your score is "to consistently create great content that people want to share and respond to." My suggestion? Get on and try it out for yourself! Who knows? You could be more influential than you thought!

The Study offers GRE Prep

If you are planning on entering a graduate program, you more than likely will first have to face off with the GRE. This test has both math and verbal components and can be daunting to those who are not fully prepared. To help GRE exam takers, The Study offers prep courses on both sections of the exam.

Our prep courses are 4 ½ hours long and are aimed at teaching participants how to approach the exam’s structure, focus on test-taking strategies, and complete a practice exam and practice questions.

Verbal prep courses will be offered on May 19^th and June 14^th. Math prep courses will be offered on June 9^th, 12^th, 23^rd, and July 21^st. Individuals may enroll in one or both prep courses on The Study’s website through clicking here. The registration is $100 for each prep course, $200 to register for both math and verbal. This registration fee includes the cost of all the materials participants need for the course.

Non-UK students and individuals who are not currently enrolled in school are welcome to register for our GRE prep courses, as well as current UK students.

Once again, participants should register and pay the registration fee by visiting our website at www.uky.edu/AE, which can be reached by clicking here. 

The Year in Review

Amanda Laborio, Marketing Intern

We have seen a lot of milestones throughout the 2011-2012 academic year and here is a brief refresher on what some of those highlights were! 

August

            August brought new change to our campus community. It marked the beginning of President Capilouto’s first year as President of the University. In addition, Phi Mu made its debut on our campus this fall. While some things were changing, even more classic UK traditions carried on, including K-Week. Bigger and better than ever, K-Crew outdid themselves this year with more events, free food and free t-shirts than before. The Study participated in several of these events, introducing our prize wheel at Campus Ruckus and the Hubbub at William T. Young library. We loved getting to know so many new students and handing out lots of free goodies!

September

            September brought with it the start of our official football season. The Study celebrated this by hosting a tailgate for our home game against Louisville on September 17^th.  While the outcome of the game could have been better we still enjoyed cheering on the Cats and grilling out some yummy food.

In national news, September marked the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, making “We are the 99%,” one of the most talked about taglines of the year.  

October

Fall fun was abundant this October with lots of seasonal activities taking place on and off of campus.  Keeneland welcomed students from universities around the state with another exciting College Scholarship Day. Big Blue Madness was once again a popular attraction for UK students and fans from across the world. In case that wasn’t enough of a Calipari fix for one month, there was also a Calipari Corn Maze running in October. For students needing to let loose after midterms, October also brought the excitement of Beaux Arts Fall Ball and of course, Halloween.

In national news, the passing of Steve Jobs made October a difficult month for those in the technology industry and the many people who have become addicted to the Apple products brought to us by Jobs.

November

For many students, the highlight of November was watching the football team take on Tennessee over Thanksgiving weekend at Commonwealth. The Cats won, 10-7, and fans rushed the field in celebration. Earlier in the month, Homecoming weekend gave students plenty of reason to celebrate. The annual Homecoming parade was held in downtown Lexington and provided quite a show. During halftime of the football game the following Saturday the Homecoming King and Queen titles were presented to Micah Fielden and Mary Ellen Wimberly. The football Cats went on to win the Homecoming game against Ole Miss, 30-13.

December

            Students spent the majority of December studying for finals and celebrating the holidays at home, but as always The Study found a way to add some excitement to the last few weeks of classes.  We held a drawing for an iPad for students who filled out our peer tutoring survey and Kelsey Gill was the lucky winner. Important things were happening around campus as well, with UK College of Fine Arts Open Studio, which was a show and sale of student work. UK Theatre presented Romeo and Juliet, which was sold out for several showings. December also brought with it a Commencement Ceremony, which was held in Memorial Coliseum.

January

            January brought with is K-Week 2, which proved to be almost as much fun as the August version. During this week, we at The Study hosted “Dough Not” Avoid The Study offering students free donuts and breakfast goodies. We also hosted a study snack event during peer tutoring hours so that students could munch while getting their homework done. In terms of campus news, our cheerleading team brought home their 19^th national championship in January. Go Cats!

February

            February was a fun filled month for UK Students. Our UK Women’s basketball team brought home the SEC title. Also, the Greeks joined forces to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation by competing in the annual Greek Sing competition. Several famous faces made appearances in Lexington, with Seth Myers making a visit to campus and both Drake and Miranda Lambert performed at Rupp. (Not in the same concert.) Our Student Government Association facilitated student participation in the Rally for Higher Education, held in Frankfort during February.

In national news, the world was shocked and saddened by the passing of Whitney Houston in February.

March

            In March, The Study was very pleased to welcome President Capilouto for a visit. Our staff loved getting to know the President better and sharing with him what we are accomplishing.

            Campus life was buzzing in March. Student government elections were held for the 2012-2013 academic year and Stephen Bilas and Mary Katherine Kington were elected to the President and Vice-President positions. Early in the month the 24-hour dance marathon, DanceBlue, was held to raise money for the Golden Matrix Fund at the UK hospital. The marathon was able to raise $834,424.57 for the fund, despite being cut to 12 hours due to inclement weather. The extreme weather taking place at the time included a tornado that struck West Liberty and caused severe damage.

Around Lexington a couple of changes took place in March. First off, Graeter’s returned! The ice cream shop reopened with a location on Euclid Avenue. Nearby a new deli opened, McAllister’s, and both places have become frequent destinations for students looking to chow down.

March also brought with it the annual excitement of March Madness, but more on that next month...

April

#8, need I say more? The Men’s Basketball team brought home the 8^th National Title after beating Kansas in the championship game. Whether you watched the game in New Orleans or on campus, it was an exciting time to be a UK student and fan.

Also in April, the Student Government Association organized the first Social Media Week on campus. The week was full of panels and events aimed at increasing student’s understanding of the expanding presence of social media in our lives, including in the job search. The students of the College of Design once again hosted the Beaux Arts Ball and students poured in wearing all kinds of unique costumes.

In addition, Keeneland opened for the Spring Meet in April, much to student’s delight.

May

            As finals week winded down, May brought with it a few beloved Kentucky traditions. Both the Oaks and the Kentucky Derby excited horse racing fans across the Commonwealth. Those who were smart enough to bet on Believe You Can and I’ll Have Another we’re even more excited than most.

            For more than 4,000 students, May brought even more reason to celebrate as they joined the UK alumni family. On May 6, UK’s Commencement ceremonies conferred 988 graduate degrees, 457 professional degrees, and 2,710 undergraduate degrees.

It has certainly been a fun-filled year for the University of Kentucky and here at The Study we are looking forward to an even better time in the 2012-2013 academic year. 

ABCs of Shaping Up This Summer

Written by: Chelsey Duncan, Marketing Intern 

Summer break is right around the corner, but many students are consumed with the stress of finals. Late night cram sessions filled with caffeine leave little time to worry about exercising, and irregular sleep patterns result in unhealthy eating habits. The end is near, though! So here are the ABCs of getting fit to help students shape back up after finals week.       

Always have water handy. It keeps you hydrated and will make you feel full.

Be realistic. Don’t expect to see results overnight.

Create a weekly workout plan to stick to throughout the summer.

Dieting is key to getting fit. Don’t overdo it all at first, though. Changes should be gradual. 

Exercise, exercise, exercise. Stay off the couch as much as you can.

Forget about stress. It can have harmful effects on your body, including slowing metabolism.

Get a gym membership and take group classes.

Hold onto your goal. Don’t lose sight of it.

Insist on making exercise a priority. Don’t skip a workout if something better comes along.

Jump rope. This simple exercise is great for cardio!

Keep with it. Don’t quit after you reach your goal.

Log your activity so you know what you’ve accomplished.

Make a game out of your workouts. See how long it would take you to walk to China.

Never give up. When you feel like quitting, push through it.

Omit junk food, soda and sweets from your diet.

Persevere. It will be challenging at first, but it gets easier.

Question your limits and get the most out of your workout.

Reward yourself. It’s okay to cheat and enjoy some ice cream every once in a while.

Strength train to build and tone muscle.

Too tired? Not an excuse. Exercise is proven to make you feel better!

Use the buddy system. It’s harder to back out if you’ve made plans with a friend.

Vary your exercises. Switch it up with aerobics, strength training, running, etc.

Walk your dog or just go on walks.

eXtend your plan and modify your goals.

Year-round healthy habits can result from your summer workout plan.

Zero into your zone. Don’t worry about how you look while you exercise.

For more summer shape up tips, visit these websites:

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/summer-fitness-8/10-easy-tips

http://www.oprah.com/health/Bob-Greenes-Summer-Fitness-Plan#ixzz1t4vyYWge

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/weight-loss/get-your-best-summer-body-ever-28-day-workout-plan.html