Friday, December 12, 2008

Getting a Chance at Love


Sandy and Chance met during their junior year at USC. During their time in college, they ran with different crowds. Chance was a jock, with a chip on his shoulder. At 6’3” and 253 lbs, this all muscle dark-brown Adonis was a force to be reckoned with. He was headed to the NFL and nothing would stop him. With that said, he knew that he should also get a college degree. On the off chance that something happened, he wanted a back-up plan and a degree in architecture was the answer that he chose. Although he played football for the love of the sport, the women that chased him was the biggest reason that he took the physical beatings on the field. There was no woman of any nationality that could resist his looks, charm and desirability.


On the other hand, Sandy was a quiet bookworm with few friends. You normally could find this Nia Long look-a-like sitting somewhere alone studying or reading a book. Although she was one of the most beautiful women that walked the campus, she kept to herself. She didn’t have the time or the patience for idiocy. It was a miracle that their paths had ever crossed, but it was meant to be.

Sandy happened to be working at the campus library on the Saturday morning that Chance strolled in. It was not his M.O. to be in such a setting, but with finals coming up, he knew that the apartment that he shared with his buddies was not conducive to real studying. He did pride himself on being an intelligent athlete. He was looking for a book on 18th century architecture and Sandy was the only one to help him. As he approached the desk at which she was sitting, Sandy’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest. His face was flawless. He had a slight slant in his dark brown eyes that made him look exotic; lickable lips; long powerful legs and a chest so dark and hard that it must have been made of raw mahogany wood. Sandy had never seen any man so beautiful in her life. She wanted to run out of the room as he got closer and closer.

“Go away, go away”, she thought to herself.

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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Your Black College: Regimens: For the Best Pick-Me-Up, Lie Down


A cup of strong coffee might make you feel wide awake, but a small study suggests that for improved physical and mental performance, an afternoon nap works better.

Scientists spent a morning training 61 people in motor, perceptual and verbal tasks: tapping a keyboard in a specific sequence, discriminating between shapes on a computer screen and memorizing a list of words. Then the scientists randomly divided the subjects into three groups. The first took a nap from 1 to 3 p.m. At 3, the second group took a 200-milligram caffeine pill, and the third took a placebo. The subjects repeated the tasks they had been taught earlier and were scored by researchers who did not know which group they were in.

Those who had caffeine had worse motor skills than those who napped or had a placebo. In the perceptual task, the nappers did significantly better than either the caffeine or placebo group. On the verbal test, nappers were best by a wide margin, and the caffeine consumers did no better than those given a placebo. Despite their mediocre performance, caffeine takers consistently reported less sleepiness than the others.

“People think they’re smarter on caffeine,” said Sara C. Mednick, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and the lead author of the study, which appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of Behavioral Brain Research. “But this study is a strong argument for taking a nap instead of having a cup of coffee.”

Originally posted on NYTimes.com