I went back to the ol’ high school alma mater last night as part of the annual “Life Ater ‘Iolani” event. We divided into groups according to the regions where the seniors were headed to school, so I represented the East Coast with three other alums, who had attended MIT, Boston University and Cornell University. There were about 30 students in our classroom, which I consider a good number.

The 2-hour event gives students an opportunity to be in a room sans parents, teachers and other adults, with just their peers and some young(er) alumni. So, students can ask questions that might not have been asked in the presence of adults, for example, about drugs, alcohol and “hook-ups.” And alumni can give honest answers.

I was glad that in addition to the usual questions about how to stay in touch with friends and how often to call parents, we also had practical questions — how to purchase a good winter coat without breaking the bank, how to find a job during school to help with costs, how to sneak a rice cooker into the dorm without campus security or your RA catching you.

This is the second college info night I’ve participated in. Every year I leave feeling optimistic that I’ve offered at least some semi-useful advice to seniors about the challenges they will face getting on a plane, traveling 13 hours away from family and friends and familiar surroundings, and stepping into an environment that in many cases will be new and foreign in almost every way.

I also think: there is no way that I or anyone else can prepare a Hawaii high school senior fully for when he or she finally embarks on that experience.

Before I left for Massachusetts in August 2002, I talked to a lot of people. But I think there are some things that people tell you that you can never understand or appreciate until you get there; things you just have to learn for yourself.

For example: how can you begin to fathom what 20-below-zero feels like when you’ve enjoyed sunny 80-degree weather for your entire life?

Or, take long-distance relationships. Both years, alumni addressed the topic, basically saying that there is a 95 percent chance that long-distance relationships that carry over from high school to college are doomed. There’s always a nervous twitter among the seniors, many expressing confidence that “there’s still 5 percent.”

I guess it’s just something you have to learn for yourself.

Entering into an entirely different environment, an entirely different life, even, is what going from high school to college is all about. Whether it’s going up the street to the University of Hawaii or HPU or leaving for a rural town in upstate New York, college should be, at times, uncomfortable. It should jar you a bit. Who knows — it might change you from who you were in high school. It may change your friendships with people you thought you would be able to talk to forever. But that’s not always a bad thing.

I guess my advice to seniors would be: yes, ask questions, take some time to prepare yourself for school, for leaving Hawaii and your friends and family. But don’t be afraid to venture off without knowing everything. Don’t be afraid to embrace the unknown.

Teachers might want you to think otherwise, but college isn’t just about school — it’s 60 percent academic learning and 40 percent everything else.

I wish someone had told me that before I left for college.

photo: College graduation, June 2006.

Half an hour since “Grand Theft Auto IV” went on sale at midnight, and you can bet hundreds of gamers and fans across the state are already playing the much-anticipated video game that has drawn criticism for its violent nature and criminal subject matter.

I caught a friend on the phone just minutes after he walked out of GameStop in Kailua clutching the $60 game in his hands. He arrived at about 11:30 p.m. and was 40th in line. By the time the clock struck midnight, there was a queue of about 70 on the sidewalk — “a weird mix of people,” about half of them high school students with some college and military types thrown into the mix. The crowd, he said, was about 90 percent male.

Why the big buzz over a video game?

“Never before have people had such enthusiasm for a video game,” he said. “(It’s) a revolutionary medium … an open world where you can go anywhere and do anything.”

“What was the general mood in line?” I asked.

He replied: “Dork.”

Then he apologized, and said he had to go. I probably won’t hear from him for at least a month.

The fourth installment of the popular video game, which again sees a hero-type character rising through the ranks of the criminal underworld, is one of the most anticipated and controversial entertainment releases this year.

A New York Times review called the game “a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.” Players are cast as a former soldier/human trafficker from Eastern Europe who takes on assignments from the mob to save a relative in “Liberty City,” which according to reviewers is a spot-on take on New York City.

Previous versions of “Grand Theft Auto” feature various kinds of role-playing, driving, racing, shooting at cops and even a sex minigame that was cut from the game. As “Niko” in GTA-IV, players can go on dates, buy clothing and weapons, fly helicopters, take out drug dealers and cops, and — of course as the title suggests — steal cars.

Parents and even police have criticized the game for its violent nature, sexual themes and partial nudity, and its emphasis on committing crimes to get ahead. But, if anything, the controversy has only added to the hype: The game’s first-week sales forecast is expected to be upwards of $360 million, surpassing the $300 million by Microsoft Corp.’s “Halo 3″ in September, according to Bloomberg.

Ladies, the next few weeks (or months) might be a good time to schedule that girls’ night out…

photo: AP, via www.CNN.com

I like watching The Hills, but sometimes I find aspects of the MTV reality show difficult to relate to: the Hollywood lifestyle, the high fashion, the excess of blonde…

That’s why I was excited to watch MTV’s newest reality series, The Paper, about the student staff of The Circuit, the award-winning student newspaper of Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla. It’s got just the right combination of drama, comedy, touching moments and dorkiness.

The first episode opens with: “Journalists are the most important part of world. They really are,” a surely indisputable truth spoken by the show’s best character, a power-tripping egomaniac named Amanda who also happens to be editor-in-chief. Naturally, just about everyone on her staff wants to do her in. They exclude her from all social activities, gossip about her behind her back and plot at every chance they get to undermine her power.

Fittingly, Amanda has been afforded space to write on The Paper’s web site. To give a taste of her character, here’s what she wrote after watching Episode 2, where she has just won the editor-in-chief position and her staff is still stewing about it:

After watching the episode, I noticed a glaring familiarity between the situation between my peers and me and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the most recent democratic debate. I watched the screen and noticed the consuming glimmer of passion that seized our eyes, the exchange of heated glances, and the putrid stink of unrelenting competition.

It’s this air of self-importance — every reporter has it — added to the deliciousness of high school drama that make the show worth watching.

The Paper airs on Mondays at 10:30 p.m. HST. I’d say it’s the best thing to hit MTV in a long time — but I guess I might be a little biased.

photo: www.mtv.com

What’s your favorite work/study spot on the island?

One of the benefits — or challenges — of being a mobile journalist or “mojo” is working out of the office with a laptop, wireless Internet connector device thingy and cell phone. When I first started out, that meant I did a lot of work from my desk or living room table at home when I wasn’t actually physically out on a story.

Recently, though, I’ve found that working from home can often be a combination of lonely, boring and distracting, so I’ve sought out other places where I can sit and interview people and write stories. Plus, the city last week started water main repairs on my street, which has most recently added “headache-inducing” to that list.

The biggest problem I’ve found is finding a QUIET place to do this. Without resorting to the local library, it’s remarkably difficult to find any establishment that isn’t blasting music. For example, Starbucks plays a combination of opera, salsa, indie and Frank Sinatra, which I guess can be pleasant — but not at crazy volumes.

The other problem is finding a place where I can plug in my laptop. I like working at the newly renovated Safeway supermarkets, especially the one on Kapahulu, which has comfy couches, tables and chairs. It’s quieter than Starbucks, and all the food you could ever want is right there! My work has provided me with an enormous, orange, 50-something-feet long extension cord to help me be more “mobile.” Even so, the few outlets in Safeway’s sit-down area are often taken and if I can’t plug in, my laptop expires within 30 minutes. So, no good.

There’s also the problem of “admission.” At Starbucks, I usually go for the least expensive, but still tasty, “small” ice tea, which runs me $1.98. Most drinks besides the basic coffee will cost $3 or more. At that price, you end up paying $60 a month in “coffee rent” for your study space at Starbucks. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is another favorite place, but again, you have to buy something if you want to sit there for hours, as I usually do. As if my regular rent at my apartment weren’t enough! I’ve also tried working from Panda Express in Kahala Mall, but after one week you can only take so much Beijing Beef and chao mein.

It’s also important for me to not be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with people when I’m trying to work. This is for my sanity, and because I’m sure they don’t appreciate my gabbing for hours on the phone while they’re trying to read the New York Times.

So, right now I’m at Starbucks in the Waikiki Food Court on Kalakaua and Seaside. I’ve drained the last of my passion fruit ice tea and a baby just started screaming in the background. Don’t get me wrong, working out of the office is cool… but sometimes… yikes.

Anyone have suggestions?

It’s a question I asked many people last fall when I took an online microeconomics course and was suddenly caught toting my Econ book everywhere.

A couple of my friends who are my age and who graduated recently from college guessed $80. Nope. It was $120.

That’s right. One hundred and twenty buck-a-roos. Try buying it used online? Too bad. It’s the brand new 8th edition with a copyright date of 2008! Amazon.com lists the new book for $151.20; new and used starting from $85.93 (it was “new and used from $120″ when I bought it in Sept. 2007). No thanks. It’s not even a hard cover!

The skyrocketing cost of textbooks can be attributed to a number of factors, mainly the inclusion of CD-ROMs and other supplements that drive up the cost of the books. When I was in college, I recall spending as much as $250 for books each semester. And as a political science major, I was one of the lucky ones — some of my math or psychology major friends paid even more than that for hardcover textbooks with questionably useful CD materials attached.

A New York Times editorial today applauds a bill pending in Congress that would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of textbooks and to reveal book prices in marketing material to allow professors to make less pricey selections for their classes. The editorial suggests colleges and universities might turn to digital textbooks to keep materials affordable and chides publishers for hiking up costs:

Right now, textbook publishers are calling the tune. They add as many bells and whistles as they can and pump out new editions as quickly as possible — as a way of making perfectly good textbooks obsolete. Not every book can be cheap. A specialized text that only a few people know how to write and that reaches a small audience will be costly by definition. But there is no reason for an introductory textbook to carry a price tag of, say, $140 in an area like economics where the information changes little from year to year.

You have to wonder where all that money is going. This article from the Daily Toreador, the student newspaper of Texas Tech, quotes stats from the U.S. Government Accountability Office that suggest the cost of college textbooks increased at two times the rate of inflation between 1986 and 2004. It says:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site, as of 2001, 64.4 cents out of every textbook dollar is retained by publishers, while 11.5 cents is forwarded to the authors of the textbooks, leaving 24.1 percent of the cost left over.

Chad Davenport, assistant store manager at Varsity Bookstore, said Varsity only keeps approximately 5 percent of the total cost of a textbook.

“We mark our books up 20 percent from what the publisher charges,” he said. “At that point, we still have to pay for freight coming in, the labor to put the books on the shelf, electricity to keep the store open and credit card charges.”

Davenport said the average incoming freshman spends approximately $900 for his or her first year of textbooks.

Although I love flipping through a book assignment armed with a highlighter and a pencil, digital books make a lot of sense in this era where we’re trying to be more eco-friendly and reduce waste.

On the economic side, forcing penniless students to shell out $900 for books each year is outrageous. With food prices, gas prices and the general cost of living on the rise, it is unfortunate that the cost of education should follow suit. When faced with spending $140 on the textbook or being unprepared for the class, students may not have a choice. Promoting more online learning or offering hard copies by request would at least give schools and students more options. And as I learned in Econ, that’s always a good thing.