And the Oscar Goes To...

I like movies. Well, most movies. OK, more like some movies (ever seen Darkness Falls? It's about the vengeful murdering spirit of the Tooth Fairy. It, uh, doesn't make my list.) But I digress.

In the spirit of remaining hip and cool and "up with currents events", I am doing a post based on the ostensibly "hip and cool" Academy Awards last night. No, I'm not going to talk about James Franco's apparent revival of his Pineapple Express role while "hosting" the ceremony. Nor will I discuss the use of a certain four letter word when describing the difficulty of an acceptance speech (though it probably is "really [thank god we're on time-delay] hard."). I'm not even going to effervesce about Scarlett Johansson (though I could at length.)

I am instead going to highlight a couple of our student films. Did they make it to the Oscars? No (snubbed by the Academy again...). But everyone starts somewhere, and our program is a fantastic point of Inception (see what I did there?). We offer small classes (<17 students per class on average), state of the art editing and film equipment (including a green screen studio), faculty with real working experience in the industry, internship programs, and the ability to start working on films right off the bat. In other words, it's awesome--whether you want to stay all four years in our intimate program, or transfer after two years (USC and Chapman are two of our top transfer destinations).

See the films after the jump. 

Service, Spiders, Green Thumbs, and Nuns, Or, As We Call It At Marymount: Tuesday

Have you ever seen a sow-bug killer spider? If you haven’t, click here. It’s important to have the image in your head—unless it’ll give you nightmares, in which case, refrain from clicking. (Too late? My bad...)

They’re the ugliest spiders I think I have ever seen (because I don’t live in Australia).

You're probably wondering at this point why I am writing about creepy red spiders with disproportionately large fangs.

In Honor of Spring Preview Day: The Top Ten Things To Preview Before You Commit

You definitely want to actually see a college before you enroll, which is why you should attend our Spring Preview Day tomorrow, Friday, 2/18! No, it isn't anything like Groundhog day, but it is going to be a soiree worthy of "Punxsutawney Phil" himself! We'll have student panels; campus and residence tours; breakfast and lunch; faculty presentations; alumni presentations; and, rumor has it, our director of admission is going to arrive in an egg!

It starts at 8:00am. Be there.

On another note...Don't you wish they had preview days for other areas of life? It could save a lot of grief. Read on for our top-ten list of things (other than a college) that you want to actually preview before you make a decision to commit. 

"Why Marymount ?" - Direct From Our Staff And Faculty

“Why your school” is a fantastic question, and one you should really ask in regards to any college you are considering. Why should I attend? Why is this institution in particular a shining beacon of academic excellence in the vast, murky ocean of educational mediocrity? 

You probably don’t have to ask it like that (though if you do, I will be delighted), but, like buying a car, you don’t want to get stuck with a lemon just because you didn't ask.

It’s our job to answer that question, and we answer it a lot. Every admission page, blog, brochure, pitch, tour, and video will have a section devoted to answering “Why” (usually, in a fit of originality, called “Why [insert school here]?”). We’re kind of obsessed with it. Toward the end of the recruitment season you’ll find us randomly bringing up school facts in polite conversation (“Yes, I’ll have the rib eye, medium-rare, and did you know we have the highest transfer acceptance rate in the western United States?”), shouting numerical statistics at joggers through our car windows, and muttering our list of majors in our sleep. We’re popular at dinner parties.

You can find our official answers to the “Big Question” on our website [also here and here]. They’ve been perfected over more than a half-century, and, as such, don’t really need to be re-typed on a blog. However, in an attempt to offer something new and unofficial (and get away from the tour script that is on auto-repeat in my head), we posed this very loaded question to our faculty and staff to get their honest reactions. There is a reason that we choose to work at Marymount (and it's not California’s staggeringly high unemployment rate)—we love this school. Hopefully offering a candid view of what makes this college special to us will help to answer your own "Why Marymount" question. At the very least it will be more entertaining than reading another list of admission statistics.

So, without further ado, here is what our staff and faculty had to say:

Awesome [Nerdy] Valentines!

Happy Valentine's Day from Marymount College! In the spirit of spreading the love, we decided to reblog a couple of awesome Mariner-themed Valentines via our Twitter friends @Oceana [they got them from the sorta-NSFW site "Street Carnage"]. Though they may not win you many romance points, they'll at least prove to your sweetheart that you're college educated (or a Discovery Channel junkie).

Single? Try THIS post.

The Return of the Son of Walk-In Application Day Pt. 3

So, if the last WIAD was metaphorically Christmas, I suppose—in keeping with the seasonal theme I never should have gone with—this one is analogous to Valentine’s Day.

How romantic.

Come in this Friday from 9am-5:30pm and our whole office will be your collective Valentine! We’ll cook a nice meal for you [snack table], our little cupids [student workers—but they won’t be wearing diapers or armed with archaic missile weaponry] will flit around and shower you with personal attention [tours of campus], and then our admission committee will potentially profess their collective love with a same day decision. We’ll even waive your $40 application fee--and we promise we won’t spend the whole weekend sulking if you don’t buy us something in return (though we do enjoy flowers, candy, and diamond jewelry).

Here’s what you’ll need to bring.

• Your completed application (if you filled it out online, you don’t have to bring it in. We’re all high-tech and 21^st century here).
• Official transcripts from every high school and college at which you’ve attempted coursework (even if you withdrew).
• SAT/ACT scores (Optional. Don’t bring them if you’re against being considered for thousands of dollars of free money. Otherwise, bring them. Can’t hurt.).
• Personal statement/Letter(s) of recommendation. (Optional, but again, it can’t hurt).

That’s it! You don’t have to RSVP (hence the “Walk-In” part of Walk-In Application Day).

Stayed tuned next month when I valiantly attempt to make our next WIAD (March 18^th) tie into St. Patrick’s day. Any ideas?

Stories That Make Us Love Our Jobs - Heritage College Ready Academy

A bus full of awesomeness, not unlike The Magic School Bus.

Much like a crackling campfire, the gray and white flecks of the foam board that lines my cubicle have something of a mesmerizing, hypnotic effect. I can stare at them, mind as blank as a lobotomized pigeon, for indefinite periods of time (usually first thing in the morning…and after lunch…and most all of Friday).

This morning, however, the foam-board spell was soundly broken when 42 students from Heritage College Ready Academy (located in urban South Los Angeles) visited our campus. Any campus visit—whether it’s one student or one-hundred—is awesome (and a great remedy for cubical-induced avian-lobotomy syndrome). This visit, however, was particularly awesome. Super-awesome, even.

The first half was pretty standard: a tour of campus and a question and answer session. But then we ushered them all into one of our conference rooms.

We knew something they didn’t...

Bored? Go Clubbing!

It is a sad day for me. With a bang in Wisconsin and a whimper in Pittsburgh, football is now officially over and the dreadful spring doldrums are upon us. Thousands and thousands and thousands of basketball and baseball games will be won, lost, and tied before the next touchdown is scored in the fall. Now, like many of you, I will be left to stare despondently at the television and try to dredge up some excitement that my favorite team is a mere fifteen games behind the division leader. Come May, you'll find me alone in a dark room watching the Golf Channel and hyperventilating into an empty Doritos™ bag.

But spring need not be agony, my friends. There is a solution.

Practice Safe Social Networking - 10 Tips for Thwarting Would-Be Facebook Stalkers

We’ve googled you.

We’ve perused your Facebook, too. We’re like a jealous ex. And yes, we do wonder why that girl from your gym keeps posting such flirtatious comments on all of your pictures. You, like, totally know she’s trying to make us jealous.

This is an age of exaggerated self-importance. Sure you can film a video on your phone, post it on a website, and make it accessible to virtually the entire planet (because of course they’ll want to see it). You can invite millions of people into your personal thoughts, your pictures, your memories, your dating life (just where I want to be…in someone else’s failed romance)—and there is no animated good judgment cricket sitting on your shoulder to gently remind you that all of humanity doesn’t need to read your free-verse love poetry. Like reanimating a dead corpse (a la Frankenstein) or making a sequel to Mean Girls (equally horrific): just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.

Read on for 10 great tips on thwarting would-be Facebook stalkers!