Listen, Moms and Dads: Odds are your freshman college student doesn't feel so hot about life because of you.

A 2015 Harris poll is making waves again as the college year is about to start. The poll, which surveyed 1,502 first-year students, found that 60% wished they had received better emotional preparedness from parents and their high school before attending college. In addition, one-in-eight students declared that being an independent adult was "extremely or very challenging." Little do they know that every adult 28 to 108 years old feels the same way.

"Emotional preparedness" is most likely what you think it is:

1.)  The ability to adapt to new environments
2.)  The ability to take care of oneself
3.)  The ability to control negative behaviors
4.)  The ability to create positive relationships

The survey doesn't offer much in the way of solutions--and media outlets simply echo the survey results--so we're simply left with the news that students feel emotionally vulnerable and incapable of taking care of themselves at college.

In the end, incoming freshmen are staring in horror at their dorm room laundry basket and have entered DEFCON 3 levels of panic over what to do.

Singapore's migrant workers and the poetry competition they compete in each year.

While among the world's wealthiest, the citizens of Singapore have very little to do with the day-to-day operations that keep their small city-state bustling and operating as amongst the world's most efficient.

Indeed, nearly one-fifth of Singapore's unofficial population is made up of foreign domestic laborers, mainly from Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines.

Singapore: Largely not made by Singaporeans.

I say unofficial because Singapore has a long history of not counting the over one million workers who stay on long-term work visas as members of the population. Saying these individuals are second class citizens would be a compliment, as they are largely ignored, shunned, or abused by the locals as a means of cheap labor. Females are required to live with their employer, often with abusive conditions, while males live in cramped, slum-like dorms spread throughout the city, or in "nice" dorms in remote areas that some say is a form of apartheid.

While they may come from economically struggling countries, these maids and construction workers and garbage collectors and hotel cleaners were often once engineers, doctors, lawyers, educators, and writers back in their native land, now forced to work for menial wages to send back home to support their family.

The physically harsh and emotionally draining conditions don't stop Singapore's migrant workers from channeling their creative spirit into poetry. As Australia's ABC News details, the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition is now in its third year, with a large number of submissions that now needs to be whittled down to 17 finalists, for which an evening is reserved by organizers at the National Gallery, and those finalists read their poems to raptured crowds.

Ramaswamy Madhavan, a site engineer at construction sites throughout Singapore, told ABC that such events and writing competition brighten the workers' spirits. "It gives us more energy to write."

And maybe more energy to survive, to live, to thrive.

Randomness Corner: Dog Disco

Welcome to Randomness Corner, where we'll post something that has little to do with writing/books/English/education...if only for our collective sanity.

Today: Dog Disco.

Do we really need to define what's going on here? It's like a bizarro Saturday Night Fever. Swap out John Travolta for a springer spaniel, and you get the idea.

Maryland college cruises to a solution.

(((rim shot)))

Short story:
So heavy rains led to heavy mold in a variety of dorms at St. Mary's College of Maryland. And heavy mold led to unlivable conditions for students.

Solution option #1:
St. Mary's paid for hotels. Students inevitably start rapping, Mo--tel, ho--tel, Holiday Inn!

But hotels were far away for the remote college, and were fairly pricey.

Solution option #2:
Charter a cruise ship to dock sort-of, kind-of nearby and house students there.

That was pricey, but less pricey.

Ultimate solution:
Students stay at docked cruise ship and walk to class every day. Their laundry is done for them by ship's staff. School crafts agreement with cruise company that piano player, lounge act, and all-inclusive meals are not required.

Interesting side note #1:
Some students enjoy the laundry perk. According to Andy VanDeusen, a biology major, "It's wild. It's much more frequent than I wash my linens." In unrelated news, women have commented that Mr. VanDeusen's "man essence" smell is not nearly as attractive as he'd like you to believe.

Interesting side note #2:
Some students are pulling a Leo Dicaprio-in-Titanic role and are assigned rooms below decks, with no carpeting, no windows, and metal lockers.

I bet those future alumni checks will be huuuuge.