All Emerson students could be described with adjectives like artsy, hipster, indie, preppy, etc. But students within each major have their own assortment of unique characteristics which should be taken into account when considering a relationship with an Emersonian. They define priorities, interests, and expectations for each. Think of it this way: while the entire student body has a mutual love for such things as Passion Pit, (500) Days of Summer and Alexander McQueen, depending on the major, there are different levels of prominence for each.

Here are a few tips for dating the Emerson student—by major.

Musical Theatre
The trouble with dating a Musical Theatre major—or more affectionately, an MT—is their hunger for being the best. This means that if you wind up dating one of them, you cannot under any circumstances be in competition with them. Even if you find yourself silently competing with grades, you can’t take it too seriously (even if they do). They will push and push, taking the fun and simple competition to the max, taking the joy and whimsicality out of it all.

Characteristics of note: They’re always singing. They may prefer dating someone who is not a musical theatre professional (again, the competition thing), but it is expected that you know the difference between Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, or at least know what The Last Five Years is. They make references to everything and you need to be on top of your game.

Film & Television
Film students will expect your favorite movie to be something artsy or revolutionary (meaning it doesn’t star Julia Roberts or Katherine Heigl). Be prepared to sit through movies in Spanish, French and maybe even Mandarin Chinese, featuring totally unrealistic fight sequences and lots of sex. Brush up on terminology such as a “grip” or “best boy”. Also, they work insane hours, mostly on weekends in Allston or somewhere in New England so your nights out must be extra special if it will be the only one for quite some time.

For TV majors, even if you’ve never seen an episode of Lost, Dexter, Buffy or True Blood, chances are that you’ll be able to talk about them like you watched them from start to finish after a month or so of dating. In the end, students of the Film and TV majors are probably the most hipster of Emerson students.

Filmographies to study: Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman.

Writing, Literature & Publishing/Journalism
I’ve clumped the WLPers and journalism students together because quite frankly, they’re probably the most normal in the throngs of students at Emerson. However, Henry Miller said the best way to get over someone is to turn them into literature, so be prepared: if you end up breaking their heart, you may find yourself one day immortalized in a novel or two. Get used to your dates or intimate moments becoming their inspiration, soon on display for all to read.

Current events may be nagging at a journalism major more than anyone else. Also, it’s more than a guarantee that you’re going to have to partake in a number of interviews for their broadcast class or appear in the Berkeley Beacon about the DH’s decision to continue using trays.

Authors to brush up on: Faulkner, Hemingway, Vonnegut and Kerouac.

Marketing
A marketing major is one or both of the following: a perfectionist or pretentious. In any case, they’ll admit to it. Most marketing majors have strict schedules they have to adhere to. If you’re more than four minutes late to even the most casual coffee date, you’d best have a doctor’s note. Marketing students by nature are probably the most ambitious of Emerson students in terms of the number of things they try to cram into their schedules. Due to this,most have addictions to coffee, so if you want to surprise them, a Red Eye is a thoughtful treat. They might snarl comments about what other students are wearing, but don’t get discouraged, they do it because deep down they actually do care.

Things to remember: They’re the only students who are required to take math.

(text by: Joey Polino)

Why not see 50/50 and then talk to Seth Rogan and Will Reiser about their inspiration for it? Just kidding. You can only do one of the things. But we did the other one for you! em Magazine Features Writer, Ben Kling, sat in with Seth and Will:

50/50 is an upcoming film, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogan, about a young and otherwise healthy guy who’s diagnosed with life-threatening cancer.

Also, it’s kind of a comedy .

I spoke with Seth and Will Reiser, the writer of the film and Seth’s close friend, to ask them some things about cancer and movies and cancer movies.

EM: So, how did you two meet? Did you know each other while Will was struggling with cancer ?

SETH: I was a writer with Evan Goldberg, my writing partner, on the Ali G show and Will was a producer for the show. It was his job to book the guests. So he’d be on the phone convincing James Lipton and Walter Cronkite that we were different people than we were, and then me and Evan would help write the interview questions. And Will was just getting really sick that whole time.

WILL: Myself, Seth, and Evan were the youngest guys working on the show and they became basically my closest friends. And then about 7 months after the show ended, I was diagnosed with cancer. Seth was pretty much my closest friend going through that whole ordeal, so the character of Kyle is an extension of Seth in some ways.

EM: When did you decide that you wanted to make a movie out of the experience? While it was going on, or after you’d been through it?

SETH: At that time me and his other friends—we just didn’t really want to talk about it. So we would make jokes about it. And the joke we would most often go to was “what kind of movie could we make out of it?” And because we were in the middle of it, we didn’t really have the wherewithal to realize we could just kind of make a movie about exactly what was happening. The joke was we’d make a fucked up version of The Bucket List

WILL: Which we would call “The Fuck-It List..” The whole idea came from the fact that when I was sick—people didn’t know how to deal with it. And they would ask really absurd questions.  People who had actually seen The Bucket List thought that that’s what you actually do when you have cancer.

SETH: The most unfortunate part of Will’s illness was that it coincided with the release of The Bucket List.

WILL:  Yeah, not great timing. Seth and Evan really just urged me to write a screenplay about the experience of being sick, and I sort of drew upon a lot of the themes that I went through with friends and family and sort of incorporated them into the script. For example, I used to be a really neurotic, worried person, and he [Seth] used to make fun of me all the time for it. And that’s very true to the characters of Adam and Kyle; that’s their dynamic. Kyle makes fun of Adam for how neurotic and how worried he is. And that’s definitely true to our friendship.

SETH: Yeah, it was very similar. But again—it’s kind of a mish-mosh of stuff that’s true and completely invented.

EM: Right, you have to embellish a little in order to make a movie. Is there a reason you went with an independent studio? More creative control?

WILL: There’s no way in hell any major studio would have bought this movie.

SETH: “A guy has cancer, but it’s hilarious!”

EM: This is definitely the first wide-release movie to try to make light of such a dark experience. Did you ever have to reconsider a joke or a scene because it felt like you were going too far?

WILL:  I feel like a lot of the humor in the movie has more to do with the characters and how they’re all inept and how they don’t know how to deal with the situation, which is very true to us. I mean, at 25 you have no clue how to handle a situation like this. I feel like we’re not necessarily making fun of cancer—the jokes come from character. And as long as you stay true to the characters and you never betray them—as long as they’re not saying anything that’s out of character, you’re safe.  If you just start making a joke for the sake of making a joke, then it starts becoming a broad comedy and that doesn’t feel real. You just need to keep it honest.

SETH: Since we experienced it, we had a good frame of reference to constantly ask ourselves “does this feel like shit that would have happened?” and as soon as it didn’t feel like shit that would have happened, we took it out.

WILL: And I also think that the characters are fairly likeable, and I think that you empathize with them. Even Seth’s character, who can, you know, at certain points seems like he’s a bit crass and a bit of a dick, you still forgive him because of the situation.

SETH: Thanks, Will.

WILL: I forgive Seth. I forgive him.

EM: Seth and Joe have such a good rapport on-screen. Part of what makes the friendship between the two characters so believable is how casual their interactions are—even the jokes. How much of that was improvised?

Will: There was a lot of improvisation. I would work on scenes the day before, we would shoot them, and then take alternates.

SETH: We improvised a lot. Like, scenes we shouldn’t have improvised. Like the head-shaving scene we mostly improvised. Which is pretty stupid because we can only do it once, and if we just said a bunch of shit that wasn’t funny, we just shaved Joe’s head for no fucking reason.

EM: Will, it must have been really difficult for you to rehash that period of your life and try to convert it into something inspiring and funny. Writing that into a script and then making it must have been cathartic.

WILL: Yeah, incredibly. Especially because six years ago, I was 25, and at that time in our lives we didn’t sit down and talk about our emotions.

SETH: At all.

WILL: I don’t think you ever asked me how I felt.

SETH: No. Never. Ever. I made jokes about how I thought you felt.

WILL:  It was a really difficult time for me, and the process of writing the script and then making it really allowed me to extract a lot of the things that were painful that I couldn’t talk about. And that was really great for me. So yeah, it was incredibly cathartic.

Rain did not deter the mass of teenage girls eagerly waiting to meet style-icon and now designer, Alexa Chung, outside Madewell on Newbury Street on Friday night. The British “it” girl premiered her second collaboration with J. Crew’s younger label, Madewell – making an in-store appearance, including a meet-and-greet with the designer herself. The collection has been so popular that at its online launch Thursday night, Madewell’s website crashed.

            Would the collection to sell out just as quickly at the Boston Premiere? Or were the throngs of young women were only there to bask in the glow of  (and maybe snag a Facebook picture with) the international starlet? We were there to find out, speaking to many of the girls who attended the launch. Huddling under an umbrella, we spoke to Toni Farreira, an MIT grad student who had her sights set on buying. Shopping the collection on her iPhone as she waited in line , she said “Alexa has such effortless style, she is absolutely 100% my style icon. Her style is different, it’s uniquely her. The clothes she wears I can actually imagine myself wearing.” It seemed the girls in line and those online were eager to emulate Alexa’s put-together twist on grunge.

            Speaking to others, we discovered that simply meeting the Brit “it” girl was the aim for many. Twins Sara and Abi Bistany, 15, were there “cause we love Alexa. She’s not Miley or Selena, her style is amazing.” Emerson sophomore Young Park said “I really like her – I’m so drawn to her sense of humor.”

            As the doors opened at 7, the crowd of girls piled into the store where a British themed party awaited them; complete with a photo-booth, a nail bar, shortcake cookies and for those of age, Pimm’s cocktails and Guinness. A retro 50’s playlist set the mood for an equally retro collection, inspired by another decade: the ‘90s.

            Alexa greeted guests upstairs, friendly and inviting in a lace top and jeans as she spoke with each giddy girl. When we asked her what inspired the collection, she said that her biggest inspiration was the music of the 90’s. “I was really inspired by Nirvana, Sonic Youth, even the Spice Girls with the shoes.” At that she pointed to her own her own boots, complete with a Baby Spice-worthy platform.  “I was really inspired by the girl-bands and youth-culture of that era.”

            Alexa’s inspirations harkened back to our own childhood, when style icons displayed originality and talent. Indeed, the 2000’s youth culture of over-processed pop stars can’t compare with the creative energy of the Courtney Loves and Madonnas of the ‘90s. Thankfully, we have designers like Alexa to remind us of the creativity of the generation and give a modern twist to the styles we remember so fondly. 

(text by: Kim Suchy and Daniel Tehrani)

I’ve been a How I Met Your Mother addict for years. And when I say “addict”, I don’t mean that I’ve just seen every episode. I’ve seen every episode at least twenty times.   I drive my friends crazy every time I say “Oh, there’s a How I Met Your Mother episode about that…” Marshall, Ted, Lily, Robin and Barney have been my close friends for almost seven years, and even though it’s a cheesy multi-cam sitcom with a laugh track, the show has taught me some of my most important life lessons.

1.     Be a loyal friend. All the time. Forever.

If HIMYM has taught him anything, it’s that when you’re a 20-something, your friends are your family. But let’s be real, sometimes your friends can be really annoying. They can be going through a huge break-up, and be crying in your living room every day (Marshall, who got dumped after nine years with Lily in Where Were We 2x01), and ask to sleep on your couch when they have no where to stay (Robin, in Not a Father’s Day 4x07), but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be there for them. You need to give them your best advice, even if you don’t really know what you’re talking about. They’re the most important people in your life, and you have to be there to pick them up when they’re on the ground. Even if they’re kicking, screaming, drunk and unemployed. They’ll give it back to you one day.

2.     Fight for the one you love.

Yeah, Ted’s kind of an idiot. And he’s pretentious. And he usually falls in love with super annoying chicks. (Victoria? Yeah. She can stay in Germany.) But dude knows what he wants. He spent all of the first season pursuing Robin, and even did a Native American rain dance on the roof of a building, hoping to stop her from going on a work retreat so she wouldn’t hook up with a co-worker (Come On 1x22). Ted has taught me a lot about what not to do when pursuing someone, but his passion and determination to find the love of his life is annoyingly inspirational. Ted loves completely, and refuses to settle. So every time I wonder if I should go for someone who might be for me, I always find myself watching the scene in “Come On” where Ted hires an entire blue orchestra and fills Robin’s apartment with red roses. Crazy? Yes. But as Robin’s vet (for her five dogs) points out later, no one does that. When it’s someone you love, you’ve gotta fight.

3.     “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead” (“Where Were We” 2x01)

Barney (the undeniably awesome NPH) is all about taking life by the throat and punching it in the face (and also banging trashy chicks). Barney is also known for throwing around the word awesome a lot. More than a lot. In about every other sentence. But this line has always stuck with me. Barney is a narcissistic and admittedly unrealistic character, but he’s got a point there. What’s the use in moping and feeling sorry for yourself, when you can get out there and kick your life into high gear instead?  So whenever I’m feeling lonely or like a loser, I just stare at the fighter jets on the wall next to my bed, suit the hell up, and go make my own happiness.

(text by: Erin Doolin)