Rachel Cieri

Michelle Edgar has always known she wanted to contribute to philanthropic music organizations, but if you’d asked her in college, she never would have thought she’d start her own charity.

The Northwestern University graduate has been involved with the arts since childhood, training in classical piano since age five and graduating from the Manhattan School of Music. But when she looked for an organization worth her support, her search came up short.

“None were true to what I stood for,” said Edgar. What she does stand for is bringing people together to support underserved communities through all genres of music – be it classical, rock or hip hop – and that’s exactly what Music Unites does.

Edgar said the big idea came to her in 2008 after a special benefit concert for the Rainforest Foundation, a philanthropic organization started by rock phenomenon Sting and his wife Trudy. The show featured well-known artists like James Taylor and Billy Joel, but had classical artists and the artists’ children programmed into it as well.

“It was a totally different way to experience classical music,” said Edgar. “It changed the way I listened to everything.”

From there, the light bulb was lit, and she organized a group that promotes emerging artists while bringing together people from all walks of life. In April 2009, New York City-based Music Unites was born. “People asked me, ‘Why now, in a recession?’” said Edgar. “But you just have to listen to yourself. I’m a firm believer in pursuing your dreams.”

Lifetime’s “Army Wives” might be a little melodramatic (not to mention filled with bad acting), but the show’s emotion-filled episodes aren’t always far off base.

Her Campus talked with two experienced military girlfriends to find out what it’s like to have a camo-clad boyfriend.

For University of Maryland sophomore Meagan Keller, long-term separations and deployment decisions are a daily reality.

“It definitely has its ups and downs, but I know he’s eventually going to come home,” Keller said of Eric Goldenthal, her boyfriend of 11 months.

Goldenthal, a U.S. Army combat engineer, has been stationed in Heidelberg, Germany since July 2009, and Keller’s still waiting for the day he gets orders to a war zone.

“We haven’t gotten to deployment yet, but he could possibly see combat,” she said. “I don’t like having to worry if he’s coming home.”

The typical college girl might pine for her man while they’re separated for winter break, but Keller has endured six long months without so much as a hug from her boyfriend, a feat even veteran long-distance couples would admire.

So how has she done it?

In the beginning, “rough” wouldn’t come close to describing the effect on their relationship.

“We were feeling the stretch,” she said. “We wouldn’t talk every day because it was expensive and there was such a time difference. I didn’t see anything of him for months, just the pictures his friends posted, and that wasn’t even very often. We had to make the decision to take the extra effort and talk every day or it wouldn’t work.” Then they discovered the joys of modern technology. If you ask Keller, she wouldn’t say she hasn’t “seen” her boyfriend in six months because she sees his face on a daily basis – on her computer screen.

Feeling down? Put down the Ben & Jerry’s. According to college students, one of the best ways to make yourself feel better is to log onto the Internet and read a few posts on FMyLife.com, TextsFromLastNight.com, PostSecret.com or MyLifeIsAverage.com

With millions of visitors each day, these blogs allow any user to share his or her thoughts with the masses in the form of a few lines of text, or, in the case of PostSecret, a single post card.

Hood College junior Rachel Morgan is just one of the many who turn to anonymous microblogging sites like these when they need a quick pick-me-up.

“When I have bad days, those stories make me feel better because they’re so much more ridiculous [than my own],” Morgan says.

It started with PostSecret.com in 2005, a community art project and blog that allows people to anonymously mail postcards with their secrets written on them. Some are sad and serious, but others are silly and lighthearted, evoking a mix of emotions some students say is just right.

To date, PostSecret.com logs more than 200 million visits, and a 2008 Youth Trends report called the site the tenth most popular among female students. But its popularity seems to have been replaced by more recent, less meaningful (though possibly more entertaining) projects.

In 2008, Web entrepreneurs Maxime Valette, Guillaume Passaglia and Didier Guedj launched the English version of one of the most popular French Web sites to hit cyberspace. Viedemerde.fr, which translates to “life of sh--,” spawned its English language equivalent FMyLife.com, a blog that serves as a “recollection of everyday anecdotes likely to happen to anyone,” according to its Web site.