If you are giving more than one person a flash drive like this then the thing to do is to pick software according to their tastes and then enhance it with some extras appropriate for the software.

Are they a budding graphic designer, or are they someone who likes doodling? If that was the case i would support the idea of getting them Inkscape, but I would add some extras to go with it. Download a sequence of tutorials or worked example videos for example, so they can start using it and have fun at the same time.

Have they commented about wanting to learn to program? Python, plus downloads or the examples and exercises from a tutorial course so that they don't have to do all that themselves.

In essence I would take a single program for each recipient and "boost" it with some selected extras.

As someone who uses a Linux desktop at work essentially non-stop the great thing about the "old" GNOME 2.x interface was how powerful the keyboard access was. The HI Guidelines did a fine job of making sure I only needed to touch my mouse for certain positioning operations and object selections in a few apps. Navigation through the system didn't need me to move my fingers away from the keyboard.

To date, though I'm still practicing, I can barely launch applications from the keyboard. It used to be [Alt]+[F1]+[arrow keys through categorized menus]. Now it seems to be [Alt]+[F1]+[guess the name of the application]. I can't seem to browse categories the way I used to.

Tabbing now seems to be between applications rather than between windows in an application so I have to reach for the mouse to select a window. I never needed the mouse to select a window before. Am I missing something?

There used to be a geometric layout of desktops. I bound semantics to my layout for really fast mental switching. Now there is only a growable, linear list of desktops. How is this linearity an improvement? (If you are interested my approach is to have two rows. The upper row is for running applications and the lower row is for support activity: browser windows at docs, terminals set for screen capture etc. Each column - and I have six on the fly by default - is for a separate activity.)

The comments on touch suggest to be that the designers of GNOME 3 have fixated on a single user group: the light-weight occasional user. They seem to have screwed the heavyweight user in the process, though.

Note that there's a lot of "seems" in the text above. Another annoying shortcoming of GNOME 3 is the lack of documentation about keyboard shortcuts. Is there a definitive list of all of them anywhere? I searched the GNOME website but came up empty. Perhaps "keyboard" is the wrong term to use.

This is mainly reiterating what has gone before, but I would advise that you buy a desktop computer rather than a laptop. Take lecture notes with paper, though not at the cost of listening to the lecturer. As soon as possible after the lecture transcribe your notes to your computer. The act of transcribing them forces you to reread and think about them while the lecture is still fresh in your mind.

Partying advice: Alternate soft and alcoholic drinks. Always have at least one drink fewer than the person you are trying to chat up. Party with as many different people and in as many different styles as you can over the course of the year. Never worry about not being cool enough to go to any particular party; it's staying in your room that's not cool.

Security: As has been said, always lock your door and make sure everything is insured.