I am always happy to hear about people who use their powers for good. Cal Newport over yonder at Study Hacks is in that category, and has worked to bring to our attention the existence of Chris Guillebeau, also in the powers-for-good category. You can read Cal’s interview with Chris here.

Anyone with a blog entitled The Art of Nonconformity gets 20 points right out of the starting gate. And Guillebeau gets extra points for his just-released free PDF entitled A Brief Guide to World Domination (he means it in a benevolent way).

Frequently, the people who are thinking non-sheep-like thoughts and who are moving through the world differently than everyone else are viewed as slackerly or wing-nuttish. ‘Slacker’ isn’t an apt description of Guillebeau as he appears to be in a constant state of forward motion. And I fail to see how being thought of as odd or different or off-the-wall could have negative connotations since the proverbial sheep of the world rarely contribute to the progress or the creative thinking of the herd.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

That’s a lame title, I know; I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve either profanity or a description of me sticking a fork through my eye. To back up my previous statement regarding the overall suckiness of the SAT, I’m re-posting the article below wherein I explain my personal history with standardized testing.

And here’s a morbidly funny older post about more recent high school students and their stance on the SAT. I think the videos help to highlight the warped level of importance everyone (students, parents, teachers, and admissions personnel) has placed upon the SAT. I think it has come to be viewed as the magic-bullet yardstick for measuring an individual’s worthiness of a higher education.

The Re-Post: College Admissions–Looking Good Only On Paper

There’s an article in the NY Times about the increasing numbers of small liberal arts colleges dropping the SAT from their admissions requirements: Students’ Paths To Small Colleges Can Bypass SAT. Call it what you will (I like to call it WASP Guilt), but it’s moving me to confess: in high school I was an under-achieving slacker who got into college because I look good on paper. Many a kid smarter than I am (and possessing both an excellent work ethic and academic drive) didn’t end up in college because the realities of their lives made it hard for them to look as shiny as I did.

I test well. I’m a public school kid, and this theory of mine may be a bunch of crap, but I think 12 years of standardized tests prepared my brain very well for taking the SAT and the ACT. I skated along without having to do much actual work in school because the language spoken in my home was English and my entire family are voracious readers, which meant I was always reading or being read to. So I have that whole “excellent reading comprehension skills” thing going for me. Do you know what your life needs in order for you to be able to read a lot? Time, money, and a fairly low stress level.

Half of the population of the tiny California farming town I grew up in had arrived pretty recently (within a generation) from Mexico. I’m not an idiot, but I’m not a genius either, and I somehow always tested several grades above my actual grade level. Every year at testing time, the adults in charge made a big deal about how damn smart I was. I never corrected them, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I might not be as smart as the tests said I was.

I could see what went down in the classroom: there would be a tiny handful of extremely smart kids in the class. Of that handful, the smart kids who spoke English at home would grasp the material as soon as it was out of the teacher’s mouth. The smart kids who spoke Spanish at home would have the language hurdle to jump over, but then they would be off and running, still faster than the majority of the other students.

By the time I was applying to colleges, I got it that I looked good on paper, but that my test scores weren’t the whole picture. What my 98th percentile test scores didn’t show was that I was a decently (but not supremely) intelligent, English-speaking, total slacker with no work ethic to speak of (proof: my verbal scores rocked through no effort on my part, but my math scores blew hard because math requires studying, which I was too lazy to sit down and do), who came from an educated family which would be funding my college career.

There were several kids who we all knew were not only smarter, they also had more drive, and were generally more interested than I was in expending the energy required to kick some ass in the world. And would they be joining us at university in the fall? Not so much. And why? Because their families had bigger issues than SAT scores and college transcripts to tackle. Those kids didn’t get a lot of recreational reading or SAT prep-course work done because they spent their spare time working to help their parents make ends meet.

Here’s what my fortunate, English-speaking booty was up to. My habit through school was to complete my homework assignment in the five minutes of paper-shuffling before class started. I rarely studied for exams. I ditched the two SAT prep courses my parents paid good money for and spent those two Saturdays wandering aimlessly in the sunshine while those other suckers sat inside and wrote pages of intensely-scribbled (but probably very organized) notes on how to kick the ass of the kid sitting next to you when you go in to take the SAT’s.

I lacked a good work ethic. I was not the spastic over-achiever I am today. Far from it. How did I manage to get into Cal State? I test well. And I look good on paper because of it. My high school transcripts looked good because, since I didn’t have to work to survive, I had the time after school to do four years of swim team and student government.
Honestly, here’s what I think. If any college admissions person worth their salt had spent a day watching me and one of my Spanish-speaking counterparts, I would not have been chosen. I completely screwed up my first semester away at school. Eventually I gave in and saw that even I was going to have to buckle down and study in college.

That’s not the point. The point is that admissions boards are scanning transcripts and SAT scores to decide which kids should get in. I’m telling you (and hopefully them) that I did no more than I absolutely had to, and I sailed on in to a university. If someone had watched me in action or had interviewed me or had looked at my cush life next to that more-deserving-because-she’s-smarter-and-harder-working girl over there, I would have been passed over. Looking good on paper should get you nowhere. The whole picture, the whole package, that’s what should be scanned and weighed.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

This exquisitely informative article in the NY Times will help to lessen the shocking dose of reality that might otherwise paralyze the newly graduated twenty-somethings who’ve recently been unleashed on the job market. It sucks to have finally figured out the bureaucratic red tape that is student loans and financial aid, and now you’ve got a whole new mess of paperwork and money-related crap to wade through and comprehend.

The article explains quickly and simply what a newly-minted adult needs to know about retirement, health plans and taxes. These are good things to know about (and to avoid screwing up) sooner rather than later.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I love school; everyone who knows me can tell you how pissed I am that being a professional student isn’t a marketable skill. I stretched out my college career for as long as possible, and only stopped when I looked around and saw what my perfectionist tendencies and my exemplary GPA were doing to my family (it turns out it’s not possible, for me, anyway, to be a straight-A student and a good mother and wife).

As much as I adore school and wish it to be the answer to all professional and career-related bumps, quandaries and questions, I must say that I agree with Penelope Trunk’s post: Seven Reasons Why Graduate School Is Outdated. I do think that getting a graduate degree is necessary for some individuals and for the pursuit of some professions. But I also understand that the professional world is changing, the cost of higher education is rising, and it’s not a small thing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree you may not necessarily need or ever really use.

People don’t stay in the same career for fifty years like our grandparents did. There’s a lot of motion in the workplace and along the career path. Everything looks to be in a pretty constant state of flux, and the people who seem to be adapting the best are the ones who are capable of learning as they go and switching lanes mid-stride.

Getting a huge dose of education at the beginning of the journey and then staying the course throughout the length of one’s career trajectory is fine if you actually stay in that particular field of interest and skill. But what if the subject matter that most interests you when you’re 22 isn’t what you want to continue working in when you’re 35?

I don’t think graduate school is outdated in all areas; I’d say it’s fairly necessary in several fields. I do agree with Trunk’s point that one should not use graduate school as a way to discover what one wants to be when one grows up, and one should perhaps rethink the idea of getting an incredibly expensive degree in an area one sort of thinks maybe they might want to earn a living at some day.

I’m not telling people to decrease their educational goals and aspirations, and I’m not trying to put undue amounts of pressure on anyone currently trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up. I’m just pointing out that Ms. Penelope Trunk made some excellent points regarding the possibly outdated graduate degree. I was in such disbelief that I actually agreed with what she was saying (being super pro-education) that I felt it was necessary to bring attention to her line of reasoning.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Hey, look at that–the SAT still sucks. What are the odds?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I cannot believe humans didn’t come up with this until now: avoiding the tyranny of the textbook-publisher racket by renting textbooks. (Author’s note: It’s entirely possible this rental option was around a few years ago when I was in school, and I was just too snobby to even allow the idea to enter my consciousness.)

It may not be feasible to rent all of your books every term; lab books tend to actually be written in, and some texts will be kept forever as reference books. But if you could rent just a few, you’d still be saving a fat wad of cash and would be helping to limit the power of the iron-fisted, textbook-publishing regime that rules the land of academia.

According to Alan Bradford over at Geek Stew (who alerted his fellow humans to this book-rental genius-ness), Chegg.com also plants a tree for every book rented, which means you’ll be saving the bacon of trees on several levels.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

In the Unconventional Career Advice category, I’m putting Steve Martin’s memoir Born Standing Up. I’m a big fan of Martin’s writing, so it was a given that I would read his recent book about his stand-up comedy career.

I was expecting a well-written description of what happened in the 1970s, when he’d already made a name for himself and was selling out gigantic arenas. He does cover that, but the main focus of the book is everything leading up to that point, all of which turns out to be much more interesting.

Obviously, if you’re planning on becoming a stand-up comedian when you grow up, you could do worse than take advice from Steve Martin. But while I was reading the book, I kept seeing how solid and telling and honest and thorough Martin’s ‘advice’ is, and therefore how relevant that makes it for any other endeavor. He doesn’t even necessarily intend for it to be an advisory, how-to volume; his main intent is to explain how and why he made such an all-consuming journey.

Cal Newport, over at Study Hacks, was also struck by how well the book works as advice on more than just becoming a comedian. You should read the excellent post he has about how to become famous using ‘the Steve Martin method,’ which he outlines perfectly in the post.

Gary Woodill at Brandon Hall Research uses Martin’s memoir, along with Jerry Seinfeld’s documentary, Comedian, as examples of deep learning, which is the type of learning that takes “years to acquire, engaged immersion in the world, and lots of hard work.” Surface learning, on the other hand, requires much less time and effort. Surface learning is just the memorization of (and not the full-on learning of) the material or the process.

There is nothing ‘surface’ about Steve Martin’s comedic process; he swims in it, lives it, and breathes it for eighteen years until he burns out and walks away. It’s exhausting to read about, but it’s also pretty damned riveting to follow someone’s intense and incredibly focused journey to success. He doesn’t let up, he’s constantly learning and revising and thinking about the details and trying to grok the bigger picture. I think if you have that much focus and energy and depth of thought to put into something, you’re going to be okay.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

For any recent college graduates who might be heading off to their first year of teaching, this post on Ephblog lays out with severe honesty what a first-year teacher might expect. I’m not a teacher, but I’ve learned from scores of them, and I found it interesting to read about what it’s like for a new teacher to jump into the breach for the first time. The post is the first in a summer-long series about teaching through the eyes of Williams College graduates and should be worth checking out.

Posted by Alexa Harrington