As an undergrad, I got really good at taking notes. However, I took them according to my own odd little system, and I’m not sure they would have been of any use to someone else. Now I can be less sad about missing out on the ShareNotes.com concept, wherein college students take notes, upload them, share them (was that not implied?), and get paid if their notes are awesome enough to be downloaded. If you’re a spectacular note-taker, and you’re planning on showing up to class and taking notes anyway, you may as work your marketable skill.

ShareNotes.com is a unique online lecture note sharing service. We’ve created a collaborative environment that allows college students who share classes to also share their lecture notes. In just minutes you can be part of the ShareNotes.com community. Bolster your study materials, share your lecture notes and maybe even make some money.

You can take advantage of ShareNotes.com a couple of different ways. You may post your quality lecture notes and make money each time your notes are downloaded. Or if you would prefer, you can choose to download quality lecture notes that have been posted by your colleagues. Either way, you win. You may choose to do one or the other, but we think you’ll do a little of both.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source

Paul Bogush, the teacher with the Blogush blog, has a funny list up of all the things we could expect If Movie Theatres Were Like Schools. The ones with asterisks were thought up by his students.

If movie theatres were like schools…

Everyone would sit in alphabetical order.

If you laughed at the car crash you would have to leave and talk to the guidance counselor.

There would be IEPs in place for the guys so that they could sit through an entire chick flick.

There would be no candy or soda allowed.

By 2012, NMLB law would have all children ready to view rated R movies.

If you showed up to the movie late you would be given a detention.

If you tried to leave early the manager would haul you back in.

If your cell phone goes off the staff will confiscate it.

You would have to pause the movie and write a blog post reflecting on why they would name the starship the “Enterprise.”

You would have to enter and exit the theater in two straight lines.

The movies you watched would be chosen for you.

Once a month you would have to watch a movie about a culture other than your own.

*Everyday you would have to watch action movies first, then drama, then romances, then horror. There would be no movies allowed that crossed genre lines like romantic dramas.

*Any movie over 50 minutes long would be completed the next day.

*Can’t watch previews of what is up-coming until movie is over.

*Can’t pee while movie is going on.

*Any B movie would have to be re-made until it is a hit.

If no one spoke for the entire movie you would get a blue star on the board.

*The opening sequence of rules would be 2 hours long.

*You can’t leave the theater with a friend to go to their house unless you have a note from your mother.

*If you are sick and can’t watch a movie the next day you have to watch twice as many movies.

*There would be no cursing in the movies.

*They would take out the air conditioning and install two small fans.

*There would be five screens but only two projectors.

When the projectors break you would have to role-play the characters in the movie.

All the incorrigible viewers would have to watch Marley and Me until they cried.

Popcorn would be ordered in bulk from Frey Scientific and cost $25 per pound.

The ushers would have to be certified, have 30 hours of credits, pass two tests, and practice ushering with another usher who sat through a 6 hour workshop on how to teach ushering before being hired.

People would be bused across town because watching the movie with a diverse audience will bring more peace and harmony.

Every movie theater in the city would be playing the same movie at the same time.

There would be no comedies shown.

You could watch movies, but not create movies.

Ushers would have PD on how to check and see if the audience is watching the movie, but none on making movies.

You are not allowed to boo, only cheer for movies.

If the males didn’t like watching movies when they get older it IS NOT because they had to learn how to watch movies by watching Beaches, An Officer and a Gentleman, Dirty Dancing, Ice Castles, and Flashdance.

Ushers in the black-and-white movies would be hand-writing letters to their loved ones.

Ushers in the 3-D movies would be twittering to one another on their phones wondering why the ushers in the black-and-white movies are still hand writing letters with more than 140 characters.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source

It takes a certain amount of ballsiness to quit your safely cubicled nine-to-fiver and strike out on your own as the freelancer you’ve always dreamed of being. Sometimes one’s bravery can get an ass-kicking boost by being unexpectedly down-sized. Whether you’ve decided to flee cubeville voluntarily, or have had the decision made for you by a suited personage with no sense of humor (or humanity), I have three book recommendations to help you find your way in the real world (with no more grid-like cubes and straight lines of fluorescent lighting to help you find your way).

I’ve been meaning to mention Michelle Goodman’s books for a while, and Pamela Slim’s book was recently published and reminded me of the down-with-cubes genre. Both authors write with a simple, down-to-earth style that gets the all-important information across with a humorous bent. Humor and nuggets of knowledge are always appreciated by anyone leaping into the abyss.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Jason Seiden has written a compelling piece about the concept of college education as we know it, and the vision he has for its future (hint: things are not going to stay the same).

I’m an old-fashioned, pen-and-paper loving girl who adores education in all of its forms, and I’m especially enamored of the halcyon days of the traditional four-year college degree. Which is to say that I am not the most receptive audience for Mr. Seiden’s proposal that college’s days are numbered.

However, since I’m now 35 and am officially an adult (and society makes you act like a grown-up whether you want to or not) I’ve been trying to open my little noggin up to new thoughts and ideas. So, with much wishing it wasn’t so, I must admit that his ideas have merit and I can see logic in his argument.

Hey, college: you’ve been put on notice. My kids will probably not experience you the way I did. My guess is, by the time they get there, a college education could have some of the following characteristics:

–College will be less about the four years that follow high school than about a lifelong commitment to a learning community.

–College degrees may be staged. One of the first areas of focus for many out of school will be basic professional skills, which in many cases will be taught in blended study/work environments.

–Northeastern and Drexel already use this model, where internships are part of the program. Some professional grad schools use this model, too. This will get students into the working world and earning an income quicker.

–Math and science will also get early billing in the curriculum. Not knowing how to divide isn’t cute, it’s dangerous. Our economy today requires incredible specialization, which in turn requires more detailed, and higher level thinking. That means math. From my experience, people are a lot better at math than they give themselves credit for. Their issues aren’t about manipulating numbers, they’re about the teachers they had[link]. We’ll get over it.

–The liberal arts education will become a lifelong endeavor. People will take ongoing courses in English, the arts, history, and the humanities. Knowing something of the world around you will be a status symbol… and for businesses, these ongoing courses will provide tremendous networking opportunities.

That last paragraph is a good one. He makes some good points, yes? Even so, change kind of blows. On the inside, I’m sticking my bottom lip out in a preschooler pout and I’m kicking the ground like a three-year-old who doesn’t want to use her words.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

hat tip: Lynn Mattoon

image source

Via EphBlog, I was alerted several months back to Williams College freshman, Juliana Stone, and the weekly column she writes for a paper back home in L.A. about her first year away at college. She’s effing funny (if she’s a Williams student, should I be calling her ephing funny?), in a dry, cranky sort of way. Her second-to-last piece, The Freshman: Self-Diagnosing Swine Flu Right Before Finals Blues, is worth your time.

I think I have swine flu.

I called my radiologist dad at Torrance Memorial Medical Center seven times the other day to tell him I thought I had swine flu and to make him explain how he knew I didn’t have swine flu, and what would happen to me if I did have swine flu and it went undiagnosed.

He told me to stop calling.

I went to the campus health center recently because I actually was sick, and the nurses did a strep culture. But they wouldn’t test me for swine flu – even though I’d diagnosed myself online – because I didn’t have a fever. Or any of the other symptoms. And they probably didn’t want to encourage my totally out-of-control hypochondriacal tendencies. They told me to stop going on WebMD. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source

The Frugal Duchess has a guest post from Consumer Credit Counseling Service up about graduating seniors and the financial wisdom it behooves them to know. Learn it. Know it. Live it. (Or there will be no home-owning in your future and your student loan debt will pale in comparison to your credit card debt and you will be crushed like an insignificant bug under the weight of it all). Am I over-explaining? Do you over-stand yet? Don’t be one of those idiot college grads who got an ‘A’ in calculus but can’t grok how money works. For anyone who still isn’t sure: if you have some, you can spend it, if you don’t have some, you effing can’t.

I have a theory that financial literacy and parallel parking are the modern-day tests for Survival of the Fittest. Back in our life-in-the-state-of-nature days, keeping the fire lit, surviving the winter without four walls and heating ducts, and avoiding being scarfed down by a wild animal were the tests for survival. Now we’ve got parallel parking and not ending up on the street because you spent money you didn’t have.

Further Reading and Resources:

Consumer Credit Counseling Service
Ramit Sethi: I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy
Consumer Jungle
Council for Economic Education
Money Smart
Financial Literacy Through Video Games
Push for Financial Literacy Spreads to Schools
Reuters: New Young Adult Financial Literacy Curriculum
Newsweek: Clues for the Clueless

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image credit: Alex Nabaum

AllMyFaves just added an Education page to their site. There’s the expected flurry of standard white-bread stuff, but they also have some decent lists to get you started in your quest for educational info. I particularly enjoyed the link collections for Teachers, Video, Science, History, Math, Homeschool, Green, Art, Books, Dictionaries, Earth, and Encyclopedia.

It’s a little like a Big Box Store for all of your basic info-searching needs, and while I do like to be diverse and twisty in my searching so as to bump into unexpected and amazing moments, there’s something to be said for having an enormous warehouse wherein all of your basic needs can be met.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

In today’s Daily, the University of Washington’s campus paper, there’s an opinion piece that makes some persuasive arguments for increasing the online-ness of UW’s two online learning options, the College of Engineering’s EDGE Program and UW Online Learning. While the EDGE Program—which was kicking online education ass before online education was cool (since 1984, thank you very much)—has a solid list of online graduate degrees in engineering, UW Online Learning offers a few Master’s degrees and certificate programs, and nowhere at UW is an online undergraduate degree to be found.

The UW is ahead of the curve in the area of digital education. The College of Engineering’s EDGE program offers more than 50 online courses and 10 degrees, and numerous courses and certificates can be obtained via UW Online Learning.

However, UW distance-learning programs fall short of a comprehensive approach to online education. There are numerous core classes missing from the list of course offerings, and only graduate degrees are available online. There are rules limiting the number of online courses that can apply to an undergraduate degree and the amount of courses that can be taken during a quarter.

While the Daily’s columnist, Mr. Noon, is arguing for an increase in online learning options at UW, he’s fair in pointing out that not every course is conducive to an online platform. I, myself, have never been able to figure out how some of the messier science-lab courses could be done away from campus. I’m as adventurous and curious as the next science-geek gal, but I’d prefer it if cadavers and chemistry experiments stayed on campus.

There’s also the question of the technological upgrade UW would have to invest in should online education be expanded. College students tend to be among the more spoiled and savvy tech-users, and they won’t stick around for long at a school that has less than badass technology. And have we forgotten that this is the age of instantaneous information? One whiff of a school’s sub-par technology, and it will be shouted virally from the Twitter rooftops. Keep up, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source

Reading this article in the Wall Street Journal—while being informed fully of the situation —will make you want to beat your head against a wall. The job market has pretty well reached mythical status for recent college graduates; the “job market” was a place other generations did some minimal step-following in order to slip their educated way into a spot seemingly reserved for them. “Them” being the twenty-somethings who had followed procedure: graduated with decent grades in high school, taken all required standardized tests, gotten into colleges and universities, graduated with one or more degrees, etc.

I can’t imagine how pissed off the current generation (are we still on Y? When do we get to Z?) must be regarding their financial futures. They’ve been jumping through academic hoops since middle school in order to secure their spot in Careerland. And now, things don’t seem to be progressing according to plan. If’n I were a Gen-Yer (I’m Gen-X) I would be so done with adults and jobs and school and rules. There are going to be a lot of twenty-somethings living off the grid, far away on tropical islands, telling society to perform expletive-y things on itself.

Here’s the teensy smidge of silver lining…at the end of the article, there are a few lines that give recent grads another option (besides smashing their heads repeatedly against the Job Market Wall:

Others are opting to ride out the slump doing public service. At AmeriCorps, a nationwide community-service network, applications more than tripled to about 48,500 between November 2008 and March compared to the same time period a year earlier. Teach for America received 35,000 applications this year — 42% more than last year. About 70% of those were recent college graduates. Among the most common reasons people cited for applying, according to Teach for America, were poor job conditions and President Barack Obama’s call to public service.

Another alternative to unemployment or a low-paying job: Stay in school.

Graduate applications for 2007-2008 were up 8% nationwide compared to the year before, according to the most recent numbers from the Council of Graduate Schools. Schools such as Northwestern University and Harvard are already tracking double-digit increases this year.

College grads who went to graduate school instead of the job market during the early ’80s recession didn’t suffer the same wage losses, says Ms. Kahn, the Yale economist.

I love school, so I see no downside to sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand (grad school) and waiting the economic slumpiness out. There will be more student loan debts, but maybe there’s a way to keep the course load manageable enough to also work at the lame job you’re ridiculously overqualified for but it’s the only job you could find after months of searching. And, really, isn’t being in school the perfect excuse for having a crappy job and a cash-flow problem? I’m not kidding, I think I’ve found the perfect hiding place to wait out the Recession Boogeyman—a nice, long PhD with a crappy job on the side. It’s perfect.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Most folks, when faced with a sucky economy, panic in the face of economic downturns. There are some, however, who come up with an innovative twist and offer an elegant solution to a problem. The University of Alabama is now offering a combined engineering and MBA graduate degree program, so students can multi-task their little hearts out and end up ready to kick business-minded engineering booty as soon as they graduate. Less time in school, better prepared for their future careers.

Engineering and MBA graduates from The University of Alabama will now offer more than just technical knowledge to their future employers, as they will combine essential financial skills with engineering through two new innovative dual-degree programs.

Beginning this fall, students can earn master’s degrees in engineering and business administration in two years, and the programs are specific for civil engineering and mechanical engineering.

As Alabama’s automotive, manufacturing, energy, construction and civil engineering industries continue to expand, financial business skills are more essential to guiding engineering projects. Students will be able to immediately impact their future employers through both engineering technical knowledge and the bottom-line financial goals.

“With the mounting costs to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure and with the need to continue the American leadership in the world economy, the need has never been greater for engineers with a strong education in the financial, public funding and economic aspects of major projects,” said Hugh Mathews, president of England, Thims & Miller Inc., a leading civil engineering firm in the Southeast. “This program offers the opportunity for future engineers to prepare themselves to meet this challenge.”

Further Reading and Resources:

UA Announces Two New Dual-Degree MBA and Engineering Programs
MBA Facts and Figures
Accredited MBA Programs
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
Washington State University Announces New Online MBA Program

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source