Archive for July, 2009

Grammar and Punctuation Resources

I really don’t like screwing up. When I notice my screw-ups later, it freaks me out and I think about my mistake for days. Probably not the best use of my time and energy, and I’m working on that part of my personality, but there it is. It bothers me that I was put on [ READ MORE ]

Free Money For Textbooks

Sometimes it’s hard to change your ways so as to avoid evilness. I love books (have I mentioned that before?) and am probably the last human on Earth who would buy a damn Kindle thingy and start reading my “books” on a screen. However (here comes the part where I clear my throat and mumble [ READ MORE ]

Obama’s Race To The Top

How horrible a mother would I be if I sat my kids down, looked them in their sweet, trusting eyes, and told them that only the most ass-kicking one of them was going to get funding for food, shelter and clothing, and the loser was going to be on their own? I would be deemed [ READ MORE ]

Advice For Surviving PhD Orals

If you’ve ever read the About Page on this here blog, you’ll know that somewhere on my extensively planned path to the land of the Perfectly PhD-ed Career, I was derailed (mostly voluntarily) by my own personal efforts to ensure the continuation of the species (Mommyness replaced my dream of Tenured Professorness). I’ve been a [ READ MORE ]

Top 10 College Majors That Lead To High Salaries

Below is PayScale.com’s shiny chart showing which college majors may lead a college graduate to a decent salary. For the full list, go here. I tend to peruse these things with my manure-proof haz-mat suit on, just in case. School rankings lists, for example, are rife with opportunities for the less-than-upstanding number crunchers to make [ READ MORE ]

UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program

Aaaaahh…back from vacation. I apologize for the technical difficulties (it sucks when one’s fear that controlling less and relaxing more will surely lead to everything going to hell turns out to be a well-founded fear). But now I’m back and have alerted the technical people and we can move on. Here’s an informative higher education [ READ MORE ]

Summer Vacation 2009

My husband and I both were raised in regions where surviving the brutal heat of summer was something to be proud of and, apparently, nostalgic for. We also feel compelled to inflict three-digit heat on our grossly unprepared, rainy weather children. Seattleites only ever burn themselves on highly caffeinated hot beverages laced with precisely foamed [ READ MORE ]

Dual Academic Careers Re-Post

Do smarty-pants professor types feel they need a bigger challenge? Was defending their dissertation not enough? All of those years of undergraduate and graduate work, living somewhere near the poverty line, working and striving for those extra letters after their names? Why do obviously intelligent humans do this to themselves? Because they want to spend [ READ MORE ]

Rhymes With ‘Fresca’: Part One Re-Post

I am a reader. I was raised by three voracious readers: Mom, Dad, Stepmom. I come from a long line of book addicts. My parents read to my brother and me a LOT. I remember desperately wanting to learn to read and it seemingly taking forever to get to the part in school where the [ READ MORE ]

Rhymes With ‘Fresca’: Part Two Re-Post

Given everything in the previous post, it will shock no one to learn that I started to read to my kids when they were in utero. They both have impressive personal libraries, but we supplement their kiddie-lit collections with twice-weekly trips to the library. We frequently discover new authors and check out every book he [ READ MORE ]