Archive for August, 2009

Organization Systems for College Students

Fall term will be starting soon, whether you’re prepared for the deluge or not. Summer vacation is good for earning money and bonding with peers, but it’s getting toward the portion of summer that would be well spent on getting a few of your higher-education ducks in a row. Getting one’s organization system planned out [ READ MORE ]

What Makes a Good Parent?

Last week’s post got me thinking about the kid/achievement/parent dynamic. I may have mentioned, once or twice, my absolute fury toward and lack of goodwill for parents who place volumes of pressure the size of planets onto their kids’ shoulders and tell them repeatedly that only the achievements which can be recorded on paper are [ READ MORE ]

Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2013

Every August, right before the new freshman class shows up for Fall Term, Beloit College publishes the Mindset List for that year’s incoming class. This year, the incoming freshmen who make up the class of 2013 were all born in (or near) 1991. In 1991 I was a junior in high school, and everything new [ READ MORE ]

The Community College Guide

I was never good at taking advice in my teen years, but grown-up me wants to go back to the 1990s, tie teenager me to a chair, and wait while the pain-in-the-ass younger version of myself reads the above book. I also would have liked to have known of its existence yesterday, when I wrote [ READ MORE ]

Community College Before the Four-Year School

Not everyone heads off to a four-year higher learning institution right after high school. Some people forgo the awesomeness of freshman year in the dorms so they can save thousands of dollars learning how to become a stellar college student amid the relative safety of a community college before launching themselves full-bore into the larger [ READ MORE ]

CourseSmart’s eTextbook App for the iPhone

So much excitement about the iPhone! CourseSmart just announced the release of its free eTextbooks application on the App Store. The eTextbooks App allows student and instructor subscribers to access their CourseSmart eTextbooks whenever and wherever they want. “We’ve seen significant demand from student customers for the ability to get required textbook content in electronic [ READ MORE ]

The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…

…It costs $99 and it’s called the App Store. This post over at the FairSoftware Blog starts out funny, but ends up making sense. If you’re working toward a degree in Computer Science, you’ll be writing (one hopes) cool and useful programs. Unless your future plans for world domination necessitate a separate MBA degree, consider [ READ MORE ]

Budget Cuts Starving The Arts

The arts tend to be less than fully appreciated, so it’s not like I thought art departments would be immune to the current swath of budget cuts, but it’s still depressing. Everyone’s taking a hit, but the NY Times has highlighted several painful examples: If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the [ READ MORE ]

Statistics Is The New Black

Good news for data-analyzing statistics geeks: according to this article in the NY Times, being a statistician in the Internet Age has extreme hotness potential. “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.” The rising stature of [ READ MORE ]

Teaching Naked at Southern Methodist University

As the granddaughter of science professors who was used to asking a question at a grandparent’s house and receiving a long but educational lecture as an answer to my little-girl ponderings, I have always had a fondness for the prof-lecturing, students-listening method of teaching. If the professor is engaged and is obviously enamored of his [ READ MORE ]