The recession makes the holidays even more exciting, yes? The stress and fear of minimal funds leads to killer adrenaline rushes, which is always fun. Adults are always freaking out about the gift-giving season because they have no idea how to chill the eff out and stop trying to constantly up the ante. College students have the advantage: You’ve been starving for lots and lots of semesters and know how to work the gently-used and regifted items into glorious gifts, all wrapped up in shiny paper (or the Sunday comics, to be more realistic).

I myself am a frugal little spaz who was creatively thrift-store shopping and regifting before it was all hip and trendy and green and s**t. Just so there’s no confusion.

A close family friend of mine recently retired (she was my Dad’s high school sweetheart and I’ve known her all my life). I purged the hell out of my Already Read stacks of books and gave her a huge, delicious collection of retirement leisure reading. She was happy, and told me she’d start in as soon as she gets back from Peru.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(book-stack sculpture)

Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in America is Ryan’s account of the research he did comparing and contrasting two high schools in Richmond Virginia. There is an unfair, and–one would hopefully argue–un-American disparity in the educational opportunities for each school’s students. Mr. Ryan not only lays the situation out for us all to fully comprehend, he also offers solutions to a problem we are smart enough to have solved by now.

Sadly, our severe lameness as Americans–who continually spout off about freedom and equality and the right to a decent education (we drive the proverbial big truck), in order to compensate for the fact that our public schools are lacking (in order to compensate for our proverbial, unfortunately sized penises)–has mightily contributed to the less-than-illuminated public education system in this great nation of ours. I love America and that damn National Anthem makes me cry every time, but that doesn’t mean I have to love the way politicians allocate funds.

Martha Minow’s In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark, covers what has and what hasn’t been achieved since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka[italics] brought the idea of racial equality in public schools to the forefront. How equal are American public schools? Is it possible they’re more segregated now than they were before Brown?

Minow, in case you’ve not heard every Obama speech, was the professor Obama spoke of in a 2008 campaign speech, “When I was at Harvard Law School I had a teacher who changed my life—Martha Minow.” She’s Dean of the Harvard Law School, but more impressive (to me) is the fact that she’s considered an expert in human rights and advocacy for persons with disabilities, women, children, and for members of racial and religious minorities. All of which is to say that she uses her powers for good and I am always appreciative of that quality in a fellow human.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Kids who grow up with no television in their homes either (a) make friends quick with a kid whose family worships the ‘mote, or (b) they read a lot. My utter lack of pop culture references from the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties should do all the explaining as to which path I took.

The outcome being, I ended up with a stellar vocabulary, full of words I’d only ever seen in print and therefore usually couldn’t pronounce correctly. Whatever. At least I knew what they meant.

And there were some I knew how to say. (With feeling). When I was eight my 18-year-old babysitter burned the chicken pot pies that were to be our dinner. My mother never bought us crappy processed food, which meant my brother and I were infatuated with all sugary, well-preserved, and insanely processed foodstuffs.

I was understandably pissed when the sitter burned my only shot at packaged food for the month and filled the kitchen with smoke. To vent my anger I hollered, “What are you trying to do, asphyxiate us?!” She had no idea what that meant, and almost sent me to my room because she thought I’d called her something so horrible, not even teenager her had ever heard that particular obscenity before.

There is also the common problem, among adults and too-smart-for-their-own-good children, of only ever hearing a word or a phrase and never figuring out the correct spelling. There are so many words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and each version of the stupidly exact-sounding word means something completely different. I’ve got their, there, and they’re down cold, but it took a while for me to get affect and effect straight. The English language, in my bitchy opinion, has some definite asinine qualities.

Or perhaps I should ask more questions. Until I was in college and saw this phrase written on the board as a common mistake college sophomores made when writing papers for the professor, I had always thought “For all intents and purposes” was “For all intensive purposes.”

According to Paul Brians, author of Common Errors in English Usage, I’m not the only native English-speaker to screw that phrase up. Which made me feel better for about point seven seconds until I saw the bit where he describes the phrase as “Another example of the oral transformation of language by people who don’t read much.” Ouch, Professor Brians. That was totally uncalled for.

I read plenty, thank you. The books I read (fine literature and lots of science-y non-fiction) just haven’t ever contained that exact phrase. I am still very smart and am an excellent reader. And clearly I have nary a hang-up about the whole intents/intensive blunder.

Further Reading:

Common Errors in English Usage
Confusing Words
Grammar and Punctuation Resources

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Arjun Muralidharan, aka the Productive Student, has a list of 14 ways college students can strive for greenness on Earth. You’ll want to do them all to slow the destruction of the planet, but you’ll actually do them to save yourself some coinage.

14 Ways to Be a Greener Student (and Save Money Doing It):

-Eat less meat or go vegetarian
-Do more efficient laundry
-Buy groceries with less packaging
-Eat out less
-Buy a greener computer
-Optimize your commute
-Decompose organic waste
-Bring your own bag for shopping
-Recycle paper
-Buy recycled notepads and textbooks
-Put old and unwanted textbooks up for sale
-Use a durable water bottle
-Be conscious about lights everywhere
-Reduce and manage electronic devices

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(recycled notebooks)

I’m already certain that I absolutely must read this book: Problem Solving 101—A Simple Book for Smart People. Kyle James at .eduGuru.com reviewed it, bringing it to my attention (I’m grateful).

Japanese school kids have gained a reputation for insane adroitness in their memorization and test-taking skills while lacking a basic working knowledge of problem solving. Being ill-equipped for the solving of the problems turns out to be somewhat of an issue in the real world.

As we’ve all realized by now, s**t happens in life. You don’t even have to try to interface with s**t and it will still happen. Death, taxes, and s**t are the only guarantees we humans are given. So, avoid death, pay taxes, and prepare yourself for the s**tstorm we call life.

The book was originally written by Ken Watanabe for Japanese school kids, but ended up becoming incredibly popular among Japanese adults in the business world. It’s short, it’s simple, it’s meant for smart, less-than-fully-grown humans, and it’s practical. I’m buying it as soon as I post this.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Graduate school, should it have escaped everyone’s notice, prepares no one for reality. One learns insanely vast oceans of information, but this just means that the M-Something or the PhD in question just knows a lot of stuff—more than most other breathing bodies about one particular slice of one weensy area of reality. Knowing that much information is awesome. But a job it does not acquire. I know, I am an unnecessarily logical bitch. I get that a lot.

So, here you are, all filled up with the knowledge and no way to turn the smartness into cash money. There’s always teaching, fighting for tenure, and someday becoming a beloved professor. But that rarely works out these days. I’ve heard you have to either off someone, sell your soul, or hand over your firstborn to get a professorship. I’m going to officially state that academia may not be the best option. Which is unfortunate, as by this point, your particular topic and the world of academics are the two bits of this life you grok fully and without any doubt as to your capabilities.

I’m thinking you may require assistance with the prying off of your fingers from your lab table/thesis/dissertation/research notes/library carrel/desk in the windowless basement “office.” The Oxford University Press will save you: they’ve just published Jerald M. Jellison’s book, Life After Grad School: Getting From A to B. Technically still under the very edge of academia’s umbrella, but much more saturated with real life and logic.

Jellison’s book is simple; it reads like a To Do list with only the necessary explanations to go along with each item. This is not at all what I expected from a Univ. of California professor. He’s done well in academia as well as in the business world, so perhaps that combination has helped to simplify his writing. Whatever the reason, it’s comfortingly logical in its this-is-possible forward momentumness. Rarely do academics leave their world with emotional grace; they’ve invested too much to walk away easily. Jellison has broken down the horrific task of leaving one life and beginning another into absorbable and complete-able bites.

From the publisher:

There are 2.5 million graduate students across the U.S. in programs designed for a career in academics, and it is rarely acknowledged that less than five percent will realize their dream of becoming a professor. And as tenure track job openings disappear, this percentage will only shrink. The truth is that many of these students aren’t getting the support and instruction from their grad schools on pursuing a career outside academia, nor do many realize that they have the knowledge and skills that could make them a very attractive candidate for a job with a corporation, government agency, or nonprofit.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

It’s shocking. I’m overwhelmed with dumbfounded bafflement. How can this be? They went and published an anthology of science writing, and all but three of the authors are of the male persuasion. Is that even possible? Hold on! I’m thinking.

I think yes, there’s a staggeringly high chance that this could have occurred. There’s many a female science badass out there, but I can guarantee she’s spending a large portion of her time and energy trying to hold her ground in a man’s world.

It’s almost Christmas, and we’re all supposed to love each other even more because the country is littered with sparkly dead trees and overtly cheerful Muzak, so I’ll spare us all the rant. Let’s just say I’m a huge fan of DNA and its structure. It’s beautiful, it’s poetry, it actually chokes me up. I’m not kidding. I also think Watson, Crick and Wilkins were amazing. But that doesn’t change the fact that Rosalind Franklin was treated like sh*t despite her ability to kick DNA-structure ass.

I’m well aware of the fact that the Nobel folks don’t hand over the prize to dead people, and that they only allow sharing between a total of three recipients. Three living ones. So Franklin wouldn’t have been eligible regardless. However, it would be fascinating to know whether she would have been chosen to receive the 1962 Nobel Prize for physiology/medicine instead of one of the men had she been alive at the time.

It’s been almost fifty years. I would have hoped for some improvement on the equality front.

And there they went—all the diplomatic words just left my building. I will stop short of explaining exactly how much people suck. Happy holidays. Go forth and treat people fairly.

Further Reading:

The Rosalind Franklin Papers

The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology 1962

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Have I mentioned the awesomeness that is Flat World Knowledge? I’m fairly certain that I have. They were doing good things in the textbook world back in September of 2008, and now they’re teaming up with Bookshare to provide alternative textbook options to students requiring non-traditional textbook modalities.

Students who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability that requires computer-generated speech and highlighted text soon will have more resources after publisher Flat World Knowledge announced Dec. 14 that it will make its content available to Bookshare, the largest web-based library for people with print disabilities.

Bookshare, which has 75,000 members worldwide, will add 11 new digital textbooks to its online library, which has been bolstered in the past year by contributions from colleges and universities hoping to bring reading material to students who can’t see standard print or can’t turn a page. More…

Further Reading:

Partnership a Boon for Alternative Textbooks
Bookshare.org: Books Without Barriers
FlatWorldKnowledge.com
Flat World Knowledge
Buying Textbooks: New, Used, Rented or Digital
Custom: Cool for Sneakers, Not for Textbooks

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Kids who grow up with no television in their homes either (a) make friends quick with a kid whose family worships the ‘mote, or (b) they read a lot. My utter lack of pop culture references from the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties should do all the explaining as to which path I took.

The outcome being, I ended up with a stellar vocabulary, full of words I’d only ever seen in print and therefore usually couldn’t pronounce correctly. Whatever. At least I knew what they meant.

And there were some I knew how to say. (With feeling). When I was eight my 18-year-old babysitter burned the chicken pot pies that were to be our dinner. My mother never bought us crappy processed food, which meant my brother and I were infatuated with all sugary, well-preserved, and insanely processed foodstuffs.

I was understandably pissed when the sitter burned my only shot at packaged food for the month and filled the kitchen with smoke. To vent my anger I hollered, “What are you trying to do, asphyxiate us?!” She had no idea what that meant, and almost sent me to my room because she thought I’d called her something so horrible, not even teenager her had ever heard that particular obscenity before.

There is also the common problem, among adults and too-smart-for-their-own-good children, of only ever hearing a word or a phrase and never figuring out the correct spelling. There are so many words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and each version of the stupidly exact-sounding word means something completely different. I’ve got their, there, and they’re down cold, but it took a while for me to get affect and effect straight. The English language, in my bitchy opinion, has some definite asinine qualities.

Or perhaps I should ask more questions. Until I was in college and saw this phrase written on the board as a common mistake college sophomores made when writing papers for the professor, I had always thought “For all intents and purposes” was “For all intensive purposes.”

According to Paul Brians, author of Common Errors in English Usage, I’m not the only native English-speaker to screw that phrase up. Which made me feel better for about point seven seconds until I saw the bit where he describes the phrase as “Another example of the oral transformation of language by people who don’t read much.” Ouch, Professor Brians. That was totally uncalled for.

I read plenty, thank you. The books I read (fine literature and lots of science-y non-fiction) just haven’t ever contained that exact phrase. I am still very smart and am an excellent reader. And clearly I have nary a hang-up about the whole intents/intensive blunder.

Further Reading:

Common Errors in English Usage
Confusing Words
Grammar and Punctuation Resources

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Ian Ayres is a gentleman and a scholar (and a lawyer and an economist). He’s a professor at Yale, and since 2005 has been handing out cash to his students whenever he assigns one of his own books as a required text. That way, he hopes, people will understand that he wants to use his own material because it’s necessary, not because he wants some royalties action.

In addition to explaining the motivation for royalty “disgorgement,” Ayres points out that any college student who’s assigned a text written by their professor is justified in requesting a rebate on the royalties the prof is generating. One more way to decrease the feelings of impotent rage which textbook purchasing tends to bring forth.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)