I don’t care how high your SAT scores are: if you’re planning to attend any institution of higher education that isn’t blatantly obvious in its accreditation (Stanford, Yale, etc.), and you don’t take the so-easy-a-monkey-could-do-it step of checking your intended school’s official accreditation status, then you’re an idiot.

Go here or here and get it done. You’ll spend hours more time texting today than you will ascertaining that your institution will hand you a valid degree after you’ve given said school your blood, sweat, tears, time, and money. Avoid this woman’s mistake.

Accreditation Resources:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)
U.S. Dept. of Edu. Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(graduation joy)

Meat school! That might be it. That may be all I’ve got to say about this NPR story. Meat school. One can attend meat school. It makes sense, of course. How else would one learn to cut meat in the days of supermarkets, Styrofoam, and the possibly extinct neighborhood butcher?

Meat school, however odd it sounds, is actually a good thing. The month-long intensive certificate course at SUNY’s meat lab in Cobleskill, near Albany, teaches everything a student needs to know to run their own small meat-processing business. Graduates can then do good things, like keep well-raised, local, small-farm meats local. The farmers can send their animals to a nearby small slaughterhouse, have their meat prepared and handled by a professional.

Raising meat that has been treated well is a lot of work. In the end it’s worth it, as it’s better for the animals, the planet, and the consumer. It would be a shame, and a bit of a backward path, if the animals were raised so particularly only to be shipped off to a slaughterhouse and a market hundreds of miles away. It’s better to do all that work for yourself and your neighbors.

The phrase “meat school” is still weird. Meat school meat school meat school meat school. I’ve thought it too many times. The phrase has lost all meaning.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

We’re all in agreement that economic recessions bite, yes? Since reading this article, I’ve read nothing but articles and sound bites and commentary that all state basically the same thing: The Baby Boomers are getting old(er). Anyone working in the healthcare industry will have an excellent chance to maintain their jobs, careers, and mortgage payments despite the economic downturn. Let the healthcare-ing of the aging process begin!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Sports psychologists and what they do for athletes used to be something of a deep dark secret in the world of athletics. Increasingly they are being viewed as necessary, secondary only to coaches and practice.

Athletes are viewed as the strongest, sleekest, fastest humans on the planet. They are also supposed to maintain an inhuman level of cool calm through the thousands of intense fight-or-flight moments they encounter in their athletic careers. Coolly composed and bizarrely perfect, they perform their made-for-slow-motion moves with an amazing combination of pure instinct and well-planned execution.

They are also supposed to win. Every time. No slacking, not even at practice. All available asses must be annihilated at every waking moment of every day or the fame/prestige/money/contract goes away. Don’t fuck it up, kid. Don’t get hurt. Never ever, even for a second, can you be second best. You’re either a winner or you’re a loser. Win at all costs or we take it all away.

Stunning: an athlete in mid-motion, all body and a quiet mind. Totally focused on making his/her body move with immaculate perfection. Heartbreaking: an athlete frozen in place, a loud mind and an unmovable body. Drowning under pressure from all sides.

Help them get out of their heads. Like all people perceived to be superheroes, athletes have dark sides. Sports psychologists can pull them up and out.

Further Reading:

Ron Artest Thanks Psychiatrist After Lakers Win
Ron Artest Did Not Shrink From Psychotherapy
Wired for Draft Success: Scouting Players with Computer Models and Psychoanalysis
Mind Games: The Psychology of Champions
Western Washington Univ: MS Sport Psychology
Oregon State University: Graduate Studies in Sport and Exercise Psychology
UT Knoxville: Graduate Program in Sport Psychology
Sports Psychology Information

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The physical training athletes constantly work at can only get them so far when the big moment comes. The body can always be trained and improved, and when the competitive sh*t is hitting the fan, an athlete’s body will have been so intensively trained that the muscles will tend to react according to the memories the muscles have stored up based on that training.

All of which should mean that if an athlete can see what’s happening during a competition and can let their minds go enough to allow their muscle-memoried bodies to do what they’ve been trained to do, everything should be golden. Too bad athletes are using their bodies so extensively that their amped-up minds have time to think and think until mentally the athlete is curled up in a corner, twitching and terrified, certain of failure at the critical moment.

In the old days, the coach gave the athlete a pep talk, a good whack on the back, and told the athlete to suck it up and take it like a man. These days, there are sports psychologists. When an athlete is physically flawless, but tends to mentally crumple when confronted with the pivotal moment of doom, a sports psychologist becomes part of his/her training team.

An article in the CS Monitor explains the ins and outs:

German biathlete Magdalena Neuner came into the Vancouver Olympics with six world championship titles in her pocket – but a history of wildly inconsistent shooting that has also left her with some poor results.

So when the young stand-out won her first of three medals so far at these Olympics – including two of Germany’s six gold medals – she had a simple answer for how she had become so much more consistent this year.
“I worked very hard, especially in the mental training,” she said, a concept she elaborated on later. “One has to understand that physical fitness alone isn’t sufficient. My mental training is very complex and it makes me believe in myself…. To control your mind is more difficult than to control your body.”

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Having a home base to call your own is good. And as in love as I am with travel, one of the best feelings ever is the moment you get home and walk back in the door. It’s strange and new and comfortably enveloping and familiar all at once.

As marvelous as coming home to the place that’s yours in the world, the most profound bit a trip abroad can offer is a better understanding of a whole new group of humans. I don’t care how educated someone is or isn’t, or how much political-correctness training they’ve had; leaving home base and finding yourself among people you don’t consider familiar or anywhere near your own will open your eyes a smidge and will wedge some new information and thought processes into your noggin.

It doesn’t have to hit the “It blew my mind!” level of experience intensity; subtle works too. The more we humans grok the fact that the planet is full of other humans who are basically just like us, the better things will be. Global knowledge and understanding is good.

Even if their reasons aren’t planet-saving or brotherly love, I’m still glad UCLA’s Anderson School of Management will have an international requirement for their MBA students. Starting with the Class of 2012, students will have three requirement-fulfilling options:

1) Take an international elective.

2) Spend a term abroad at one of more than 50 premier global partner business schools.

3) Complete an international Applied Management Research (AMR) project.

It’s possible the business types are hoping to use their powers for global economic rule, but they’re still going to gain insight into other earth-dwellers—in non- business-y ways—whether they want to or not.

Further Reading:

UCLA Anderson: Compare MBA Programs
Business Week: UCLA Anderson School of Management
The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…
UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program
UA’s Two New Dual-Degree MBA and Engineering Programs
Washington State Univ. Announces New Online MBA Program
Saving the Planet is a Solid Career Choice
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
AllBusinessSchools.com

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Enrollment at community colleges is increasing at a startling rate. The two main contributing factors being: (a) college students and their parents are pinched for funds and spending a few years at a community college is several thousand dollars cheaper than heading for a four-year school immediately after high school graduation; and (b) adults who have just lost their jobs due to the recession are using the forced downtime to work on improving their career education and/or training.

It blows mightily that just as everyone is flocking to community college campuses, the recession is sucking a lot of funding from public schools. The schools have neither the physical space nor the money to deal with every potential student who knocks on their doors.

Irony is a tricky word, and no one should go around just slapping the Ironic! label on every bummer situation they see. The fact that community colleges have an embarrassment of riches due to incoming students, while simultaneously losing a painful chunk of their funding so they can’t enroll all of those students isn’t technically ironic. But it does get the It Ubersucks! label.

Further Reading (It’s All Bad News):

Community Colleges See Demand Spike, Funding Slip
Community College Enrollment Increase 4.9%
College Funding Dilemma
Demand Has Increased at State’s Community Colleges
3 O.C. Colleges Cut Classes for 2,000 Students
Community Colleges May See Increase In Enrollment
Community College Enrollment Booms At University of Hawaii
Community Colleges See Spike In Fall Enrollment
COCC Closes Fall Admissions
New Data Confirm Increased Enrollments
The Community College Enrollment Boom
Community College Surge

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Ah, the economy. I’ve always assumed that most humans of legal money-earning age have three thought-topics on more or less constant rotation through their minds: food, sex, and money. Those are all directly related to survival, so it makes sense that we’d be hyper-focused on them. And yet, when the media and the government types yell “The economy is tanking!” in a crowded theatre (or country, as it were), everyone comes unglued. All wage-earning adults are suddenly on a mission to make themselves Super-Duper Employable. Were they not toiling to that end before?

There’s nothing wrong with a strong work ethic and a good solid employability mindset. I’m all for being a productive citizen. It’s just odd to watch everyone suddenly scramble around in panicked circles and then run off in an Extra Hireable direction. What was everyone doing before, lolling around eating bonbons and archiving earwax chunks?

Sometimes it’s just bad luck: anyone who was kicking ass in the real estate business a few years ago is having a tough time these days. A lot of adults who had been, until recently, firmly ensconced in their careers are finding themselves less than necessary. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and praying for a miracle, a lot of adults are using the forced downtime to their advantage and are heading back to school.

For anyone who’s concerned that they haven’t been productive enough to survive in the current and near-future economy, here’s some further reading and resources:

Career Schools List
Weighing a New Industry For a New Job Outlook
More Students Spring From Tough Times
The Way To Go When the Economy Slows…Trade Schools
Certificate Programs Can Lead To Good Jobs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image: Emil Rothengatter

As I’ve mentioned previously, I am fascinated by what goes on behind the curtain. I can’t stop thinking about the education, training and knowledge that goes into all the professional actions that play out right in front of me. I’m not nearly as enthralled by the worker and the job they’re doing as I am by all the know-how they surely must have packed into their brain. I want to know why they’re doing what they’re doing and how they knew to do it in that particular way.

Professional athletes are workers (in their own high-pressure, playful sort of way). I would never classify myself as an avid sports fan, but I can appreciate the grace and skill involved. Again, what I’m really thinking about when I’m watching a game is how the players and the coaches have taken decades of amassed sports knowledge and are applying it all right before my eyes.

There’s all the game strategy—which players to put in at what point in the game based on the players themselves, how the game in question is proceeding, and on which of the opposing team’s players are on the field—and the training methods, including specific movements that have been engrained in the players’ muscle memory, etc. During any given play, all of that knowledge, training, strategy, muscle memory, and talent combine in a fraction of a second with the players’ instincts to create an amazing moment that I get to witness.

Sports psychologists are one of the fascinating behind-the-curtain elements on the sports team staff. A lot of athletes, especially the do-it-for-money variety, appreciate a highly educated pep talk when they’ve hit a slump and are psyching themselves out. It’s understandable; if I had a gajillion dollar contract to be awesome (or else) and thousands of people watched me do my job, I’d need a damn sports shrink, too.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (no longer an actual newspaper) has this article about the Mariners’ sports psychologist, Steve Hecht, and what it is, exactly, that he does for the players. It’s info from behind the curtain, and it’s even more interesting than watching an actual game (although perhaps only to me).

Further Reading and Resources:

What is a Sport Psychologist?
BLS Occupational Outlook: Psychologists
Sports Psychology Degrees and Careers
Sports Psychology Degree Programs: How to Become a Sports Psychologist
Univ. of Iowa, Dept. of Health and Sport Studies
SportPsychology.com
Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP)
North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image credit: zuma press)

Sometimes I wonder why the decision-makers are so backward in their thinking, and then I wonder which one of us non-decision-makers was responsible for putting them in charge in the first place. Outdoor recess and unstructured, in-classroom play time have been decreasing so as to make time for the fully structured knowledge-absorption parts of the school day. The yahoos in charge of how much time is spent learning vs. playing in elementary schools need to spend an afternoon finger-painting and remember what it was like to be a kid.

Alternatively, they could read all the research backing up the idea that kids who are given time during the school day for physical activity (the crux of the recess invention) and to play in the classroom during free choice time (they learn while they play indoors, too) are better able to sit down at their desks and absorb more info when it comes time for the focusing.

I’m a big recess fan, so I’ve always been cranky about the slow but sure disappearance of primary school recess times. But there’s also an entire portion of in-classroom free time, also known as child-directed educational play, which is being squeezed out in favor of fully structured, sit-still-and-absorb-the-information learning.

The traditional kindergarten classroom that most adults remember from childhood—with plenty of space and time for unstructured play and discovery, art and music, practicing social skills, and learning to enjoy learning—has largely disappeared. The results of three new studies, supported by the Alliance for Childhood and described in this report, suggest that time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing.

The studies were conducted by researchers from U.C.L.A., Long Island University and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. The researchers found that

• On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being
instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).

• Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that most uses of such tests with children under age eight are of questionable validity and can lead to harmful labeling.

• Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied.

• In many kindergarten classrooms there is no play- time at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not
incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.

Kindergartners are now under great pressure to meet inappropriate expectations, including academic standards
that until recently were reserved for first grade. At the same time, they are being denied the benefits of play—a major stress reliever.

If teachers were in charge, I can guarantee there would be more free time in the classroom for the kids to engage in child-directed, imagination-saturated, problem-solving, cognition-developing play. Anyone who has learned anything about the psychology of kiddos and their brain wiring knows that they are learning even when they are playing, and that they learn better during the in-desk formal learning part of their school day if they’ve have a chance to blow off some steam and decompress a little.

Someone with a conscience and the proverbial balls to use their powers for good needs to get some official documentation of their qualification to tell the powers that be what it is, exactly, that kids require to be happy and healthy. (The answer is: More play, on and off the monkey bars.)

I think educational psychology carries some excellent potential for bureaucratic ass-kicking. Educational psychologists understand the whys and hows of who is learning what, how they’re learning in any given situation, and who is teaching and what makes those educators tick, and why the curriculum is or isn’t working for all parties involved. They’re the ones who grok the whole educational picture of a school and can use torrents of gorgeous vocabulary to explain to the policymakers why recess matters. Someone go to it and save our kids.

Further Reading and Resources:

Physically Fit Kids Do Better In School
Physical Activity May Strengthen Children’s Ability To Pay Attention
Educational Psychology Careers and Degrees
About Educational Psychology
Telling the Stories of Educational Psychology
American Psychological Association

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image sources: classroom and playground