Dr. Julie-Ann McFann over at Around the Academy wrote a beautiful post about the new GI Bill issue. She writes from the perspective of not only the daughter-in-law of a WWII veteran who benefited greatly from the GI Bill, but also as an educator who has taught students that enlisted in the military because it was the most realistic shot any of them had at paying for a college education. She’s as cranky as I am about the whole thing.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I think we (and by ‘we’ I mean Americans) used to be a little prone to taking the commuting portion of our college education for granted. That is no longer the case. There’s an article in the NY Times about the rising cost of commuting coinciding with the rising number of college students enrolling in online courses.

Taking some or all classes online, or earning an online degree is looking better and better to impoverished college students. It saves money and the planet.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Does anyone have summer jobs any more, or do the learning opportunities, résumé-building bullet points, key letters of recommendation, and invaluable experience of the summer internship far outweigh table-waiting wages? Summer’s half over; if you’re in the midst of your own personal interning adventure, here are some beneficial words of wisdom to assist you in milking your internship for all it’s worth:

Top 10 Tips for Interns
Tips to Make the Most of Summer Internships
Summer Internships—Making the Most
Internships Are More Important Than Ever
Inside an Ad Agency Summer Internship

And if this summer’s internship wasn’t all you had hoped it would be, you can start dreaming immediately of landing one of the most coveted internships next summer.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Again I say: there but for the grace of All Things Holy go I. A phone call to my parental units might be in order so I can thank them excessively for bringing me into this world at a time when computers took up entire rooms, tiny technology was available only in science fiction books, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook hadn’t yet been conceived of.

By no means was I an over-the-top party girl in high school or college, but I feel confident that had the technology been in place, I could have certainly captured some detrimental moments for posterity. Any number of which, I can guarantee, would somehow, somewhere, have been unearthed by a prospective employer.

Bowling Green’s online newspaper has an article up about the increasingly standard use employers make of sites like Facebook and MySpace to screen job applicants. I don’t agree with the practice, and part of me feels like it’s an invasion of privacy for employers to go digging around online for information. Which brings me around to the impossible-to-refute point that nothing posted online where the whole world can see it can be considered personal or private.

It sucks that teens and twenty-somethings have to work harder that any other generation since the Victorian age to mind their reputations, but all this technology is probably here to stay. Don’t put s**t out there that you don’t want people to see. Like all things logical, it’s elegant in its simplicity. So either keep your proverbial pants on or mark the “friends only” box on your chosen social networking site. Good luck.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Trying to decide whether to attend a community college or a university right out of high school is a question worthy of pondering. I’ve attended both (university, then CC, then university) and each has its pros and cons.

Class Size

Community Colleges tend toward fewer students per class, which means more student/teacher interaction. This is good for students who like access to their instructors so they can ask questions and avoid getting lost (in the course material or in the shuffle).

Universities usually have massive auditoriums full of a few hundred students, all of whom are trying to keep their heads above water and have hordes of fellow student to compete with for the prof’s office hours. Higher level courses have smaller class sizes (the riff-raff have been weeded out and those left have proven their mettle).

Campus Housing

Community Colleges rarely have on-campus housing to offer.

Universities generally have one or more version of campus housing in order to accommodate students, grad students, faculty, married students, etc.

Expense

Community College will put less of a dent in your college fund.

University tuition costs vary depending upon whether they are public or private, but are more expensive than community colleges.

Caliber of Instruction

At any school there are the amazing instructors and the dismal ones. It’s just the way it goes. I have experienced both kinds at two-year and at four-year schools.

A lot of great instructors teach at community colleges because they actually want to teach and not do the whole publish-or-perish game. I’ve had community college instructors who were there because they wanted to teach at a college-level and they were effing good at it. They could break down some utterly confusing and complicated calculus or chemistry or physics moment into its most simplified, basic form and with one eloquent statement sweep it up, explain it, and have it all fall into place, fully comprehended, in my head.

I’ve had university profs who were so busy with their research (which is, unfortunately, the only way to achieve and maintain professor status) that they were more like silent partners in the course and their TA’s did the actual teaching and question-fielding. But I’ve also had ass-kicking professors who clearly went into their chosen field because it is the thing that makes their world complete and they are happiest standing in classroom explaining their idea of perfection to college students.

Architecture

Community Colleges are rarely architecturally stunning as they tend to lack both real estate and funding.

University architecture is what we all think of when we picture a college campus: the buildings vary depending upon the decade in which they were built, but overall a university campus is usually far superior to its community college counterpart.

Transition Issues

The transition from high school to a community college is easier, but you miss out on all the dorm parts.

Jumping from high school to college isn’t as smooth as it could be, but moving away from home when you’re a barely legal adult and living sans parental supervision in a puke-infested dorm is the American version of painfully unmentionable tribal rites of passage. It’s a grow-up-quick, sink-or-swim, survival-of-the-fittest situation and it is what memories are made of.

Degrees Obtainable

Community colleges offer Associate of Arts degrees, nothing higher. However, they are extremely useful as a means to a transfer end: most general ed. coursework that a university requires of its freshmen and sophomores can be taken at a community college.

At a university you can be educated to within an inch of your life: they offer Bachelor’s degrees, Master’s degrees and Doctorates. Go crazy.

College Life

Little or none at a community college.

Lots at a university. Sports, clubs, bonding with fellow collegians, you name it.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College enrollment has maintained a generally upward trend for the past several decades. (Being educated has turned out to have been an excellent idea.) In keeping with the increased enrollment trend, the number of adults pursuing education has been on the rise. According to the N.C.E.S., the adult education numbers for Fall 2007 were 6,956,000 adults aged 25 and over enrolled in college (compared to 10,825,000 18 to 24-year-olds enrolled).

I can’t see that the numbers of adults seeking higher education will diminish any time soon, as we have the Baby Boomers beginning to hit retirement age. As far as generations go, the Boomers are a highly educated group. A lot of them are looking at retirement as the perfect excuse to go back to school.

Being severely technical about it, traditional college students are ages 18 to 24, and nontraditionals are age 25 and up. The ‘traditional’ window is only six years (so you’d better get on with it), and yet those students are the norm and have a smoother college career than most nontraditional students. That may have something to do with the fact that attending college is their main focus. Also, everyone expects them to be there and doing nothing beyond going to school, which simplifies things a bit.

The nontraditionals, however, have a slightly more complicated and less normal postsecondary education process. Things are getting easier as time goes on and the powers that be realize that there’s a decently-sized chunk of the college student population that has different needs, issues, and requirements like childcare, funding, and access to evening, weekend and online courses. Going to school as an eighteen-year-old is different than being a college student with a whole separate non-college life that you can’t disengage from.

Younger students can immerse themselves completely in the college life. Adult nontraditional students can end up having a little bit of a schizophrenic superhero alter ego thing going on. I was a lucky little girl and got to experience college as a traditional and as a nontraditional student. The younger version had a lot more fun and a lot less stress and a somewhat less mature work ethic. The older version had no fun, stupid amounts of stress and had a work ethic capable of turning a lump of coal into a diamond in about two weeks.

I have such fond memories of my first degree—everything is college-campus gorgeous and is rosy-golden and halcyon-hued. My second degree has not one happy moment and is steeped in so much reality it reeks. As such, I would highly recommend not having a newborn in tow when heading back to school. Most adult students head back into the fray when their progeny are at a more independent age and I’m certain this yields better results.

There are more and more adult education-seekers out there these days, which will help their situation considerably. Evening, weekend and online courses are widely available and are usually the best option for adult students who have a career or a family to consider. Not going the traditional daytime college-campus route means missing out on the full college experience, but decreasing the daily commute time or being able to continue working is the most feasible plan for some. Another perk, of course, is that all the other nontraditionals with whom you can commiserate with are more likely to be taking the online, weekend and evening courses.

Adult Education Resources:

AdultStudent.com

Top Ten Adult Student Books

Fun With Statistics:

N.C.E.S.: Participation in Adult Learning

U.S. Census Bureau: 2006 School Enrollment

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I loathe grocery shopping and therefore make my trips to the market quick, much like the preferred method of Band-Aid removal. As I was walk-running past the “ethnic foods” aisle the other day, I saw ramen noodles on sale 10 for a dollar instead of their normal 5 for a dollar. College student budget instincts die hard, and I almost tripped my daughter when I did a little half-stop turny thing before thinking better of it (I have eaten entirely too much ramen in my life, I don’t care how on sale it is).

Seeing the cheaper-than-the-crap-they’re-made-of noodles made me nostalgic for my college days and how different my relationship with food and the shopping for it was when I was a no-family-having girl. Grocery shopping was irregular, spotty, mismatched (who buys only mangoes, Honey Smacks, coffee and brie?), and rarely represented all the food groups. It was also way more fun.

I only had to shop for me, first of all. I was in class all day and then I’d be studying or procrastinating all evening. Around midnight or two in the morning, after too much thinking and caffeine consumption, I’d be all zippy and sproingy and it would suddenly be the perfect time to go grocery shopping.

Single-girl shopping excursions in the middle of the night are so much more enjoyable than mommy shopping excursions with cranky toddlers half an hour past nap time. In the wee hours of the morning there are only a few other delirious (either chemically-altered, of reclusive tendencies, or hopped-up on caffeine like me) shoppers wandering the aisles along with the employees re-stocking the shelves.

It was lovely to meander my way through the store, looking at everything and basing my buying decisions solely on (a) what sounded good right then, (b) what fit into my food budget (sort of), and (c) how cringe-y would my mom get if she saw me buying it (my mother’s house was free of sugar, television and any processed or fried foods). After blowing my food money on French cheese and tropical fruit, I’d be down to ramen, tofu and frozen peas for the rest of the month.

I had to aggregate my own ramen recipes, prices and brand comparisons. Nowadays, there are books and blogs devoted to the MSG-laced perfection that is ramen:

Books:

101 Things To Do With Ramen Noodles

The Book of Ramen: Lowcost Gourmet Meals Using Instant Ramen Noodles

The Top Ramen Noodle Cookbook

Everybody Loves Ramen: Recipes, Stories, Games and Fun Facts About the Noodles You Love

Blogs:

The Official Ramen Homepage

The Ramen Blog

Ramen Haiku

Journey Into the World of Ramen

And if you’ve had enough fried noodle bricks to last a lifetime, there’s the twenty-something guide to never having to eat ramen again: No More Ramen.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

There was an article in the NY Times a few weeks ago which I have tried (and have now officially failed) to ignore. Brain-enhancing drugs is the new hot ethical question in academia. The use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes bothers me, but I didn’t react in quite the same way to hearing about the Tour de France and Major League Baseball and the Olympics as I did to reading about supposedly intelligent people enhancing their noggin function with chemicals.

The more I looked into it, the less intelligent I felt—this has been going on for quite a while in academic settings. Where the hell have I been? I do not enjoy the confusion of simultaneous opposing emotions: feeling cheated/lied to by the folks I thought were in possession of elevated intelligence, along with acute pissed-offedness at not even knowing this crap was available until it was too late for me. Seriously, I could have gotten so much more shit accomplished while I was in school. Probably an additional degree for one thing. Although, the side effects are extreme crankiness, intense focus, and generally just wanting people to go away so you can work, and I was already like that without any drugs in my system. So it’s probably for the best that I didn’t partake.

I can’t really come up with any solid argument against the use of brain-enhancing chemicals other than it just doesn’t seem right. People smoke cigarettes and drink caffeine so they can keep studying, and isn’t that basically the same thing? Possibly cheaper and more socially acceptable, but more or less the same idea. It sucks that humans are so obsessed with perfection that we will go to extreme measures to be the biggest and best athletes, the skinniest and most beautiful models, the smartest and greatest-thinking academics. Being great at a human level isn’t good enough anymore. We all have to find artificial ways to make ourselves super human.

I can understand why; I totally empathize with the level of intense focus you can achieve when everything in your life tunnel-visions down to one goal and all the rest just falls to the wayside. But I’m also a pretty black-and-white girl: I tend to categorize my world as right or wrong and there isn’t a lot of grey. I know I sound like I’m eight years old, but it just doesn’t seem fair. And, seriously, how pathetic if we have one more human endeavor category with an extra section for the asterisks: Fastest Athlete* (performance-enhancing drugs); Hottest Movie Star* (plastic surgery); Skinniest Model* (diet pills and eating disorder); Most Brilliant Scholar* (brain-enhancing drugs).

And, to further my confusion, let me ask this: is all medical assistance and/or enhancement bad? I adore penicillin and vaccinations and vitamins and all the life-saving and –advancing techniques that medical research has come up with. And I can almost guarantee that there was at least one old guy back in the day who saw doctors and their pills as the epitome of modern evil and would have none of it. That guy probably only considered old men who lived past the age of forty to be in the non-pussy category if they had lived that long without medical intervention or enhancement of any kind. Which would mean that by his lights, if I live to a ripe old age, I should have an asterisk on my headstone: Super-Old Lady* (went to the doctor, big fan of Western medicine).

Maybe all the enhancement stuff is just the way things are heading and we should assume everyone is doing it, that we’re all advancing a level of superness thanks to modern science, and we should just get used to it. It can’t be all bad to have a bunch of enhanced brainiacs running amok in the academic world, thinking a real lot and coming up with lots of new, exciting, and profoundly creative and advanced ideas. If they use their powers for good it should all work out great. (This is me being optimistic).

Knowledge Enhancement:

‘Era of Doping’ on the Horizon in Academia?
Is Your Professor Juicing?
Would You Boost Your Brain Power?
Pumping Up Your Brain With Legal Drugs
A Possible Target For Memory-Enhancing Drugs
The Doping Dilemma
Performance Enhancing Drugs in the Boardroom?
A Timeline of Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports
Fallout From BALCO Probe Could Taint Olympics, Pro Sports
CBC Sports: 10 Drug Scandals
Are They All Dirty?

Posted by Alexa Harrington