Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your perusal as I am on vacation.

Big projects, like term papers or dissertations or what have you, really freak people out. Sometimes I try to give other people advice about getting s**t done. They never appreciate hearing my exquisitely condensed single line of wisdom, so sharp it sings out like a band of angels with knives: Sit down and get to work (dumbass).

If they’re unappreciative a**holes about it, I shrug and walk away. Their big dumb project is their big dumb problem, not mine. But if they’re all quietly sad and hopeless and ask for some expansion on my awesome advice, I will relent and add one shred more: Set a timer for an hour or thirty minutes or whatever you think you can handle without losing your s**t. Sit down and work on the project until the timer goes off. Take a short break, and repeat.

Little chunks that you can see the end of never seem insurmountable, and it’s actually fairly painless to move a mountain from here to way over there if you do it one bucket at a time.

Peg Boyle Single wrote a piece in Inside Higher Ed about how to change your procrastinating ways so’s you can write your dissertation already. It’s helpful advice (and she’s much kinder in her delivery than I am).

Further Reading:

Write or Die V2.0
Getting Past the Overwhelming Wall
Monumental Tasks
A Writing Routine

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure as I am on vacation.

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

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Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure while I’m on vacation.

I was never concerned as to whether or not today’s school-age kids were going to be considered fully functioning adults someday; anyone who can seemingly mind-meld with a computer (or a cell phone or anything gizmo-ish), understand it, and make it work is probably going to do just fine once they’re let loose on the world.

Despite feeling that kids these days were good to go on the technology front, I was a wee bit worried that the whole writing portion of their lives was headed for much suckage. I was caught in the admittedly old-fashioned (lame!) idea that all forward progress in the land of tech can only lead to less and less well-rounded humans. The telephone, for instance, led to a severe decline in letter-writing. (Of course, the electric light bulb led to everyone staying up later and getting more work done, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)

Clive Thompson’s article in Wired has calmed me down. Thanks to all the e-mail and texting that goes on these days, kids are doing more writing than anyone has since correct cursive and perfect penmanship were qualities to strive for. Now we’ve got technologically savvy kids who can express themselves with the written/typed word like nobody’s business. I’m stoked that society will not be taking one-way trips in any hand baskets.

From the article:

The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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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)

Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(take notes)

This is hilarious and educational. Ze Frank explains how to vent one’s impotent rage when replying to e-mails while maintaining one’s professional integrity. Herein lies Ze Frank’s exquisite advice.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Ah, the wonderful careers we pondered when we were young. I can only recall ever having two career dreams for myself: when in elementary school, I knew absolutely that I would become an elementary school teacher when I grew up, and in high school I changed my mind and wanted to earn my degrees in physical therapy.

Practical and lacking incredibly in imagination, I know. What a lame kid I was. Didn’t I ever want to be a queen or a ballerina? Nope. I would have totally ganged up with the Dukes of Hazard, and in the fourth grade, during the 1984 Olympics, I spent a few months trying to work out how I could actually become Mary Lou Retton (cute, short, and all gymnastics-y, just like fourth-grade me).

The most impractical my real dreams and aspirations ever were: the bizarre number of graduate degrees I felt I needed to hold in order to follow my teaching/physical therapy paths. I was always certain that my working life would not begin until I had at east one PhD on my wall. Why? I have no good answer other than the fact that I thought my grandparents were all amazing and had all been academic badasses.

There’s a study in Britain that’s been going on for over fifty years, called the 1958 British Birth Cohort Study. When this group hit the age of eleven, the children were asked to write 30-minute essays about what their lives would be like at the age of 25. It’s fascinating to read how clear their plans were at age eleven, and how things turned out when reality hit.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(when I grow up…)

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

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

It’s a marvelous sign when institutions of higher learning join forces to make the world a better place.

From the UMN press release:

– New partnership links IonE with Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund –

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (06/30/2010) —The University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment today announced a new partnership with the Natural Capital Project, a worldwide effort to align economic forces with conservation. The other partners include Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund.

Founded in 2006, the Natural Capital Project aims to mainstream the values of nature into major resource decisions. Working with public, private and nonprofit partners around the world, “NatCap” is developing practical, science-based software for mapping and valuing societal benefits provided by healthy ecosystems. The Natural Capital Project is using this software in major policy decisions now underway in Canada, China, Hawaii, Indonesia, South America and Tanzania.

The Natural Capital Project is led by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and project leaders from Stanford, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund. U of M applied economics professor Steve Polasky, an IonE resident fellow, is one of the leaders of the project’s ecosystem service mapping and valuation effort. This new partnership will increase opportunities for collaboration between IonE and other Natural Capital researchers and collaborators.

“We would be nowhere without the world-class expertise and experience from U of M, and we’re thrilled to recognize that formally now by teaming up as full partners,” said Gretchen Daily, Stanford-based co-founder and chair of the project.

“The Natural Capital Project is one of the most important environmental projects in the world,” said Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment. “It’s answering one of the really big questions: How much is nature worth, and how do we start to include ecosystem goods and services into our economic system? By joining this project, the Institute on the Environment will be working with world-class ecologists, economists and practitioners, and in return, we will be contributing our expertise in ecological economics, land use and agriculture, and environmental systems modeling. It’s a fabulous partnership for everyone involved.”

You can learn more about the Natural Capital Project here: http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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