Hilarious bit about what happens when students are made to memorize great poetical works and can recite them at will for life, even when drunk and wandering the streets in the dead of night. This post from Fielding at The Guardian makes me regret not keeping up the curious habit of learning poems by heart so one can pull them out at odd times throughout one’s life. My fifth-grade teacher made her students memorize a poem of their choice every week, and then recite the poem on Friday. I loathed every single Friday from September through June in 1985. The vomit wants to come back whenever I see a Shel Silverstein book.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Mr. Casey Wiley, lecturer at Penn State University, wrote an excellent piece about the current Sandusky situation at Penn State, with the emphasis on the wonderful things that come out of PSU (i.e., not just high-profile coaches on trial for the unthinkable), and how he and his students have been affected by the Sandusky situation. Wiley comes at the problem trying to figure out what it means to be at Penn State and how to go about finding the amazingness that is still Penn State.

Here are some tidbits; the entire article can be found at EDU in Review:

Three weeks before the allegations broke en masse, on some sunny fall morning, I asked my mostly freshman composition students to write about what it means to be at Penn State. No, that wasn’t right, I said. I thought about it more. I’m an outsider here, I told them. I’ve been teaching at Penn State for two years. I grew up in upstate New York, and I have no family members who attended the university. This may be the case at other major universities, I continued, but hyperbole aside students here seem to express — in the most real and basic sense of the word — Love for the school. Students have feelings for it, a heavy devotion. I said this in all seriousness.

In short: What is this feeling of being at Penn State? Or of being Penn State?

My students smiled — they got it, this strange, maybe naïve philosophy: Penn State-ology, or whatever silly thing one might call it. My students wrote, but in the end, they couldn’t articulate what this Penn State feeling was. Football? Paterno? Tradition? My dad went here? And my grandpa? The social scene? The library and old buildings? In short: Penn State just was. And it was good. I wasn’t satisfied, but I couldn’t articulate why. My students watched me. Like most days, roughly a third of them in this 24 person class wore an article of clothing with big PSU lettering sewn or ironed to it.

… I’m not sure what the students can learn from this horrible situation – long and short term – but I remember saying to them in class and out that week, that while they have every right to feel ashamed, confused, angry with Penn State and its leadership, or lack thereof, maybe the silver lining here, if there is one, is that the students, the community, me, we can all be reminded that Penn State is not a so-so school with a big football program; it is a strong school, now with a tainted football program and hierarchy. And because of that, the entire school is tainted. But the school doesn’t stop teaching and researching and discovering and learning. This school is built on ideas, and the advancement of ideas, I told them. And I believe that.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: Brian Cover)

Physics is phun! Except when you don’t check your math. Occasionally I am referred to as an obsessive, over-achieving re-checker of my answers. Trig, chem, calc, or physics. Doesn’t matter, I’ll re-check everything just to be dead certain sure it’s right and I didn’t flip a negative sign somewhere. And have I ever launched a cannonball through a house and a minivan? No, I have not.

Those Mythbusters guys (and girl) are smart and creative and have, quite possibly, the coolest job ever. In eight years of mythbusting experiments that have included a lot of potentially dangerous situations (they really like to blow sh*t up), nothing like this has ever occurred. I’m quite certain that the math was checked, just so we’re all clear on the fact that one flukey screw up among hundreds of potential fails does not take down one of the best television shows of all time. And who else teaches the world physics, math, and chemistry while doing insanely dangerous stuff?

Further Reading:

Mythbusters Cannon Experiment Ends in Epic Fail
Dr. Tae Tells It Like It Is
Launching Potatoes for Physics Lessons

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The one thing no one tells new parents: Maybe don’t start shoveling aside the gargantuan pile of cash your kid will need for college. The one thing people never fail to ask new parents, after Girl or boy? and What’s its name?: How’s that college fund going? The You poor bastards is implied.

Any yahoo walking around advising parents to not start amassing gold bullion runs the risk of being smacked upside the head for sheer stupidity. However, one such individual (the only one I have ever heard of) does exactly that. Financial planner to new parents, Kristin Harad, explains to spanking new parental units that the college fund is about four down on the list of financial priorities.

Three items must be dealt with prior to starting the college fund:

Emergency Fund (enough to cover 6 months’ worth of expenses)
Retirement Fund (student loans exist, retirement loans do not)
Household Budget Under Control (spending less than you make)

Further Reading and Previous Posts:

You’re A Parent, Now Plan
Ways To Kick the Ass of Student Loan Debt
How To Avoid Graduating College Summa Cum Debt
Tax Breaks for Higher Education
Fall 2011 Facebook App for Financial Aid
College Grads and Student Loan Debt
Number-Crunching the Effects of Student Loans
Calculating Potential
Adventures in Education: Paying for College

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: college fund)

For the first few years of my college career, I was a cocky little sucker who was convinced that tutors were for the less-evolved, slower-thinking students on campus. Since I was “gifted” and had always been told that I was in possession of above average intelligence, I would of course be able to learn all college coursework instantly, perfectly, and with no assistance.

I know, what a dumb b**ch.

Because I’ve grown as a person, the irony of this is not lost on me: the “average” and “below average” kids showed higher levels of intelligence, common sense and basic survival skills than I had when they all joined study groups and headed to the tutoring center the first week of school.

It took me a few years, but I finally figured out that (a) I was going to actually have to work to learn all the material (sadly, no instantaneous absorption qualities do I possess), and (b) trying to get through college with no assistance just makes you look like a jackass. A jackass with a really expensive, crappy GPA.

The first trip to the tutoring center or to the prof’s office hours were the hardest. Once I got over the hump, I lived there. Later on, during Degree #2 I was technically in school full-time, but I was creatively spreading my classes out to mostly evening and online courses so I could be home with my infant daughter (only people who can hire drivers and butlers can afford childcare and tuition simultaneously). Which meant I was usually studying at home, halfway across Seattle, not on campus in the library where I could search out a classmate and ask a question about the homework.

I hated so much that feeling of being totally lost or confused by a physics or chem or calculus problem that I lost any self-consciousness associated with walking into the tutoring center, raising my hand before I even sat down, and asking for help. At some point, when my daughter was old enough to start preschool and I was on campus during the day like a real college student, I had the math tutoring center hours memorized and would just sit in there doing lab write-ups and math homework, raising my hand whenever I encountered a road block.

So the tutors saved my ass (once I managed to yank my own head out of it) and helped me figure out monumental, James Joyce-ian math and physics problems without ever giving me the answers or spoon-feeding me. I needed to understand how to do the problem, I didn’t want the answer. A tutor worth his or her salt never does the work for you. And if you find one who does, pray they’re tiny enough to fit inside your backpack so’s you can bring them along for exams.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Science Professor (aka as Female Science Professor) over at Scientopia gave a reader some advice about whether or not it’s okay to date a senior colleague. Academia is a complex and many-layered animal with insane demands to make of any academic hoping for tenure. Dating an academic colleague with one’s the tenure vote still to come is a risky move, people. I’m with Female Science Professor on this one: my vote wouldn’t be altered by the colleague-dating situation, but it very well could be for others on the panel.

Does it suck hugely to have to walk away from possible love in order to attain one’s dream? Absolutely. But anyone who has already decided to pursue the nearly impossible tenure track has already announced loudly and with a barbaric yawp that they are more than willing to offer up their firstborn, their kidney, their hand, their mother, and several years of happiness to the tenure gods for even a smidgen of a sliver of a chance.

Humans are animals, and will do anything to survive and continue the species: food, sex (love), and survival, that’s all we need and are instinctively hell-bent of the pursuit of those goals. As far as I’ve seen, only tenure can veer an otherwise intelligent human animal away from food, sex and survival. (Wo)man up and realize how much you really want tenure, what you’re willing to give up for said dream, and walk the hell away from love until you’ve nailed down tenure.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(Rockefeller University)

Pamela Yellen over at the Huffington Post gives advice on How to Avoid Graduating College Summa Cum Debt. I’ve read dozens of articles on this topic over the years and none have irked me and impressed me with their proposals and solutions the way Yellen’s article has.

Her main piece of advice is to flat out not head off to college at all “unless or until you can afford it.” Not the standard higher education version of the American Dream. Usually everyone’s telling young adults to do whatever they and their parents can in order to acquire a college diploma, regardless of how many decades beyond graduation both parties will be swimming in debt.

Whether you agree with her or not, it’s interesting stuff to think about:

Four Paths to a Debt-Free College Education
1. Save it first.
2. Postpone it.
3. Do it smarter.
4. Skip it altogether.

Further Reading:

Ways to Kick the Ass of Student Loan Debt
Number-Crunching the Effects of Student Loans
Adventures in Education: Paying for College
The Economy and Higher Education
No One Likes a Recession
Calculating Potential
Investing in Students’ Futures
Extremely Useful Guidance for the Newly Salaried
Fall 2011 Facebook App for Financial Aid
College Grads and Student Loan Debt
Arne Duncan: Direct Student Loans
Increased Tuition Increases Some More

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) has a report out that shows the colleges low-income students head for first tend to be for-profit schools. That particular population is underrepresented in four-year public and private colleges, and overrepresented in the for-profit schools. All of which is not new, but it does mean fairness in higher education has still not been achieved.

From the brief:

INITIAL COLLEGE ATTENDANCE OF LOW-INCOME YOUNG ADULTS

More than 2.3 million low-income young adults began postsecondary education in 2008. Where these students initially enroll is of greater consequence than it is to their economically better-off peers because the likelihood of completing college for students from low-income backgrounds depends strongly on where they start their studies. This brief examines the types of postsecondary institutions where low- income young adults begin. Focusing on the starting point in low-income students’ postsecondary experiences will lead to later investigations of other key factors that influence their persistence and completion prospects, as well as labor market outcomes.

In the context of national completion goals, inducing more low-income young adults to participate in postsecondary education is deeply important. Yet enrollment data over the past decade indicate that certain types of institutions have seen their ranks swell substantially. While all sectors of higher education—two-year1 and four-year, private and public—are expected to bestow benefits upon their graduates, the types of institutions where low-income young adults are increasingly likely to enroll provide the least clear or certain educational and economic advantages (Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner 2010; IHEP 2002).

With these trends in mind, our analysis addresses two key questions:

What types of postsecondary institutions are low-income young adults first attending?

To what extent have the initial enrollment patterns of low-income young adults, especially females and certain racial/ethnic minorities, shifted over time, and to which types of postsecondary institutions?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Forbes contributor Robert W. Wood gives advice about which forms of higher education qualify for tax breaks. Wood lists the following articles for even more information on how to get a break from the IRS for funding one’s higher education pursuits:

Ten Rules for Deducting Career Education
Who benefits from student loans and educational tax benefits?
Two Tax Credits for Higher Education
IRS Publication 970: Business Deduction for Work Related Education
IRS Tax Topic 513: Educational Expenses
Deductibility of Work Related Educational Expenses
IRS: Tax Incentives for Higher Education

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: taxes)

Along the lines of my previous post regarding the much abhorred Epic Fail, Emily Chapman at Hack College wrote a piece advising one to Refuse to Dwell, Move On, Kick Ass. Well put.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(photo: kick-ass)