Watch it, people. Just because information is second only in volume to pollution on this planet, it does not mean all info is available for you to use and then slap your name on to it like you wrote it or something. Plagiarism, for those of you who missed that day in class, is when you take someone else’s work and falsely claim it as your own. It’s very bad, and it makes you look like an ass@$%*.

The NY Times has an article up about plagiarism and the tech-savvy information generation. The lines are blurry for Gen-Y, apparently.

If you’d like to avoid being an uninformed cheating ass@#$%, the following links are helpful.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism.org

I must go. The line above regarding information and the volume of it is freaking me out. Can digital information have volume at all? And is it possible to measure the volume of every printed word on the planet? What about all the still-intact newspapers in old landfills? Do those count as existing information? Crap!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Any current or prospective MBA students out there looking for advice? Aswini Anburajan is currently working on her MBA at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge in the UK. In her post she explains what she’d been hoping for when she embarked on her current education adventure, and what she’s figured out along the way.

It’s not what she thought it would be; some bits are better, some aren’t, but all of it has helped her make solid realizations about the business world, the real world, and the interactions among humans that thread through everything.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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You can download AVG’s new LinkScanner for Macs for free. There’s a PC version available as well.

Not yet paranoid enough to make you feel the urge to be responsible? Watch this SANS security expert discussing security issues with modern technological gadgetry:

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Please refrain from acting on the overwhelming urge you’ll have to stick a fork into your forehead after watching that. My father’s advice would be: It is what it is. And my advice is this: We’re all in the same boat so suck it up, sweetcheeks.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

How do the parents of a financially well-off kid send their educated, over-scheduled, never-had-to-get-a-job offspring into the real world and expect them to survive without help? No can expect those young adults to have a graceful trajectory; they’ll smack the pavement a few times before they figure out the mechanisms of reality. I recommend the more harsh sink-or-swim approach. Based on my own experience, I would suggest handing out sage advice once the college degree has been earned, along with no more money. It’s the quickest way to teach The Real World Sucks 101.

While my higher education was paid for, not much else was. During my K-12 years, food and clothing were purchased after the monthly allotment of college money was set aside. I looked like a doof in my highwater pants and the worn out, stinky-by-Wednesday two pairs of red knee socks I owned. Two identical pairs were purchased for me every fall, and the day-glo red color never matched a single item of clothing in my dresser.

The refrigerators at both parents’ houses were sad to open, but I re-checked their contents several time a day nonetheless—nothing but bread, milk, generic cheese, and the flats of free eggs my mother got for free from the Avian Sciences Dept. at the University. Eggs that were the edible (we hope) byproduct of fertilization experiments and were either double- or triple-yolked. I would complain loudly right this minute and fall into a pile of twitching heebie-jeebies if I didn’t suspect those cholesterol-laden eggs of keeping me decently nourished during my childhood.

Although I had to learn to survive my financially (and physically) waiflike childhood, I was totally covered as soon as I hit college. I worked all through elementary, middle, and high school to earn money. In college, though, my parents strongly discouraged my desire to get a job. They wanted me to focus on the education we had all suffered to save up for. By the time I entered college, I was quite the self-sufficient little worker bee. By the time I was shaking a professor’s hand on stage and clutching my degree, I was as financially clueless as I’d been in the first grade. While I knew how to work for money, I had never learned how to work to survive on my own. Paying for food and shelter were not something I’d ever done.

I’m not whining, and I know full well that my parents did everything they did to give me the same chances they were given in life. Education is a huge deal in my family; fancy cars are not. Education comes before all else. I hit bottom in the real world pretty quickly once I was really on my own, which is why I fully support the idea of wealthy parents releasing their young into the wild like the helpless little bunnies that they are.

I’m sure it’s nearly as upsetting to watch their kids’ asses get chewed up by reality as it would be to watch a pet rabbit be set free and immediately get taloned up by a bird of prey, but that’s life. You know, the circle of it and all that. It sucks. At some point, kids have to learn to run and to protect themselves with cold hard cash or they’ll be living back at home with their parents (if you’ll have them). Seriously: Teach them now and teach them fast or you’ll all be sorry.

This article in the NY Times will give you a head start.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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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

A year ago I was writing and reading wretchedly hopeless posts and articles about newly graduated MBAs who could not get jobs and were swarming back to their recently ditched high school digs to cite the Home is where they have to take you when you don’t have anywhere else to go! rule to their confused parents. Parents who had long since turned their kid’s bedroom into a taxidermist’s suite.

The job market still blows for MBAs (and almost everyone else). But it’s managed to move ever so slightly up the flagpole of income opportunity. I’d say it’s improved at least three eighths of an inch.

According to the Wall Street Journal[link], the meek and the less-than networked will be living on the streets or pursuing another career entirely. Any freshly MBA-ed twenty-something who wants to fulfill their business destiny has to be willing to network to the nth degree, drive the networking and coffee-buying machine, and work their pants off to even get one cup’s worth of sit-down face time with a breathing human who may (or may not) lead to an interview.

In the interest of acquiring the motivational energy required for pursuing a business career in this economy, I would advise first nailing down the minimum wage job most capable of making you loathe yourself and every sunrise you witness. Possibly the best launching pad available is hitting bottom and having to scrounge around in the slimy muck for a while. Which situation makes you run faster? The beautiful cornfields you pass on your evening jog? Or the pissed-off bull someone forgot to latch the gate on, that is now hell-bent on obliterating you on the lame-ass, country-road asphalt of life?

Basically what it comes down to is this: If you’re sniffing flowers and pondering sunsets and saying, “Aww…pretty!” you are not ready to traject (I made that word up). But if you’re hating your bull moment so intensely that you’re running fast enough to leave the words, “Son of a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii*ch!” far behind you, then you, my friend, are ready for the real world and will be kicking much business-world butt.

If you require more advice and fewer asterisks, please refer to the helpful articles below.

Further Reading:

State of the Job Market for MBAs
Where MBAs Are Finding Jobs
Post-Grad Assignment: Find Work

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I just lerves me some forward motion! The University of Minnesota’s News Service sent this press release my way:

University of Minnesota to host Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair and Working for Change Conference

– Joint events provide opportunity to learn about and apply for careers in social justice, health care, nonprofit and government work -

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (04/07/2010) — For those interested in pursuing or advancing a career in social justice, nonprofit or government work, the University of Minnesota is hosting the 2010 Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair and Working for Change Conference on Tuesday, April 13, at Coffman Union, Great Hall, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis. Both events are expected to draw attendees from across the region. The events are free of charge and open to the public, with no registration required.

“The goal of the conference and career fair is to help people answer the key question, ‘What’s in my future?’” says Laurel Hirt, director of the university’s Community Service-Learning Center, which helps organize the event. “There is a great interest in social justice and nonprofit careers among both students and non-students, and we are excited to provide a forum for exploration and getting the proverbial ‘foot in the door.’”

The Working for Change Conference will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and provide an opportunity to learn about a range of social justice-oriented careers, with a particular focus on jobs, internships and volunteer opportunities in the nonprofit sector and government. The conference will feature panel discussions and workshops. A schedule and list of sessions is available at www.servicelearning.umn.edu/Events/idealistfair.html.

The Idealist.org Nonprofit Career Fair is open to students and non-students and will feature a broad range of organizations looking for prospective employees. Attendees will be able to network, distribute resumes and meet with recruiters about job, internship and volunteer opportunities. The fair will take place from 12 to 4 p.m. A list of organizations attending is available at http://bit.ly/9ZQ8Bo.

A special health professionals careers fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in rooms 304 and 305, with advance registration required at www.healthcareers.umn.edu/shortcourses/home.html or by phone at (612) 624-6767.

The workshop and fair are co-hosted by the university’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the Community Service-Learning Center, the Health Careers Center and the Carlson School of Management Undergraduate Business Career Center. Other partners include the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, Minnesota’s Private Colleges Career Consortium, Minnesota College and University Career Services Association, Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA) and the Minnesota Association for Experiential Learning.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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For Prospective Undergrads:

Rejected by a school that you know, in your heart of hearts, you’re destined to attend? Allen Grove has superb advice on appealing a rejection letter. Does the school ever take heed of appeals? If so, what are the criteria they require in order to consider reversing your current rejected status? What does a sample appeal letter look like? Mr. Grove has you covered.

For Grad Student Hopefuls:

If you’ve asked one too many departments to spend their time and energy on smoothing your entry into their graduate program and are now faced with one too many acceptance letters, Female Science Professor has advice for gracefully declining. And apologizing, thanking those who helped you, etc.

Academia can be a dark and hopeless place should you ever find yourself without allies. Take my advice: Don’t screw over anyone who has ever been kind to you. You’ll only end up screwing your future self over several times over. Be a person, not an inhuman ass#@$%.

Be aware enough to realize how small academia really is: there are not enough spots for everyone. This means anyone who helps you to move up and forward in your academic education/career is potentially assisting someone who may become their direct competition someday. Do not take for granted their willingness to put themselves on the line for you.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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In the article/post, Hamlyn points out that all of us humans are basically moving forward intellectually, technologically, etc. by standing on the shoulders of our giant predecessors. True, and also incredibly efficient. We’d never get anywhere if every generation had to reinvent the damn wheel so they could leave the cave and design the Burj Khalifa.

Some borrowing, copying, and building upon is necessary. There are blatant examples of plagiarism (see below), as well as subtle, less conscious forms (see The Rolling Stones and K.D. Lang). Artists being inspired by one another usually works in everyone’s favor. Some critic out there probably loathes the Matisse/Picasso frenemy-ship, but I have always found the results fascinating.

Matisse:

Picasso:

Matisse:

Picasso:

Which is all to say that plagiarism in its building-upon form is necessary and can have amazing benefits. I dislike Grey Areas and adjustments to my thinking. They are so much work! *sigh* But I’ll persevere in order that I may keep my higher-thinking-mammal status.

Now I will clear my throat with authority and say, However, plagiarism in its most basic form is stealing. It is neither morally nor socially acceptable to take someone else’s work and present it as your own. Can you take someone else’s great idea, give them credit, and make it better? Absolutely. Can you take someone else’s great idea, put your name on it, and pass it around? No you may not, dumbass. Grow up and do your own work.

Further Reading:

Plagiarizing Never Ends Well

NYTimes: Recordings View

Posted by Alexa Harrington