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

(image source)

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)

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

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

ConstructionManagementDegree.org has a list of 100 Awesome Business Blogs That Are Better Than an MBA. It’s like a goldmine of information for MBA do-it-yourselfers.

The list is broken down into the following categories:

Small Business and Entrepreneur Blogs and Resources
Marketing Blogs and Solutions
General Business Blogs
Human Resources and Ethics Blogs
MBA Survival Guides and Business Career Blogs
Economy Trends and News
Investing News and Financial Blogs
Resources for Business Women
Online Business Blogs and Tools
Management Resources and Information
Harvard Business Heavy Hitters

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

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

As of yesterday, students, scholars, faculty, and librarians needing to research the fields of Islamic Studies, Social Work, Criminology, and the Classics have available to them the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The first four modules were launched on Monday, with more to come.

Here’s what the people at the Oxford University Press had to say about their new product:

In recent years, the explosion of original research and its increasing accessibility through new technologies is a blessing for scholars—but also a tremendous challenge. For faculty, students and librarians querying new areas of research, the most pressing challenge for researchers at all levels is sifting through and managing the immense amount of material available online. “With the growing ease of digital access and dissemination, scholars and students are increasingly overwhelmed by the enormous volume of academic material available to them,” noted Nigel Portwood, OUP’s Chief Executive. “The need for responsible and sophisticated filters has become critical. Oxford Bibliographies Online represents a significant step forward in providing meaningful navigation through the vast body of research material accessible on the web.”

Oxford Bibliographies Online—a series of intuitive and easy-to-use “ultimate reading lists” is designed to help users navigate vast seas of information. OUP’s first online-only product goes beyond search algorithms to present bibliographies in several disciplines selected by leading subject experts and vetted by the highest professional standards.

According to Casper Grathwohl, VP, Publisher of Reference and Online Products, “An increasing amount of scholarship is bypassing traditional publishing channels. OBO is one of several ways in which publishers are extending their reach beyond their own publishing models to validate good research in a new world of unregulated online scholarship.” Oxford Bibliographies Online will help scholars increase productivity, save time and elevate the quality of their work, while enabling them to more efficiently engage with platforms like Google Books.

I rarely cheer the idea of having to pay for information, especially research (scholarly or otherwise). However, I dislike the gallons of time I’ve spent with a numb ass and eyes glued open in a trancelike attitude, searching and searching for the articles I want and require until everything either looks perfect or utterly worthless.

And, lest we forget, we all pay money for books, journals and access to the Internet. I’m fairly certain that those all count as paying for the information we want and need. And, seriously, it’s worth the money if it will cost you less time. We are very busy people! Also, you can try it out for free before you jump.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Extensive lists full of pertinent information are invaluable. If you’re a research-paper-writing student in need of a flotation device, check out this list of almost 300 relevant links: Student Research Resources and Sites.

Further Reading:

Research and Study Tools for College Students
How to Read a Scientific Research Paper

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

Does anyone do in-library research any more? Most people don’t. Not even book-loving me. I adore the perfect scent of old library books, shelved in endless stacks in the badly lit, flickering fluorescence of university libraries, re-covered in industrial strength primary colors, the titles stamped on and the catalogue labels typed in that odd Library Label font.

And yet, I no longer use libraries for research. Now I use them as quiet places to be alone and get s**t done. No one is allowed to talk, so no one can bother me. Any researching I need to do is accomplished via the Internet. Library sites on the Internet, not Wikipedia. But digital, nonetheless.

The books I require are requested online and delivered to my library so I can pick them up, read them, and write stuff down. No more camping out next to the card catalog (I think they’ve recycled those), making lists on scratch paper with the stubby library pencils, and then wandering for hours on every floor to locate the texts only to discover they’re checked out and I’ll have to go fill out some forms to request them from another university library.

Now it’s all done with a keyboard and minimal legwork. No more physical limitations as far as how many books one library can house. And no more goose-chasing on foot–a definite benefit of mankind’s many technological advancements.

Finding Dulcinea, also known as the Librarian of the Internet, is an excellent starting point for pre-vetted sources of digital research. I’d begin with their article, Making the Most of Libraries in the Digital Age and go from there. Feel free to take advantage of their mission to cut the crap and show you to the Websites containing usable information.

Further Reading:

Reuters: Alternatives to Google
24 Most Underrated Websites of 2008

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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

(image source)