-
10 Tips for College Students Looking for a Job in a Tough Market
Tweet Share on Facebook March 31, 2010 Comment (5)Many students are worried about how they'll finish college, and some students are even more worried about how they'll find a job after college—especially given the current employment situation for recent college graduates. We've invited visiting professor Susan Schell to offer her very best tips on how to approach the current job market. She should know: In addition to having worked at a major law firm in the tobacco wars of the 1990s and as a lawyer for Wal-Mart, she taught organizational communication at Purdue and currently directs career services at the University of Arkansas Law School. Here's her advice:
When you are actually looking for a job, it is always a "bad" market. Today's market just happens to be a little more so, especially if you happen to be an autoworker or a "big law" associate. But while many people lost their positions during the "Great Recession," others have found interesting and rewarding jobs. There is no magic formula for finding a job, but there are ways to take control of the process and enhance your odds of finding a job. Here are 10 tips for finding a job in an economic wasteland.
[See the best careers for 2010.]
-
8 Tips for the Student Athlete
Tweet Share on Facebook March 24, 2010 Comment (6)U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants to draw the line. College basketball players should actually graduate from college. But we wonder: Do colleges offer their student athletes any tips for actually getting through college? We asked visiting blogger Heather Ryan, director of academic support at Duke University Athletics, and her staff, for their playbook. Here are their eight best tips for the student athlete (and a couple of extras for the future student athlete):
1. Your job is to be a student athlete. Practice, class, film, weights, eat, study hall …. Wait a minute, I don't have any "me time." How am I supposed to check Facebook, do my laundry, call my mom, and play Xbox? Treat your responsibilities as if they were your-full time job, because they are. Create an hourly planner, and update it daily. Stop scheduling nap times, and use breaks between classes to study and get your work done. If you manage your time during the day, you may just find that you have 15 minutes in the evening to sneak in a game of Halo.
-
Learn to Love the Lab
Tweet Share on Facebook March 17, 2010 Comment (1)What they learned from Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye the Science Guy is about as much science as many students know—or want to know. But many colleges and schools have a lab requirement. And many students hate the lab requirement, almost as much as they hate freshman comp, math, and foreign language requirements. Too boring, too hard, too stupid: These are common complaints students have. But it doesn't have to be this way. We asked visiting expert Stephen Skinner, laboratory curator at the University of Arkansas, for his 10 best tips.
1. Know what you're picking. At many schools, there's a broad variety of courses that satisfy the lab requirement. In addition to "hard" sciences, such as chemistry, physics, and biology, you might be surprised to anthropology, environmental science, and psychology also offer courses that can satisfy the lab requirement. Pick something that you like and that you wouldn't ordinarily have a chance to take. This is one of your best opportunities at college to make a requirement into an elective, something you choose to take because you like it.
-
Warning! Bad Students Ahead
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (18)College students might be surprised to know that professors gripe with great regularity about "bad" students. These aren't the ones getting bad grades (the profs are happy to try to help them), but instead are the ones who quickly show themselves to be a royal pain in the butt. Of course, you're not one of these students—or are you? To find out, have a look at the 13 kinds of students that professors would rather not have in their classes:
1. The Tourist. This is the student who deigns to show up for class only when he or she feels like it and sends annoying E-mails to the prof, offering lame excuses, the rest of the time. "I had to console my roommate on the death of his cat"; "My grandmother's ill so we're planning her funeral"; "My frat's traveling to the international frat-fest in Daytona Beach." No excuse is too low.
-
10 Things Your College Professor Won’t Tell You
Tweet Share on Facebook March 3, 2010 Comment (13)Everyone is into transparency these days. You would think you would know all there is to know when you get a college syllabus filled with course rules, policies, learning objectives, grading procedures, even snow policy. Boy, would you be wrong. The important stuff is what the prof will never tell you. Here are 10 examples:
1. "Think you're bored? I'm spending most of this lecture thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch." It might surprise you to know that some of your professors are even more bored than you are. Imagine having to teach Physics for Poets for the 20th time—with 300 students who are only taking it to avoid having to take a real science course. Of course, you could help break the tedium by asking an interesting question or making a good comment. But why would you want to do that, since you could just as well sit back and enjoy watching the paint dry?
Professors' Guide
If you liked the advice in this column, you’ll love the 637 tips, tricks, and strategies in our new book The Secrets of College Success. You can order a copy here at a special discounted price.
Additional tips are available at the Professors’ Guide™ website. And if you have a question or a topic you’d like to see covered, we’d love to hear from you at professors@professorsguide.com
advertisement
advertisement
