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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.]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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15 Strategies for Giving Oral Presentations
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2010 Comment (9)More than death and taxes, the thing people fear most is speaking in public. Needless to say, college students are not immune from this terror, which, for you psychology hounds, even has a name: glossophobia. Unfortunately, in college, it's not always so easy to avoid public speaking. Some schools have required courses in speech. And even in colleges where speech isn't a subject, there often is a broad variety of courses that incorporate presentations or reports–and sometimes full-length seminars–into the regular class activities. Still, there's no need to lose your breakfast (or lunch or dinner) over your upcoming presentation. Our 15 tips for improving your public speaking will make even a garden-variety speaker into a real Cicero:
1. Do your homework. Nobody can give a good presentation without putting in some serious time preparing remarks. Many gifted speakers look as if they're just talking off the cuff, saying whatever comes to mind. But, in truth, they've spent considerable time figuring out what they're going to say. You should, too.
4-Star Tip. It's always a good idea to try out your presentation on your professor (or TA) before giving it in class. Office hours work well for this.
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8 More Research Tips for College Students
Tweet Share on Facebook February 17, 2010 CommentLast week, we offered our seven best tips for college research. The response was overwhelming. And so, this week, we have eight even better tips for doing A-plus research. Here they are:
1. Embrace the zen of research. All research—especially good research—is a process that involves considerable uncertainty, doubt, recasting, and, often, the lack of quick or black-and-white answers. That's how discoveries are made. Get used to it. All of these are signs that the research is going well.
2. Drive your sources (don't let them drive you). Always keep your investigation focused on the issue or problem you're studying. Just because some other guy makes some point—no matter how good it is—doesn't mean you have to include it in your paper, especially if the issue isn't really in the scope of your project. Keep in mind that you're the researcher here, so you're in charge of this thing.
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Writing a Paper? Try These 7 Research Tips
Tweet Share on Facebook February 10, 2010 Comment (18)Once in a while you get hit with it: the 15- to 25-page research paper, also called the term paper or semester project. This is your chance to join the community of the 20 percent or so of college professors who are actually doing research. How do they do it? And how can you? Have a look at our seven best tips for doing research like a professor:
1. Start from where you are. The professor has a research program; you have the course. Carefully consider all the assigned paper topics, trying to pick one that seems interesting to you and about which you think you'll have something to say. If the professor is requiring you to propose a topic of your own, scour all the course materials (e.g., lecture notes, readings, syllabus, handouts, discussion sections, and course bibliography) for possible topics. Then meet with the prof to see if your proposed topic is one you could actually do, given what you know and what there is to know. A bad topic will net not only weeks of frustration but a bad paper in the end.
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13 Tips for Prepping for Your Next Test
Tweet Share on Facebook February 3, 2010 Comment (8)How you prepare for tests can count almost as much as how you take tests. Sometimes it counts more. That's because in most cases, the professor is actually expecting you to have thought out the answers in advance of the test, not just when you get your test paper. Since there are as many different kinds of tests as there are professors, what's the best way to prepare? Here are our baker's dozen of tips for excellent test preparation:
1. Spread it out. Make sure you divide your studying time over a number of days, rather than leaving it all for the night before. If you try to learn it all at one go, you could find yourself in the same position as that Burmese python in Florida who tried to swallow an alligator whole. The result: not so pretty (for either the python or the alligator).
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10 Tips for Getting Into the Class You Need
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (4)A recent New York Times piece, "Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges," describes the dramatic shortage of places in classes at California state colleges. The crisis is nationwide: Public universities in economically distressed states—Arizona, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio also come to mind—simply don't have enough spots in many classes to accommodate a student population growing at 4.5 percent each year. What should students do? Here are our 10 best tips for finding places in closed courses:
1. Try an off-peak time. Consider taking the sections that meet at times students find most undesirable. Think late afternoons and evenings, 7 a.m., and Fridays. Go for the times that your cohorts would rather be doing anything else than going to class.
