Snow Day Productivity

Posted on Jun 7, 2010 10:02:52 AM

Sometimes you have to just give up on getting any real work done. This was excruciatingly true yesterday and today, when Seattle had some “snow days,” (I use the term loosely). Seattle is a city with little or no annual snowfall, which means there’s not much by way of snow removal equipment. Also, Seattle is basically a collection of hills all lumped together. Not as bad as San Francisco, but it’s not like driving through snow in the flatlands of Kansas, either. All of which means that a few pathetic inches of frozen white stuff shuts the whole damn city down.

This is what happens: We get a few inches of snow, which is slush by late afternoon. Nighttime comes around 3:30 p.m. (oh how I wish I were exaggerating), the temperature drops, the slush freezes, and the whole city is one giant hilly ice rink. Most Seattleites are transplants from California, like me, and can’t drive for s**t on anything but freeways (Southern Calif., not me) or foggy country roads (Northern Calif., me). Although, I’d like to see anyone try to drive up the steep hill I live on when it’s covered with a solid inch of ice.

My husband and I like to drink our morning caffeine on snow days while standing by the front windows, watching car after car attempt to make it up our hill. They always give up and have to try to look cool (and like they know what they’re doing) while trying to back—braking—down an icy hill. It’s never pretty, and that’s why we park our cars around the corner where no inept, ice-driving chuckleheads will smack into them as they slide back down the hill.

A snow day in Seattle also tends to mean that the icy roads have hosed the school bus routes. Which means delayed or non-existent school days. And while I do love to spend the day trapped inside with my offspring, I don’t get any work done. About mid-morning yesterday I started to get that panicky, today-is-going-to-be-a-complete-waste feeling. That particular flavor of panic always makes me cranky. I dislike an unproductive day. I tried to work, but it’s hard to finish a thought (intelligent or otherwise) when tiny humans are asking you a seemingly infinite number of questions.

I was this close to snapping and turning into the fire-breathing version of myself when I remembered the post Gear Fire had up the other day about implementing a Task Kill Day. It’s the holiday season, so I have an a**load of tasks to kill. I took a deep breath, gave up on the idea of getting any real work done, and told the kids it was Getting Stuff Done Day. They are 7 and almost-3, so they didn’t really have any tasks to kill other than some artwork and bouncy-ball testing. But because I wasn’t sitting in one place and trying to have long, involved higher thoughts and was instead running around the house being super busy and kicking task ass, they mostly did their own stuff and left me alone.

I crossed several items off of my To Do List that were causing me more peripheral stress than I had thought; when I took stock of how much I’d gotten done, I saw several dark Eeyore clouds lift.

My point is this: if your day is suddenly not going in the preferred productive direction, sometimes redirecting your Unplanned Non-Work Day into a Task-List Demolishing Day can make you feel better and save you time later on. And you’ll be saving others from the cranky version of you, which people always appreciate.

Adult Scholarships explained in brief

Posted on Jun 7, 2010 10:02:15 AM

There is no age limit for education. So if you are an adult wanting to return to education there are many adult education centers available for your help. There can be numerous reasons for not pursuing education at the right age. While it can be frustrating at a later stage, you can easily do away with that frustration with adult education. However, not everyone is financially sound enough to fund for their education. This is where Adults Scholarships can be of great help. But you do need to qualify for a particular scholarship before you can start taking its advantage. Details such as your previous qualifications, the subjects that you want to pursue etc are required to be registered in order to become eligible for an adult scholarship. The internet can be your best resource while looking for adult scholarships. You can always look for scholarship information online and register for them. You will be automatically informed once you qualify for a specific scholarship.

Play Doh-Smeared Credentials

Posted on Jun 5, 2010 10:03:03 AM

While I understand the need every parent has—on a weird, biological level—to do as much for their child as is feasible in order that said kid’s life path can be as smooth and highly elevated as is everly possible, I have never been able to be anywhere near fine with the insane pressure and bizarre hoop-jumping some parents put their kids through.

Succeeding in life is super great, don’t get me wrong. Going to college for the sake of the education and the life experience is not something that can be duplicated. I’m pro-success and pro-college, absolutely. But I really (a whole damn lot) can’t fathom how working your ass off from preschool on through grad school to be in the top 5% of your cohort for any and all school and extra-curricular activities is either necessary or healthy. Plus, it can’t be all that fun.

Is it peculiar and freakish that I lump “success” and “happy” in the same pile? Perhaps. I love my kiddos, and I really do believe the high-pressure helicopter parents love their kiddos, too. We have different ways of showing it, however. I have some grandparental units who showed their love for me, for the first 25 years of my life, in ways similar to the hyper parents of today; they wished me every success, including unfounded dreams of sending me off to medical school because that’s what they had done and that’s where all of their friends’ grandkids were obediently marching off to (like cranky little lemmings, I might add).

My grandparents’ way was to coddle, protect, pressure and prepare me for the future until I was incapable of getting their lecturely tones out of my head. For the most part I’ve let it all go and have moved past the self-doubt and the second-guessing and the perfectionist tendencies I harbor. I put a lot less pressure on myself and I don’t intend ever to crush the souls of my own progeny, turning them into miserable beings, incapable of happiness or contentment. (It’s conceivable that I haven’t moved on entirely.)

My way is to support my kids and the choices they make, and to make sure they have a rich, well-rounded education, both in the classroom and at home. My main goal is to have happy kids. I honestly don’t care where or if they go to college, and whether they go right after high school or never. That sounds incredibly slackerly of me, I realize, but there it is.

The older I get (I just turned 35) the more I realize how hard it is to be a content and beatific adult. I’m happy, but only after letting go and unclenching a little. I’m fine with giving my kids an education (one where they are not expected to kick everyone else’s ass) and following their lead as to where they want to go in life. In this day and age, that’s a pretty revolutionary statement. I’m supposing people will respond with, “That crazy b**ch is going to let her kids do what they want with their lives!”

Anyway, this spew was brought on by Eduwonkette’s guest blogger, Hilary Levey. She’s a PhD candidate at Princeton, and wrote her dissertation on the whole high-pressure parent phenomenon, specifically the credentials those parents expect, want, and need their kids to acquire and achieve. The post is basically a summary of her dissertation, “Playing to Win: Childhood, Competition, and Credentials Bottlenecks.”

It’s a great article, and in it Levey does such an excellent job of explaining what the motivation is behind these insanely gung-ho parents, that I was able to open my mind up a smidgen more and maybe, a teensy bit, see the parents’ point. However, as much as I’d love to read the actual dissertation and all of her research (because her papers and her research sound fascinating), I think it would either enrage me or curl me into a ball that I wouldn’t want to come out of for a few days.

Options for Parents to Pay for Their Children’s College

Posted on Jun 3, 2010 02:20:32 AM

It is no secret that a college education is expensive.

In fact, the average price for tuition at a private college according to the College Board for the 2009-2010 was $26,273, a 4.4 percent increase from 2008 and public school was an average of $7,020, up 6.5 percent. Over the next 18 years, the cost of a college degree is expected to increase to a couple hundred thousand dollars.

There is hope however for families who will need to start planning now for those expensive four years.

Here are some brief overviews of different options for new parents paying for their child’s education:

529 College Savings Plans: Named after Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code, a 529 Savings Plan allows the state or a hired money manager to invest $50 to $300,000 in stocks or bonds or a combination of both, aggressively during the early years of your child’s life and then become more conservative as the child approaches high school and college.

There is also the option of the prepaid 529 plan, where you may pre-pay some or all of the costs of your state’s universities at the current rates. The maximum investment is  allotted to those attending public state universities as only partial credits will be available for private colleges or out of state schools.

Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (ESAs): Previously known as the Education IRA, anyone can invest up to $2,000 a year into stocks, bonds or mutual funds. The money then grows tax-free, as long as it is applied to a child’s educational costs, including elementary and secondary schools, uniforms or even laptops. Single parents whose income exceeds $110,000 or married parents who make more than $220,000 are not eligible for an ESA.

Uniform Gifts to Minors and Uniform Transfers to Minors Acts (UGMA/UTMA): This investment in mutual funds, stock and bonds opportunity allows your child, once they turn 18 or 21, to receive control of the account and are permitted to use the money in any way they deem fit. These are subjected to child taxation laws and may potentially affect the financial aid amount the child qualifies for.

Hope you weren’t too attached to that summer house in the Hamptons, because your child will need you to forgo that and instead write a check for textbooks and tuition.

More With the Education, Less With the Simulation

Posted on Jun 1, 2010 10:03:28 AM

It sucks that there is poverty in the world, and there’s something to be said for promoting poverty awareness, but I’m not sure Princeton and Dartmouth are going about it in the most effective way. It’s probably possible to educate people about poverty, but I don’t think there’s a feasible way to simulate the true poverty experience for college kids.

College kids are often lacking in disposable income, yes, but if they were actually living anywhere near enough to the edge to be capable of looking starvation in the eye, they would have bigger things to worry about than midterms and research topics and they would not currently be working to cross “College Degree” off of their To Do lists.

Dartmouth recently hosted the “Two Dollar-a-Day Challenge” and Princeton will host their own Princeton Poverty Simulation on Saturday, Nov. 22nd. Again, it’s excellent to be making people aware of how this lifetime is going down for a large portion of the human population, but I’m not on board with the attempt to simulate anything.

Nina Shield at IvyGate nails it superbly with this:

We had something like this once a year in elementary school gym class. It was called TRAFFIC and we all wheeled around on scooters and if we sped or veered off the roads or ran through the stop sign we were sent to traffic-jail, and when we went through the car wash Mr. Hennessey spritzed us with water. It was exactly like real driving.

Berkeley Students to Submit DNA for Genetic Testing

Posted on May 3, 2010 02:21:16 AM

New freshmen headed to the University of California – Berkeley are being asked to send in, should they agree to it, a DNA sample on a cotton swab from inside their cheeks. The voluntary and confidential program for the class of 2014 will be the first mass genetic testing by a college or university.

The university is planning to analyze the samples for three genes that regulate the ability to metabolize alcohol, folates and lactose.

The study is trying to find out if the students with specific genetics are able to lead healthier lives by avoiding dairy products, drinking less or eating more vegetables.

The study was “designed to help students learn about personalized medicine and identify their own vulnerabilities,” said Jasper Rine, a UC Berkeley Professor of Genetics, who is leading the project.

The test results will be available on a website using a private barcode identification system.

“In the decade ahead, genetics is going to penetrate everyday medical practice,” said Mark Schlissel, Dean of Biology at UC Berkeley. “We wanted to give students a sense of what’s coming through genes that can provide them with useful information. I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done in years.”

Berkeley will also offer a lecture by Rine about the three genetic markers and a contest where contributing students may enter to win further genetic testing from 23andMe, an unaffiliated company that privately offers DNA profiling.

But there has been widespread criticism for the project.

George Annas, a bio-ethicist at the Boston University School of Public Health questions the study.

“What if someone tests negative, and they don’t have the marker, so they think that means they can drink more? Like all genetic information, it’s potentially harmful.”

The new field of genetic testing is not without controversy and has called into question numerous concerns about the ethics and privacy of health information. Yet despite the controversy, scientists, medical researchers and health professionals are hopeful that the future of genetic testing will hold key answers to numerous health questions and provide prventive measures and treatment options for numerous diseases.

UC Berkeley has always been a trailblazer when it comes to controversial and novel undertakings by professors and students alike. This genetic testing venture therefore seems quite fitting given the progressive-thinking character of the esteemed school.

Superlative Advice For Potential Grad Students

Posted on Apr 7, 2010 10:04:16 AM

The Johnsen Biology Lab at Duke University has this gorgeously honest warning/disclaimer/nugget of wisdom posted on their website.

We currently have room in the lab for more graduate students. Before you apply to this lab or any other, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, be realistic about graduate school. Graduate school in biology is not a sure path to success. Many students assume that they will eventually get a job just like their advisor’s. However, the average professor at a research university has three students at a time for about 5 years each. So, over a career of 30 years, this professor has about 18 students. Since the total number of positions has been pretty constant, these 18 people are competing for one spot. So go to grad school assuming that you might not end up at a research university, but instead a teaching college, or a government or industry job. All of these are great jobs, but it’s important to think of all this before you go to school.

Second, choose your advisor wisely. Not only does this person potentially have total control over your graduate career for five or more years, but he/she will also be writing recommendation letters for you for another 5-10 years after that. Also, your advisor will shadow you for the rest of your life. People will always think of you as so-and-so’s student and assume that you two are somewhat alike. Finally, in many ways you will turn into your advisor. Advisors teach very little, but instead provide a role model. Consciously and unconsciously, you will imitate your advisor. You may find this hard to believe now, but fifteen years from now, when you find yourself lining up the tools in your lab cabinets just like your advisor did, you’ll see. My student Alison once said that choosing an advisor is like choosing a spouse after one date. Find out all you can on this date.

Finally, have your fun now. Five years is a long time when you are 23 years old. By the end of graduate school, you will be older, slower, and possibly married and/or a parent. So if you always wanted to walk across Nepal, do it now. Also, do not go to a high-powered lab that you hate assuming that this will promise you long-term happiness. Deferred gratification has its limits. Do something that you have passion for, work in a lab you like, in a place you like, before life starts throwing its many curve balls. Your career will mostly take care of itself, but you can’t get your youth back.

If, after reading this, you want to apply to this lab, we would love to hear from you.

It also works for explaining to the young(ers) about life and how it’s hard for a while and then you kick it (and by “it” I mean the bucket, not relaxing on the couch), so it behooves us all to figure out how to be happy sooner rather than later.

Students Choose Cheaper Colleges Over Expensive and Prestigious Colleges

Posted on Apr 3, 2010 02:22:39 AM

With ever-rising loan interest rates, dwindled savings from financial hardship and less scholarships on the market than in years prior, high school graduates are having to decide between Ivy League and state schools based on price versus prestige.

‘H’ Is For ‘Half-Measure Haggis’

Posted on Mar 4, 2010 10:03:54 AM

ABC News reported that the public high schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have decided to give out “H” grades in lieu of a failing “F” grade. The “H” stands for “held,” and means the student has twelve weeks to do the work and fix the problem.

Yale University professor of psychology and child psychiatry, Alan Kazdin, makes an excellent point in his interview:

[Kazdin] believes that schools that veer away from giving children the grades they have earned – even when it’s a zero or an “F” – aren’t doing anyone any good.

“Children aren’t going to gain from ambiguous information regarding their grades,” said Kazdin.

“The fact is children are failing yet we don’t want to call it that,” said Kazdin. “It’s this whole notion that everyone’s a winner and everyone gets a trophy.”

Kazdin argues that children are perceptive enough that they will eventually realize they aren’t doing well in school whether teachers give them “F”s or not, and that hiding their true level of achievement will only confuse them further.

“The task is to change the reality, not the labeling of it,” he said.

Providing detailed feedback on what children can do to improve their grades is imperative, said Kazdin. While students may feel initially feel demoralized when they receive a failing grade, Kazdin said that by providing them with specific ways to improve their class standing they will eventually benefit from the traditional grading system.

Getting an “F” sends a pretty clear message to a kid that they are not getting it done, for whatever reason (learning issues, home issues, crappy school issues, etc.). Kids don’t need a bigger and brighter neon sign pointing out their academic inadequacies; they need a teacher or two to sit down with them and figure out what isn’t getting done, why it isn’t getting done, and how the kid can begin to dismantle the seemingly insurmountable mound of emotional and educational sh*t that has piled up in said kid’s life.

Someone help them fix it for god’s sake. And if they’re trying to flunk out on purpose, well, that’s too damn bad. They’re going to have to find a different school district ‘cause there will apparently be no flunking out of the Grand Rapids school district.

Why do technical schools differ from vocational schools?

Posted on Oct 22, 2009 02:35:50 PM

Does a degree program at a technical school interest you? You will probably say yes. After all technical schools offers various benefits that really stand out when compared to others. These include low tuition fees which would mean a huge saving. Apart from that a degree from a technical school will unfailingly promise you, a career, immediately after you complete your academics. Moreover it is not so difficult to find a technical school near you. You can inquire in your local phone directory for technical schools that operate near your area. A major benefit will be that these schools will provide you with study hours that are convenient to you. You can even search online for more resources on GA Technical Schools and Technical Colleges in IL, available in your state. Such programs even offer you the ease of studying only what you actually need to know about the program.