Somwhere Between "Losing My Mind" and "Only Slightly Crazy"

Where in the world have I been? Well, those of you who are truly University Mamas and Papas wouldn't be asking that question because you know that my current location is somewhere between "Losing My Mind" and "Only Slightly Crazy." October and the first of November have been, in my experience, the hardest part of the school year (or any part of year, for that matter). On the personal end of things, our family begins to juggle basketball schedules, 4H competitions, holidays, special events at church and in the community, etc. It's like there is a mad dash to cram in a bunch of stuff while the weather is still partially nice and the Thanksgiving/Christmas rush hasn't started. On the school end of things, it always seems like the biggest projects and papers are due during October/November. Add all these things together, and you have a recipe for extreme stress overload.

I kid you not: there were many nights last month that I sat at my computer on the verge of tears and/or a heart attack. Okay...maybe not a heart attack, but perhaps a chest pain or two. You know the feeling where you could hyperventilate if you were the hyperventilating-type? You don't? Oh. Well, that's kind of what it felt like.

In summation, October was miserably stressful.

I quite literally survived by sending myself e-mails and setting alarms on my phone to remind me of things. Everything from orthodontist appointments to "thaw chicken" showed up in my phone and/or inbox.

Thank goodness for technology...and for a family who has stuck with me and chipped in throughout this crazy roller coaster ride. The best news is...the semester's almost done!!!


(P.S. If only I had one of those combo washer/dryers that begins drying a load after it's done with the wash cycle. That, my friends, is what I call harnessing the power of technology for REAL!)

Students, Technology and the Future

We watched this video in my Educational Media Production class this week. Does it frighten you or inspire you?




(For me, it was a little of both.)

Going to Grad School: The Backstory

I decided to go to grad school last Thursday. Classes began on Monday. How'd I manage that??

First of all, I had been encouraged by good friend (who is also a librarian) to consider Library-Media studies more seriously. She and I had discussed it in the past, though I had never really spent much time researching which universities offered Library-Media graduate studies. I began looking at our state schools just to see what was available. I also looked at one program--entirely online--that was out-of-state because I had a friend who was enrolled in it.

What really propelled me to start this semester instead of later was free tuition! I found out that one university had received a special grant to extend their library-media studies to the western part of our state (a.k.a "the boondocks"). The grant covers nine hours of graduate tuition! Awesome! The catch: students must come stay on-campus for three weeks during the summer term to take those 9 hours. On the upside, that's nine hours completed in three weeks...nine FREE hours I might add. Also, room, board and transportation are taken care of through the grant. Sweet! The downside, of course, is that I will have to be away from my family for three weeks. I will come home on the weekends, but I will be missing a lot of their summer activities and put extra strain on the husband who will have to juggle work and kids all on his own. Also, the campus is quite a drive--3 to 4 hours away--so there will be no quick trips home mid-week for anything. I keep telling myself that three weeks away from the family is a small price to pay in order to be on my kids' school schedules for the next 12 years of their lives.

When I actually started thinking, "I should do this....like, right now!" I had two pretty big hurdles: deadlines for enrollment were looming & I hadn't taken the GRE. Actually, the university that I am now enrolled in had started classes the day I called to talk to someone about the program. Talk about last-minute!

So, I quickly made the decision to give this a shot. I'm actually glad that there was a small window of opportunity to make that decision, otherwise I might have agonized over it for days. I started typing up applications, faxing unofficial transcripts, requesting official transcripts, e-mailing a trillion people for information, etc. Though I had once been an undergrad student at this particular university, it had been so long that I actually had to reapply for admission. That ended up holding things up a bit, but we finally got everything completed....yesterday (four school days after starting the process). I wasn't actually enrolled when I attended my first class. In fact, I paced the floor all day waiting impatiently to hear word whether or not I should drive to my ITV (interactive television) class. I had to leave by 3:30 to get there in time, and I finally heard back from the university somewhere around 2:30.

Luckily--VERY luckily--for me, this particular program didn't require the GRE for admission. God bless 'em.

I put out the admissions and enrollment fires, now I'm tending to the teacher certification fires! I'm getting a lot of different answers about whether or not I have to be certified before or after I complete the program and how I will go about certification. So now, I'm making tons of phone calls and e-mails to that end.

Maybe I should just be a firefighter instead!

When the Best Laid Plans Go Astray

The plan: spend all weekend in stretchy pants wearing no makeup and looking too scary to leave the house, thus propelling myself to sit in front of the computer for hours and complete the projects for my guided study which are due on Friday.

The reality: I brought my book home, but left my project CD (I'm creating projects from graphics & photos that are on the CD that came with my textbook) & my USB drive at school. School is 60 miles away. Professor is out of town, thus unable to unlock the computer lab where all my goodies are located.

The back-up plan: I don't have one! I'm really stressed out about all this. I spent over an hour working on one project yesterday; they are pretty time intensive. I have somewhere around 12 projects left...you do the math.

On one hand, I feel kind of liberated from the school shackles that I had planned to be wearing. Suddenly, I have a weekend of nothingness to look forward to. That mean I can tackle mountains of laundry or do some online Christmas shopping or work on editing a last batch of photos.

On the other hand, I'm restraining panic right now. I HAVE to complete this project or I won't graduate! If worse comes to worse, I will sacrifice my 4.0 GPA this semester on the alter of "getting it done" and just turn in enough to pass satisfactorily....but it won't make me a very happy girl.

Deep breaths...deep breaths....I think I can handle this.

Research Papers

I love to write and I love to research, but I hate to write research papers. I'm not sure what my hang-up is with writing for academia. I guess it's that I feel like my creativity is squelched by end notes and abstracts. At any rate, research papers are an almost inescapable part of university life; here are a few resources that I have found helpful:

Easy Bib: Why am I always "a day late and a dollar short?" My pal introduced me to this site just as we were completing our papers. It's a free service that create your works cited page. You have to enter in all the vital information, of course (like titles, authors, dates, etc.), but Easy Bib automatically sets up your entry in the correct style and will alphabetize all your entries. Sweet!

Tips for APA format: Having only written in MLA style in the past, I had to do a little research about APA style. The OWL at Purdue website was the one place that I kept coming back to when I had questions, and it answered them all for me.

The Elements of Style is a must-have book for any writer. This book focuses on the fundamentals rather than forms of writing. Since there is more to a research paper than making sure you have your title page formatted correctly, Elements of Style is a great resource to help professionalize your writing.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition
is another must-have book for every college student's bookshelf. If you're required to use APA format as I was, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association would be a great resource to have as well.

Studying for the 21st Century

I think anything that makes life easier or makes information more accessible/portable is cool. Sometimes I wish I lived in a metro area and had to take the train to get to work just so I could watch podcasts on the train; it just sounds hip!

As a commuter student, it can be difficult to manage the transfer of information from school to home and vice versa, especially when you are working on many different computers. It can also complicate studying on-the-go. You've heard about my love of old-fashioned index cards , but since I am also somewhat of a self-proclaimed technology geek, I have been looking at the many online study aids that are available to students.

SyncNotes seems to be one web application with promise. You can synchronize information between the web and all your many techno gadgetry (computers, cell phone, PDA) so you will always have access to the information you need no matter your location. You know what that means, right? No more excuses for not studying!

To Facebook or Not to Facebook?

That's the question...anyone have the answer?

The dilemma: how to keep up with fellow students after college.

Anyone in the working world knows that networking is very important. What if the guy that sits next to you in Biology finds a cure for cancer? What if a girl from your group project someday owns her own company...that you want to work for? How do you stay in touch with these people who are chock full of potential? On top of that, it might be nice just to stay in touch with people that have become your friends, right?

Facebook is the obvious answer. Every single college student in my class has a Facebook page. Everyone. I know MySpace is popular in other areas, but in my neck of the woods, Facebook reigns supreme.

The simple answer would seem to be: get a Facebook account. Actually, I have one, but have never set up a page (I did it once just to see what "Facebook" actually was). But, it's not so simple after all.

One, I don't know how I feel about 30-somethings and older being on social networking sites. I know...that sounds biased, but it all started when I overheard a 45-year-old mom of a teenager telling a friend that she was going to post some pictures of an event on her MySpace page. It just sounded...weird. Really? You have a MySpace page??

Two, do I really need another giant time waster? Blogs and email and texting and forums...these things eat my time already.

The only thing I can figure out is to ask for e-mail addresses the old fashioned way (nevermind that the "old fashioned way" when I was in school was to get someone's permanent address). But, e-mails often changed or don't get checked (especially if you're busy on Facebook--lol!).

I don't know....what's your plan to stay in touch? Or do you even plan to stay in touch with your classmates?

Video On Demand Rocks

Homework. Oh yeah...that little thing.

Somehow, when I decided to extend my fall break for a week instead of two days, I managed to forget about a little thing called homework. This morning at 9 a.m. when I was blow-drying my hair when it dawned on me: I have about three projects to finish!

So here I am, blogging on my workstation while watching All the President's Men on my laptop for my Media Ethics class. (I know...it's a hard job watching a young Robert Redford in action, but somebody's got to do it.)

Amazon's Video On Demand service. Can I say, I love this video on demand stuff? First off, finding a movie from the 70s in my part of the world: not an easy task. There are no big chains like Blockbuster out here in "the boondocks" and my local video store has maybe forty new releases (a.k.a "nothing from the seventies"). I'm not a Netflix customer (yet) because I have a hard enough time keeping up with my favorite TV shows that I have recorded on my DVR. Maybe frequent movie nights will become a habit after graduation.

Needless to say, Video On Demand was a lifesaver (or, at least, a homework saver) for me.

You know what this means? I'll probably become an addict. Yep, I'll probably start searching the Video On Demand listings constantly, downloading and saving movies to watch on roadtrips or anywhere I'm likely to be stuck without television or internet (because you can download the movies and store them for up to 30 days before watching...and you don't have to be connected to the internet if you download free Amazon's Unbox software). But if nothing else, it will be great for "research" purposes (insert me flexing quotey fingers and a little "wink wink" on the side). :)

RateMyProfessors.Com

Today, a guy makes an announcement in class (and in front of our professor) that you can go to ratemyprofessors.com and (what else?) rate your professors.

I've gotta say, that would scare me as a teacher. People say things on the internet under the security of anonymity that they would never say otherwise. I can only imagine what kind of mean-spirited things that show up on our end-of-the-semester class "satisfaction" surveys (whatever they're called). Still, I would think that there would be less negative reports on the surveys than there might be online because the audience is different: one is written knowing that the professors will get all comments sent to them, while website reviews are written with a student audience in mind.

I decided to investigate the site for myself.

I looked up the professor that I believed to be the hardest and most strict of all the classes I have taken. Granted, this was a professor that I loved because I learned a tremendous amount about a subject that I cared so little about, but I felt that others probably didn't share the same affinity. There was a zero tolerance policy for tardiness, cell phones and in-class snacking...three things that college students love.

Wow. I was wrong! Out of 7 pages of reviews, only 2 were negative and the rest praised the professor's excellent teaching skills and understanding of the subject matter. I was floored. Even the negative ratings weren't so negative.

Of course, there were some professors with negative ratings, but--let's face it--not all teachers are great teachers. I don't believe in publicly bashing someone, but if there are specific complaints about a class, I think it's fair to address those things.

When I fill out the end-of-semester surveys, it's been my policy to always end on a high note. Even if you have a complaint, I think you should report a positive to balance it out. If you have no complaints at all and/or really enjoyed a class, I think you should report that as well both for the benefit of "the powers that be" and the teacher him/herself.

Everybody likes to get a pat on the back. I'm glad to see students using this website to do so.

The Electronic Backpack

Here's the problem: I have to do a lot of writing (it's the nature of my major). I have to write both in class AND at home. How do I transport works-in-progress if I'm not using a laptop? I've found a great solution: Backpack .

Backpack is a FREE program where you can basically upload your notes, papers or lists to a website (of sorts) created just for you. You can make your Backpack private or shareable (great if you are working on a group project). You can also get your Backpack to e-mail reminders to you. Backpack has a calendar option and other services which do not come with the free program, but are available with an upgrade.

I just loaded my book-in-progress for my Advanced Composition class to my very own Backpack site so that I can add to it or change it from any computer. Awesome!

Times, They Are a Changin'

One of the big differences I have noticed between college ten years ago and today is the use of technology & multimedia. After all, I am typing this from a computer as I am waiting for class to begin! This week, I've watched UTube videos in class, almost every professor lectures using a projector, and everyone has access to computers (you don't have to go to the library anymore).

While I LOVE these changes (b/c I am a technology geek and visual learner), one thing is driving me nuts: the students will spend half of class time checking out their Facebook or MySpace pages while the professor is lecturing. I know the new generation is all about multi-tasking (heck, I am too!), but come on....there's no way they can actually be listening.