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Freshman 15: How to Avoid Weight Gain in College, PART 4

Jane McKinsey — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:48:19 +0000

This is the final article out of series about weight problems that a lot of students face. Excessive weight is harmful for a young organism: it affects a lot of major internal organs, thus making the long term effects of education and the life style, maintained during the years of studying, risky.

Check out the previous “freshman 15” articles on our blog. Be sure to follow the advise that we give and stay healthy! But lets cut to the chase.

If you do find yourself in the local artery clogger, order a salad to start with. Send the breadbasket back, and ask for everything with its sauce, butter, or dressing on the side. Drink water before you eat in order to fill yourself up a bit, Cut your portion in half to begin with and request a ‘doggy bag’ or clam shell container to take the remainder home. This will fit in a dormitory sized fridge, and can serve as a lunch or dinner the following day.

Problem: Change of foods

Many international students find cafeteria choices downright alien, or at best, exotic. At the least, the traditional, familiar, healthy foodways will be less available than they were at home. These are often millennia-tested, waist-friendly combinations of foods. Rice and legumes, as just one example, have healthily fed much of the world. Each culture adds its own wonderful unique spices and flavors that taste like home. Although since the 1970s, college cafeterias have tried to offer specialties such as vegetarian entrees, they tend not to get the ethnic tastes very well.

Suggestion

Talk to your cafeteria manager about trying some recipes from your home country. Perhaps they could designate a special day to serve foods inspired by your native land’s foods. Alternatively, you may need to create these familiar and healthy dishes and flavors yourself.

Ask around to locate ethnic markets in your region. Expect to travel to find merchants selling the necessary ingredients. Sudanese food hides out in Central New Jersey, for example. Get a group together and share the ride – take local friends along to experience the cross-cultural experience.

Be ready to call home for instructions on your mom’s specialties. It can be done, as evidenced by a memorable feast of Eid at the end of Ramadan, hosted by a group of Pakistani graduate students at Oklahoma State University, with an entire animal roasted over a fire.

With some diplomacy and grace, you may find that your efforts at recreating the dishes of your childhood attract great hordes of fellow students, interested in knowing more about your food traditions and about you, as well.

Eat healthy, stay healthy – be happy! Check out our blog next week for more awesome articles full of college tips and tricks!

Web Review: JourneyEd.com

Jane McKinsey — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:45:50 +0000

Over the last months and years, we’ve reviewed pages and pages of different educational websites for students. However, we realize that there is still stuff that we are missing.

If you are studying in the US/UK, you probably spend more than you would like to (or than your parents would prefer) on education-related, or personal, software. This can be costly. For example, if you are a design student, you will quite likely need Adobe PhotoShop.

This carries a price tag of over 500 dollars! For a student, this is way too much. Even for those who are long past their student years, this is a large sum for an independent designer or hobbyist to invest in a piece of software that might or might not pay for itself in new business!

However, there is a place on the web, created especially for students, teachers, and educational institutions, where you can find attractive software deals. It’s called JourneyEd.com, and it promises to save you a fistful of money. This is why sites such as this one seem to be luring in a great many students, all eager for savings. This may not always be the best choice, unfortunately.

Pros

The listed pricing is undeniably appealing. When I first checked out this website, I simply could not believe that it was actually there, and operating as a legitimate business.

For example, check out Adobe’s price for their project from their official website, starting at $199 (actual when the review was written). For dramatic contrast, here is JourneyEd.com’s price showing prices starting at $179.95 (actual when the review was written). That represents a 20 dollar savings right there, which seems like a sweet deal!

However, in order to obtain this discounted price on software, you need to provide proof of your current connection to an educational institution. You will be asked to send a scan of your student or faculty/staff identification card or equivalent documentation. They then perform their verification procedure. Before you make a purchase, do read what we have to say next.

Cons

The website has received a substantial number of negative reviews, and garnered distinctly critical feedback online. We, ourselves, found it not exactly easy to use. There are many eye-catching deals immediately visible on their site, but some of these, upon closer inspection, turn out to be less than fabulous. You can check out for yourself what people have to say about this website on SiteJabber.com and several other reputable review services.

One of the biggest dissatisfactions that people express is with the website’s customer support. People can wait for weeks to receive any sort of response. Sometimes the support team doesn’t respond properly or doesn’t react to all messages. This seems to be one of the most important issues with many reviewers.

Also, the JourneyEd.com seems to be making promises it cannot keep. A lot of its customers didn’t receive the products they have ordered, at all.

Of course, some people report that they have received a refund later on. But that still doesn’t make up for the customer’s effort and time wasted in trying to purchase the product, waiting, making inquiries, and then trying to obtain a refund. This sort of feedback is frequent enough to suggest that it has a sound basis in truth.

Also, we stumbled upon a very unusual review, which looked to us as though it was purely a commercial stunt. We just had to wonder; do ordinary consumers really write reviews like that? How many of us use paragraphs and bolded headings when writing a comment online? I don’t!

Furthermore, it is a marketing truism that people usually make the effort to go online to comment only when they have a complaint. This posting seems to be the only positive review that the site received. The commenter is a professor, so maybe that explains the formality of the review, but we continue to ponder it! The most charitable inference is that this was a particularly lucky customer who was so satisfied that she decided to write a gorgeous review with all the verbal skills at her professional disposal. Food for thought!

But then again, would a company that seems to confront such problems dare to be so socially active on the web? On the one hand, they have over 6,000 fans on Facebook, and a lively bunch they are! On the other hand, they don’t seem to be paying much attention to their audience – I can see numerous posts, but many are also not responded to, and seem to have been ignored.

Conclusion

Use this service with caution. Try contacting their support team before ordering and think twice before making an order, which in theory, and if all works as advertised, could save you some cash. It may not, however, be worth it. You were warned!

Freshman 15: How to Avoid Weight Gain in College, PART 3

Jane McKinsey — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:41:46 +0000

Wait! First, check out the previous “freshman 15” articles to find even more great weight loss tips!

Apart from requiring an inconvenient mid-year new clothing investment, weight gain can be a health burden. Earlier, we talked about ways to add physical activity to your day, and avoid emotional and situational factors that tend towards calorie imbalance. Here we’ll discuss some more factors to avoid and some actions to take.

College offers opportunities for great achievement and great failure, both academically and socially, with concomitant stress. Numerous temptations to relieve the tension of studying and dating with snacks, high calorie drinks, and late-night pizza runs spell disaster for the waistline.

Problem: The choices of eateries

College towns seem to attract the best and the worst of fooderies, and manifold food pitfalls for the unwary freshman. The corporate greaseburgers places are often the best-financed and closest to prime campus real estate. These places issue a siren song for weary students.

As an example, take Penn State in the center of Pennsylvania. This enormous campus IS the community, which had virtually no identity before the college was established.

This, by the way, is true of many U.S. state college towns, especially in the Midwest, many of which are called Land Grant Colleges. The town of State College is chock-a-block full of eating-places. There is Clem’s Wood-fired BBQ, a temple to delectably carbonized pork fat, but there is also The Green Bowl. This latter is as perfect a place find a healthy dinner as one is likely to find.

Diners choose from a plethora of vegetable, nut, seed, and fruit options, and pick a meat or tofu. All these are stylishly and dramatically sautéed on a room sized griddle, and smilingly served with rice (brown or white) or noodles. Free refills make this a relative bargain.

The home of the Texas Tech University Longhorns is another example, of college town eatery schizophrenia. Lubbock specialties include chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, and beef enchiladas accompanied by addictive deep-fried tortillas.

However, there is also a happy haven for vegetarians: Souper Salad. The point is that healthier options are available almost everywhere – look, ask, and explore beyond the immediate confines of the campus and environs.

Suggestion

The trick is to patronize these places with healthy choices as much as possible, rather than the all-you-can-choke-down purveyors of fat and simple carbohydrates. You may need to negotiate with your schoolmates to get them to go with you somewhere healthy, several days a week, on condition that you accompany them to the local Fat-o-Rama at other times (this is fabricated, but some entrepreneur will probably open up an establishment of this name somewhere!)

Freshman 15: How to Avoid Weight Gain in College, PART 2

Jane McKinsey — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:27:39 +0000

That first batch of extra poundage is devilishly difficult to shed, and may accompany you the rest of your life. Check out the first article on the topic and read on for more wight control tips.

Since obesity is such a health hazard, how can you avoid this unwelcome addition to your body? Moreover, why does it happen? Knowing why something occurs is a major accomplishment, and forewarned is forearmed.

Problem: Isolation from home

College takes kids away from home in ways that they have not usually experienced before. Even commuter students are likely to be gone from home more than in secondary school. This causes all sorts of potential problems, and being aware of them may help you to prevent negative results.

Suggestion:

To counteract this unaccustomed disconnection from one’s usual routine, make active attempts to keep a regular schedule for meals, and try to include familiar homemade foods whenever you can. If you are a commuter student, try packing at least a partial lunch from home or your dormitory refrigerator. This way you are not completely dependent on truck eateries (mobile food vendors), fast food places, and the college cafeteria.

It is certainly true that you can make friends during mealtimes in all these common eating spaces. You don’t want to miss such opportunities. Therefore, you want to retain a reason and excuse to socialize with your schoolmates. Many cafeterias will allow diners to eat some of their own food as long as they have made a token purchase. If your chums are getting their lunch from the food trucks, you can all sit together to eat whatever you have bought or brought.

The key is that you, or your family, have you have more control over some portion of your lunch, or rather, your overall daily intake. You can moderate the amount you eat, and the calorie content of the food. A homemade sandwich or portion of curry on rice or sesame noodles is almost certainly going to be less caloric than a cheese-steak sandwich that can serve as potentially two meals. You can also include healthy fresh and dried fruit, seeds, nuts, and cut up raw veggies as opposed to buying chips or cookies.

Problem: Emotional eating

Students at college are isolated from their families and the support and care that they offer. This translates into outright homesickness for some, and a nagging, vague sense of something missing for others. Feeling that something is missing generates a hunger that no amount of food will satisfy. Emotional eating such as this can sabotage the most well disciplined dieter.

Suggestion:

Emotional eating is a pernicious issue and may require professional help to resolve over the long run. However, just being conscious of the possibility can be a start. Whenever feeling the urge to eat, try to ask yourself what OTHER emotions you are feeling. Are you feeling lonely, angry, hurt, frustrated, or anxious at the same time as you long for a candy bar from the vending machine? These are but a few of the emotional states that can be interpreted by the brain as hunger.

If after a moment’s self-examination, you can, identify another emotion other than hunger, then you should definitely take a time-out. Do you truly need to eat? Alternatively, do you, instead, need to address the underlying painful feeling? You may actually need to weep, yell, hit a pillow, or use some inappropriate language in a private place rather than downing a chocolate brownie. Try taking a few mindful breaths.

It may become easier to acknowledge to yourself that you are ticked off at a dorm-mate, or scared spitless of a test, or frustrated that you did not speak to a cute classmate when you had a chance. Armed with that knowledge, you might be able to forestall the impulse purchase of a donut, bag of crisps, or other nutrition-free item.

Problem: The endless serving

College cafeterias often offer unlimited servings for students who subscribe to the dining plan. Although this might be fine if the only items they went back for seconds on were on the salad bar, this is not often the case. That third bowl of ice cream with hot fudge sauce could take all semester to work off.

Suggestion:

If you do have a cafeteria plan or the cafeteria allows unlimited seconds, try to plan your trip through the line ahead of time. Pass through with no tray in hand, so that you know what your options are that day. If that rice pudding is just what you have a yen for, then plan for that as part of your overall meal. Forego the large soda or seconds on stew. If you have an action plan for your food choices before you face the decision point, then you are better armed to resist the potential lure of those French fries.

We will look at more ideas for avoiding the risk of weight gain in college in future articles.

Web Review: Imendi.com

Jane McKinsey — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:30:36 +0000

Have you ever had a situation when you are preparing to travel abroad, or for an important meeting with a business client from another country? I’m sure you have encountered at least one of the two. You are planning your trip, and realize that the language barrier might be a real problem. What should you do? Where should you go? Time is scarce and you don’t actually need to learn that much stuff, just some of the basics to help you manage daily life.

There is a solution for your problem. It’s called Imendi.com – it’s an online set of flash cards and tests, which offer you the basic foreign language learning experience. The service is pretty simple and at the same time helpful. For it to work, however, you have to be determined, and possess a great desire to learn the language.

The system is really basic. There isn’t that much to tell about it.

It offers you a series of flash cards with different words in different languages. You have to match those words with their meanings in English, or whatever your preferred language is (as long as your preference appears on the list of those languages that are available).

You can choose from a range of topics for your flash cards. There are 12 of them, starting from ‘Basic Conversation’, ‘Colors, Numbers’, and so on. The goal here is to equip you with a basic knowledge of the foreign language in the shortest time possible.

And what we like about this service is that it offers intuitive examples for the tests. Of course, this also might be just a simple coincidence, but what we mean by intuitive examples is that even when we didn’t know the correct answers, we could make successful inferences. This showed us just how exactly the languages are similar.

For example, chocolate in Portuguese is ‘chocolate’ (try saying it with a Portuguese/ Spanish accent). Or, doctor in Spanish is ‘doctor’ (also try pronouncing it with a Spanish accent, and the stress on the ultimate syllable). These are basic examples. But we hope that you get the point – many foreign languages (e.g., the Romance and Teutonic) have much in common with English, so learning something new will not only be useful, but straightforward as well. Figuring out pronunciation is your own responsibility, however, since there is no audio.

We should also talk about the dashboard, which was still not available when this review was written.

You can check out their website to see whether it has been posted. It will offer you the opportunity to track your learning progress, as well as custom study plans, based on your results.

But at this point we can’t actually see anything that indicates that you will need ANY sort of study plan. The service is a basic set of flash cards and limited functionality. It will only work as a basic tool to enhance your foreign language learning process. Additionally, the dashboard offered is still at the closed beta phase and should become available for a one-time fee.

Given all this, we think they will need to come up with something worth the $23 one-time fee, because at this point, the service is still primitive.

Conclusion

As a service for basic foreign language learning – Imendi.com does a good job. It will offer you a basic understanding of foreign language vocabulary and structure and could probably even help you when you go abroad.

However, the main downside of their offer is that all of it is visual and text-based – there are no audio guides, or even phonetic transcripts to give you an idea of how the words should be pronounced.

Freshman 15: How to Avoid Weight Gain in College

Jane McKinsey — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:03:52 +0000

It has become almost axiomatic that students will gain a substantial amount of weight in the first semester or two or three of college. The reasons are manifold, and the prevention is not easy.

However, self-awareness is a very good beginning strategy for preventing and correcting problems. We will look at some causes of collegiate weight gain and suggest some adaptive strategies in this and future articles.

First, most high schools still require some sort of physical education , whether it is a several-times weekly PE class with dreaded dodge ball games and calisthenics, or interscholastic sports that take kids other schools to compete in a variety of sports. In most high schools with a college preparatory orientation, one way or another, there is physical activity built in to the week, at least in the USA.

College, with some exceptions, generally does not require any such physical activity. There are exceptions, of course. Columbia University requires that their graduates be able to swim, but this is rather unusual. This means that the caloric consumption that might have kept you in metabolic balance in high school is inappropriate in college. Unless you cut way back on intake, there is an inevitable result – weight gain.

Second, exercise at college often feels like a waste of time unless one is there on a sports scholarship. Although not true of every student, it is a sentiment often heard regretfully expressed. Colleges sometimes seem schizophrenic in their attitude and practices with regard to this issue.

On the one hand, colleges often promote elaborate programs of lifetime athletics, intramural sports, and of course, intercollegiate sports, but on the other hand, THE HOMEWORK IS OFTEN BRUTAL! To ambitious students, this mixed message of recruitment for rugby, half-court basketball, and martial arts (just to mention a few possibilities) as a terrible distraction.

The solution to the problem of reduced activity is increased activity. This is not a novel concept, of course, but how can you accomplish this?

One solution is to regard it as an investment in your intellectual engine. A sound mind in a healthy body, said the ancients: “Mens sana in corpore sano “. That clever old Roman, Juvenal! The brain works better when it has a consistent supply of oxygen and glucose (more on that later). A healthy circulatory system can provide it.

Gentle, regular exercise encourages the maintenance of good circulation. Therefore, a healthy brain in a healthy body – Q.E.D.! When ranked right up there with sleep, food, and hydration, exercise may seem less of an indulgence and more of a necessity. This should help you to place physical activity into a more constructive perspective.

Another solution to the problem of when to find time to exercise is to combine it with another necessity or near-necessity of life. This can reduce the guilt or irritation that a committed student may feel about taking time away from the books and the computer.

Consider your social life. You need to have one, no matter how intense your ambition is. If you do not intend to interact with anyone at college, why not get your degree online and perhaps save some money? If you can combine your social life with your physical activity, then you won’t feel so guilty about either.

This requires you to think about how and where you meet, talk, and do things with other people. If the only time you are in company, is at a bar, or a party, consuming vast quantities of empty calories of alcohol and salty snacks, this is not going to help your physique.

Alternatively, if your only visits to the gym are on off hours for a solitary weightlifting session or swim, then you probably will meet no one. Try to combine the two. Pick social activities that involve more than sitting and consuming, and pick exercise options that open up conversational opportunities.

Here are some examples:

Does your dorm have a softball team? This is a great way to make friends and move the limbs. Is there a campus group that does home building or refurbishment on the model of Habitat for Humanity? People who accomplish constructive, sweaty, group projects like this often report making friends for life.

What time is the gym or the track crowded? Do your workout then and remain open to chatting. Is there a recycling club that hoists batches of newspapers, cans, and bottles into the proper receptacle for eco-disposal? It’s pleasant exercise and you know that the participants are committed and moderately other-centered.

Who gives tours to prospective families? That is exercise within the range of everyone, and the college will appreciate your efforts. Additionally, you will be the ONLY person that all the incoming first year students recognize.

These are just a few ideas – look for more in upcoming articles.

Practical College Classes: Use Them in Real Life, Find a Job! PART 4

Jane McKinsey — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:16:37 +0000

Getting a college degree is a major investment of both time and money, and it would reassure hard-pressed families and students to have some assurance that their education was going to prove useful.

We talked in earlier articles about finding practical courses in the ivory tower, and seeking training in state colleges, community colleges, and commercial schools, for the health and computing fields. These ideas continue below.

Another direction to take in terms of instantly practical skills is the food service industry. The Culinary Institute of America, in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York State, or the Napa Valley of California, and the Restaurant School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania both offer highly professional training that prepares students to work in any food related setting.

Students run restaurants inside the school that are destinations for diners from their whole regions. In the case of the Restaurant School, the design, theme, and menu of the student-run restaurant changes every few weeks, to give students a chance to participate in the process of creating a new restaurant concept on their own.

Both these institutions offer non-credit courses that introduce enthusiastic amateurs to the hot and steamy world of the restaurant kitchen. There are local cooking schools in most areas, and many community colleges offer this training as well. Will taking one or two courses in omelet-making or wine-matching ready you for a real job? The likelihood is that they won’t but restaurants are generally run by idiosyncratic entrepreneurs, and one never knows what will strike a restaurateur positively when hiring.

We mentioned in an earlier article that large state-affiliated land-grant universities have Cooperative Extension Services. These often offer classes in growing vegetables, canning your own produce, cooking the old fashioned way, making sound nutritional choices, and other useful subjects. While it is doubtful that such instruction will get secure a job, it will certainly help you save money and remain healthy over the long term.

If you are looking for a practical education, that goal should ideally be articulated from the moment you begin looking at colleges. It is much easier to construct a course of vocational study from the ground up than to add a class here or there after you have already started working towards a major in Klingon opera.

However, even if you are more or less committed to a liberal arts degree, there are options. Your state’s universities, community colleges, free-standing commercial and state-affiliated trade schools, and Cooperative Extension services are all available to provide individual courses or whole programs of study that relate to real life. (There may indeed exist a college that offers a major in Klingon opera: let us know if you find one!)

There has been much recent discussion about the advisability of everyone being funneled into college when their inclinations may lead them elsewhere. The vocational-technical school system in the USA has been under-emphasized, and probably to our detriment in the long term.

There is nothing shameful about learning and practicing the trades that make our lives possible in the modern world. If you feel a powerful attraction to a trade or craft, whether it is plumbing, imaging technology, or computer repair, let your parents and college/career advisers know so they can help you find the right school for your interests. These are honorable professions without which the modern world would be sick, dirty, cold, wet, and generally miserable. Good luck to you all!

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Web Review: Readfa.st

Jane McKinsey — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:00:52 +0000

Is reading a problem? Is it tough to read important information fast enough? Are do you simply want to start reading faster because all those books are not going read themselves?

If your answer is yes, we’ve got a great tool for you to check out. It’s going to improve your reading skills. Plus, it’s fun. Our staff enjoyed it thoroughly, and that is not something you hear often about reading remediation! The name of the resource is Readfa.st. ‘Read Fast’ can be your personal trainer in the world of reading.

Pros

The great lessons and the great evaluation system. I personally liked the reading test – right at the beginning, this is aimed at testing your actual reading speed. As the test appears and disappears, you start getting a bit excited, as this reminds you of a sort of game. It seemed like a lot of fun to me.

After you’re done with the evaluation (you get to see your reading speed results), you get the chance to start your lessons. The system is pretty simple – the site offers you specific reading content, which you make your way through, increasing your speed over time.

Sadly, there is no magic system to make you read faster with without effort. Just as in the gym, you have to add weight to your exercise routine in order to make progress. No pain, no gain; you know that drill. It was reassuring to find my improvement in reading speed was more noticeable than any results I get from the gym (but of course, that is just me.

At first, I stumbled over a great many words, I even had to slow down the reading speed that was presented by the site, so that I could actually catch up. Then I had to take the test to verify my reading speed – it’s basic: you answer a couple questions about the text. Embarrassingly for me, I failed the first one, because, as I realized, I was concentrating too much on reading, without absorbing the content.

Everything about this service makes you want to go further and become a better reader. It offers you the chance to go through a number of articles in the same way you got through the test: by reading a text that appears and disappears on the screen.

Only this time, there is no pressure, you can pause, and stop the text from going in and out. The system will simply evaluate your speed to track your progress.

What I especially like about this reading tool, is that it offers some great content, unlike some of the common readers through which we all have suffered. You can find the latest articles from popular online resources. For example, one of the recent ones I’ve read had the following title – “How to Tell Someone You Don’t Like Them (Without Being an A**hole)”, posted at Life Hacker. As you can tell by the name of the article, this is pretty entertaining. You can stop and continue reading later on – it’s all up to you.

It offers you badges for reading, creating a gaming effect, when you want to progress level by level faster. It also allows you to establish online friendships and invite your friends to the resource. You can check out which articles they’re reading and how they match up with you in terms of reading speed. You can also create our own topics, and create your own feeds to read the news that you find interesting to read. This makes the whole process even more pleasurable.

Conclusion

Definitely check out this service. It should improve your reading skills in a pleasant and informative manner.

Practical College Classes: Use Them in Real Life, Find a Job! PART 3

Jane McKinsey — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:09:30 +0000

College tuition, ludicrously high, and rising fast, makes it vital that our expenditures pay off. While it is lovely to be able to study something interesting but totally impractical, it may not be feasible in today’s economy.

We discussed in an earlier article the challenge of finding practical courses if you are enrolled in a liberal arts institution, and want to augment your transcript with something you can use.

We also began discussing community colleges and the job descriptions that are hot items these days.
Almost any subject in the computer field is likely to increase your employability, such as programming, software development, and network systems and data communications analysis. An Associate’s degree may be adequate, but this is a field where practical experience is crucial.

A part-time job in a computer store would be a boost as well, for two reasons. For one thing, the field is changing so fast that if you are not working with the cutting edge equipment, you are already behind the curve. Also, in the computer field, experience working with the issues and problems of the field is well-respected, and often required for employment.

As a bonus, taking computer courses that address the basic design of the machines, and the way that they ‘think”, can also help you understand your own computer, and save untold hours of frustration. Considering that most courses require the use of a computer, this can be a substantial boost for your other studies.

Knowing how databases are set up is helpful in the most unexpected ways; for example, if you know that EndNotes, the proprietary bibliographic tool sold by Reuters, is constructed as a database, rather than as an adjunct to word processing software, the way that the bibliographic tool embedded in Word is, it is much easier to figure it out. When you have to turn in a paper NOW, this is useful! This can help you even if you never work in the computer field.

Another kind of course that has applicability to real life is anything involving teaching or dealing with speakers of English as a second language/foreign language. If you are ever working in a linguistically diverse setting, you will benefit from an understanding of how languages are acquired. This subject, a hot one these days, will be available in many departments of Education, because this is one of the areas in education where there is continuing need and the political will for funding such positions, since it is often required by regulation or legislation.

If you really wish to learn practical skills, you may be better off at a community college. These generally offer two year programs leading to an Associate’s degree. As an example, Montgomery College, in Maryland, offers a variety of programs in the building trades (as well as automotive technology, fire science, and polysomnography). These can involve upwards of 30+plus credit hours in such areas as carpentry, and include preliminary distribution requirements in the familiar English and Math.

A more specialized institution would be the Building Trades Institute in Columbus, Ohio. Such schools may allow registration for just one or two courses, but they are clearly oriented towards people who are going for a certification. As an example of how such training can enhance life, consider the case of a Wharton Graduate School MBA candidate who took building courses at a local trade school during summer break.

He used these skills to augment his modest and always insecure teaching salary at a Midwestern college (and pay off his PhD tuition), through renovating and renting out a growing real estate portfolio. He jokes that when his sense of humor gets him in too much trouble with the administration, he will nonetheless be set for life with the income from his properties.

Be sure to check back next week for the next article on the topic!

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Practical College Classes: Use Them in Real Life, Find a Job! PART 2

Jane McKinsey — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:27:00 +0000

With the price of an education rising to ridiculous heights, making sure that the student realizes a return on this huge investment is becoming more and more critical.

In an earlier article, we talked about finding practical courses in a liberal arts institution where vocationally oriented courses are scarce. In this article, we will push the decision point back a bit, and look at your choice of institution to allow the greatest chance of taking useful courses for work and life.

The category of college that probably offers the greatest range of courses is the large state-affiliated institution. These mega universities offer everything from the arcane and impractical to courses that are almost on-the-job training. As recipients of substantial government funding, such universities are under an obligation to train the residents of the state in all the job descriptions that will be needed for the state to function and prosper.

This means that they often have departments, or whole schools, of agriculture, hotel and hospitality management, forestry, and allied medical professions. Most states have one very large campus, and many have satellite campuses, scattered throughout the state.

Historically, when teacher’s colleges and other small colleges, including some historically Black institutions, fell on hard times, they were incorporated into the state university system. This extended the reach of these universities substantially. Another outreach is the Cooperative Extension Service, which brings the resources of the agricultural department of a university into communities that would be too far away otherwise.

Cornell University and Purdue University both have remarkably wide-reaching Cooperative Extension Services, for example, that bring classes in nutrition and horticulture, among other subjects, out into rural towns and villages in New York State and Indiana.

If you can find your way clear to attend such a state school, you will have a choice of pursuing liberal arts courses such as History, Anthropology, Art History, and Philosophy, and signing up for courses in other departments that have more vocational orientation. You might have to sweet-talk your way into some of these, but that is a matter of a meeting with your advisor and the heads of these other departments or schools. If you decide to change your major, and take something with an assured job opening at the other end of the four years, these convenient institutions are the place to be.

The areas of the economy that seem to be recession proof include almost all the allied medical professions and related specialties, and computing. Environmental engineering and business are also still strong, as well. These jobs generally require a Bachelor’s level degree in the discipline, although Associate’s degrees will get you in the door in some areas.

This means that in order to really compete for these jobs, you need to commit to the field at some point and take all the courses that the major demands. One course will probably not be enough to get you a position, although it may demonstrate your interest and open the door for an interview or internship (trying for internships, by the way, is a good strategic move in most fields).

Hot medically-related jobs right now include biomedical engineering technician, nursing, nurse’s aide, home health aide, dental assistant or hygienist, pharmacist and pharmacy technician, biochemist, physical/occupational therapist aide, physician assistant, medical assistant, and athletic trainer. One might add ultrasound technician to the list.

Most of these positions require at least an Associate’s degree, and the pay-off is considerably higher the more education you have. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains useful comprehensive lists of jobs and their responsibilities and prospects.

You will need science courses to prepare for most allied medical professions course work. After all, you need to know how organisms function, and how chemical and physical processes work. This means taking Biology, and perhaps Chemistry or Physics (this is necessary for ultrasound technician certification, for example).

Unfortunately, these courses are also the requirements for pre-medical students. Such committed schoolmates are notoriously likely to be quite competitive and perhaps even cut-throat about getting a good grade in these crucial courses. It is wise to avoid taking the pre-med suite of courses at a place and time that includes a sizable proportion of pre-med students, if you possibly can.

This material is difficult enough without worrying about someone spitting in your lab set-up and spoiling your results. If you need these courses, take them in the summer or at night, or at another less academically demanding school (check up on transfer credit beforehand). Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a great job (meaning one that pays well, in this case) that requires no preparatory serious work, unless you can be discovered as a reality show personality!

On the other hand, long term care nurse’s aides do not need much in the way of a degree beyond a high school diploma. There is, instead, is a specific rather light-weight curriculum that each state requires for their certification. Here is an example of the requirement for Texas. The Pennsylvania requirement calls for 160 hours of accredited training, divided between 80 hours of lecture and 80 hours of instruction in a clinical setting. This is strenuous work, but there is always, always a demand for this job description, both in facilities and in the home.

The pay is not fabulous, but the need is great and your clientele will be deeply grateful. There are a variety of accredited institutions that offer this training, including community colleges. We will discuss some other course work that can enhance your life and your employability in a future article. Be sure to check out our blog next week!

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