Month of June , 2007

When I graduated from college, I got myself a 6-month work visa and headed to London, which I heartily recommend to everyone. Interestingly, I met hardly any actual English people, or even British people, while I lived there – even though I ended up working in the National Gallery. Well, the café in the National Gallery.

Read/Write Web has a great list of online applications for students. Online applications are generally free (at least for basic service, and upgraded services tend to be cheap), fairly easy to use, and most importantly are available wherever you have access to a computer.

Universities are complex. Needlessly complex. The modern university represents an accretion of over a thousand years of tradition – why else do you think you are expected to dress like a medieval scribe for graduation?

Over the next few weeks, if I'm approved, I'll be experimenting with a new-ish service (new to me, anyway) called Blogsvertise. Here's how it works: Blogsvertise gets paid to promote some product or service. Blogsvertise selects appropriate blogs to write about the product or service. I write a post in which I mention the product or service a certain number of times, with the link provided. I am under no obligation to endorse the product or service, simply to mention them and provide a link. I get paid a little something, which is good.

My, my, we do hate the idea of outlining, don’t we? Most people think of an outline as a rigid straightjacket hampering the flow of true creativity. But guess what – the writers you admire most for their creativity almost without fail are outliners (and those that aren’t are lying – they most likely keep an outline in their heads and trust their memories to keep it straight). The reason is simple – an outline takes most of the work of organizing and structuring their writing off their shoulders, which means they are free to actually be creative.

A conspiracy is afoot, my friends. Microsoft is in on it, for sure, but they’re only the public face of what may be the vastest, most insidious plot to undermine America’s credibility ever carried out. I’m pretty sure the North Koreans are in on it, and the Teachers’ Union. And MTV, definitely. Their plan: through the cunning manipulation of word processing software, particularly the spell-checking function, they hope to make Americans look stupid and awkward in front of the rest of the world.

And it’s working!

Because of a server load issue, which I suspect is due to comment spam, I've disabled commenting for the moment. Since it ain't a blog without comments, I'll try to get that up and running again asap.

When you are sitting in the garage with your laptop on your lap, writing, and the garage door is open and you're enjoying the beautiful weather and you have a look of ease and contentment on your face, it's really hard to convince missionaries that yes, you are in fact working.

Learning is a craft, a set of skills that you put to use over the course of your life to construct your education. Like any craft, your mastery of the tools at your disposal is crucial. One of the most overlooked tools in the learner’s toolbox is your computer and its software. Your instructors have probably spent a lot of time teaching you how to use books and the research library, maybe how to glean information from the Web, and definitely how to use language to put forth and defend an argument, but how much time have you or your professors spent on how to use your computer?

This is the first of a multi-post series I'll be putting together over the summer. The goal is to accumulate a collection of tips that can be compiled into a guide for college and university students. If you have any good advice for students that you'd like to share, please contact me.