Tuesday November 24, 2009
I know loads of people who adore Black Friday. They get up at 4 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, don fluffy parkas and head out to wait in the pre-dawn darkness outside Target and other stores. Not me. I'm much too fond of my creature comforts! I prefer to shop online, in my jammies, with a cup of joe - or a day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich in hand.
And my fellow About.com parenting guides have made it even easier by assembling holiday gift guides for pretty much every family demographic, from perfect grandmother gifts to classic toys for tots. Check it out:
Tuesday November 24, 2009
Interesting and somewhat disturbing piece in Inside Higher Ed a few days ago. Seems Pennsylvania's Lincoln University tracks its students' body mass index (BMI). Now they've issued warnings to 25 or so seniors that they may not be able to graduate this spring, not for academic issues but because their freshman BMI put them in the obese range. Students either need to lose weight or take a special fitness class with a nutritional component - or no diploma.
The head of the American College Health Association told Inside Higher Ed that this was the first time he'd heard of such a thing. But James L. DeBoy, who heads up the PE department at Lincoln, a historically black university, said, "This country's in the midst of an obesity epidemic and African-Americans are hit hard by obesity and diabetes. We need to address this problem directly with our students."
Maybe. But considering that the primary role of universities is to educate the populace, and that the role that colleges such as Lincoln play is to draw in a historically underrepresented academic population ... wow. Why throw up a non-academic stumbling block to graduation? Or if you're going to do it, why not require a fitness and nutrition class for everyone? Your thoughts?
Monday November 23, 2009
What a year - a new study out from Michigan State University says it's no wonder so many college grads are having trouble finding work. The job market for the newly-diploma'd hit bottom in 2009, falling not the 8-10% that everyone feared, but 35-40%.
So who's getting hired? Young adults with multiple, 21st century skills, strong problem solving and critical thinking skills, and the ability to quickly adapt. Even more important, they're new grads who were pro-active about finding internships and forging connections in the work world while still in college.
Next year's job prospects don't look great either, but the Michigan researchers are predicting increased hiring in the fields of e-commerce, agriculture, environmental sciences, statistics, nursing and tech-related fields. Not looking so hot: accounting, banking, engineering, real estate and computer science.
OK, real estate was to be expected. But engineering?
Related posts:
Saturday November 21, 2009
I'm sitting here, nagging my high school senior about the college apps that are due in a few days. A timer is ticking - figuratively and literally - and that essay is going to be done today. Oh yes, it is. So she's scribbling and I'm sitting here, exuding moral support as I contemplate really weird essay topics from colleges hither and yon. CNN.com has a marvelous excerpt from MentalFloss: a list of 10 offbeat topics, many of them from the University of Chicago, which is notorious for its weird, student-inspired prompts, such as "How do you feel about Wednesday?" Also on the list, Wake Forest's "What outrages you?" and Tufts' "Are we alone?" Mmmmkay. That one's going to elicit plenty of sci-fi abduction tales and religious treatises.
NYU suggest students "write a haiku." The Mental Floss writer obliges with, "Oh please, NYU/College essays are stressful/Don't make me do this."
But my favorite isn't on the list. In 2007-08, the University of Chicago asked students to unleash their inner improv artist and pen a script that included the James Joyce line, "And yes I said yes I will yes," as well as four out of the following possible items: "a paper airplane, a transformation, a shoe, the invisible hand, two doors, pointillism, a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem, a ventriloquist or ventriloquism, the Periodic Table of the Elements, the concept of jeong, number two pencils." No superhero references allowed.
I'd mention it to my daughter, but as the deadline ticks down ... hmm, not such a good idea.
