That College Kid

How to create a successful outline

Not enough people know how to properly create an outline and that amazes me. The first step is to actually understand the material you’re reading because if you’re simply taking chunks of the chapter, you’re not going to get anywhere. There are different types of outlines, there’s one that the professor wants you to hand in, outlining your research paper and there’s an outline of a chapter. This lesson is going to cover both.

Research outline

This will be the guts of your paper. Once you’ve figured out your topic and the general direction of your paper, creating an outline is pretty straightforward. You really need to know your thesis before completing the outline and my suggestion if you’re confused, is to not worry about the thesis until the end. Start with the information.

Once you’ve gathered your research, you generally know the idea of what you want to talk about first. If you’re completely lost, choose the idea that would be a great opener - something that’s controversial, interesting or your audience would agree with. To choose what’s next in line, ask yourself, “After idea A, what is an easy transition?” If you’re going from dogs to VCRs, there’s probably not going to be an easy connection. Transitions between different sections can be made very simple if you choose topics that seem to flow well together. Also remember that nothing is set in stone. If later you realize you should have put topic B where topic F is, change it.

Because this article is so long, I’m going to cut it off here and allow you to view the rest of entry if you choose to do so. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Academic, Productivity with 14 comments

A cheap Thanksgiving when you can’t go home

Don and I aren’t going to make it back home for Thanksgiving because he’s working over the holiday (he works in retail), so we weren’t planning to do anything special. I was thinking about making chicken fried steak since we have everything we need, but now, I think I’m going to make my own Thanksgiving.

• Cooked rotisserie chicken - $5.99
• Kraft Stove Top stuffing mix - $1.99
• Green beans - $0.25 a can
• Kraft macaroni and cheese - $0.25 a box
• Cranberry sauce - $0.89 a can
• Pumpkin pie mix - $1.99

Total: 11.36

My local grocery store has cooked rotisserie chickens, which is what I’m going to use, but you can over-roast a small, inexpensive turkey or chicken, which can be about $5 if you pay attention. Most of this stuff doesn’t require a whole lot of work, and can be a nice substitute for a great home-cooked Thanksgiving. While Kraft mac and cheese doesn’t even come close to Grandma’s, it’ll be better than cold pizza.

Posted in Misc with 5 comments

Don’t you dare…in a formal paper

Here’s a list my teacher gave me back in high school. It’s compiled of things that should never be in a formal composition.

Don’t you dare…

• Use a contraction (don’t, couldn’t, etc.)
• Use “things” or “stuff”…be specific
• Use “nice” or “some” - too vague, over used
• Use “a lot” or worse - “alot”
• Use “bunch”
• Use slang
• Use “this, that, those, these” as pronouns, only use them as adjective before a noun or pronoun
• Put a comma before “because”
• Use “different than” - correct usage is “different from”
• Use “irregardless”- it’s a not real word, use regardless
• Use “off of”
• Use “plus” instead of “and”
• Write in passive voice when your sentence works in active voice.
• End a sentence with a preposition (to in, at, etc.)

Posted in Academic with 6 comments

Note taking really isn’t that bad

Cal over at Study Hacks wrote a blog post on how to take notes for power point slides, which got me thinking about my note-taking strategies. I’m a great note taker, always have been, but for some people, it’s a chore. I actually enjoy taking notes because I learn the material that much faster and when the test comes, I go over my notes a few times and I’m good to go.

Cal’s suggestion for power point lectures is to download (if available) the power point and simply take your notes in the notes section of the slides instead of printing them out first. That way, after the lecture, you can print out the slides and your notes together. See his post for more details. This is a great idea, even though this semester I don’t have any professors that actually use power point. The only notes I take are for political science, the class I stopped going to (I just read the chapters and take the tests, it’s a ridiculous class).

My personal suggestions for great notes:

• If the lecture is over a chapter, read the chapter first (seriously), outline it in Word and print it out. Bring this to class and in a colored pen (blue or red stands out the best), write notes, questions, and comments.
• If it’s a simple lecture, use different colors. I use black for main ideas and then for any comments/questions, I use a blue pen. This way it’s easy to tell what’s what. Color is also a great tool for memorization. Brains remember color distinction.
• If you like to handwrite your notes, type them up later. This is a great way to study for the test because you’re going over the material again and making it easier to read. When I do this, whatever was in blue, I keep in blue on the computer to further distinguish comments.
• Use lots of color. Sometimes switching pens while writing notes can be distracting, but during study time, highlight and draw pictures. Color really helps, even if it seems pointless.

These things work for me, but they might not work for you. What does? Do you have any strategies or tips you’d like to share?

Posted in Academic, Productivity with 7 comments

Grand Central

Grand Central is a service now owned by Google that brings all of your phone numbers together. Basically, you get one phone number that rings all of your numbers and you can decide which phone you want to answer on. There’s settings to decide which call gets directed to which line so only your friends call your cell phone.

According to the website, Grand Central allows you to:

• Check your messages by phone, email, or online
• Keep all your messages online for eternity
• Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
• Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
• Click-to-dial from your address book
• Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
• Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

It’s actually a very great service and I enjoy using it. I don’t have caller ID on my home phone because I’m cheap and never use it (cable is bundled and it’s actually cheaper to have a phone and not use it than to not have a phone…interesting) so when someone calls my home phone, I know it’s not someone I want to talk to since I don’t ever give out that number and I have my GC number set to ring my cell phone and my boyfriend’s phone.

Grand Central is in beta (and FREE) so it requires an invitation to sign up. You can either sign up for one here like I did, or get one from a user. If you’d like one from me, I have ten invites left so let me know.

Posted in Reviews with 7 comments

Why I don’t hate Vista

Back in August, I purchased a Gateway ML3109 laptop and it came with Vista (Basic, I believe). At first, I was upset because I’d heard only horrible things. I’d seen screenshots of the changes and new features and wasn’t impressed. I was even less impressed because I’d heard Vista was a memory hog so when I bought the laptop, I had them upgrade the RAM to 1.5GB instead of just 512MB.

I took the laptop home and first thing off, I reinstalled Vista, taking out the unnecessary software. I installed a few of my own programs and now I’m actually pretty satisfied. I turned off all the enhanced security features and don’t use any of the new stuff - not sure I actually have any though and it works pretty well. I mainly use it for word processing and simple surfing because I feel less distracted on it than on my Mac. Once you get passed all of that, it’s really not that bad of an OS. It certainly beats Windows 2000.

What I like about Vista

• Start search box (which you can turn off)
• New control panel - confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s better
• Not running all programs as administrator - helps with security
• Network and sharing center - same with control panel, confusing at first, but much better for novices
• It’s pretty - I like the new look, it’s simple, but nice
• It’s much, much better for non-geeks - everything is simple and it doesn’t let you mess with things unless you know what you’re doing

I don’t have anything negative to say about Vista now that I’ve used it. Good job Microsoft.

Posted in Computers with 3 comments

Custom essay writing

In high school, a friend of mine paid an essay writing company to write an essay for him. He didn’t get caught actually because websites like Custom Writing actually writes the paper to your needs. Half the paper isn’t copied onto their website for teachers to simply paste the contents into Google. They have a thesis service and even free plagiarism detection, which makes this not quite as stupid as simply buying stock essays off the internet.

I’ve always thought people who did this sort of thing were idiots, but now that there’s better alternatives, I don’t find it quite as moronic. Immoral maybe, but not stupid. There’s not really an easy way for teachers to tell you haven’t written the paper, it’s much the same as bullying the class nerd into doing your homework (or paying them), which is pretty common practice actually.

Most people think of this as cheating and it is - but are you okay with cheating? If you look at life as a game, people always cheat. Whether it’s cheating on taxes or not telling the cashier you ate half the grapes while you were shopping (they’re usually charged by weight so you’re not paying for the ones you’ve eaten). Most people I’ve talked to about this have been afraid of getting caught. They aren’t worried about morals, but about getting in trouble.

So readers, what are your views? Would you use a service like this if you knew 100% you weren’t going to get caught?

Posted in Academic with 9 comments