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.
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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.
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.)
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?
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.
Mint.com is a new online budgeting tool. You input your bank and credit card logins for their websites and it gathers the data and pulls all of your financial information together. It simplifies everything because it’s all in one place. You don’t have to login to six different websites to pull up your balances. They also have an alert system to notify you when your balances become low so you don’t overdraft.
I tried it out and was actually very impressed. If you’re not sure how to budget or don’t want to bother, Mint is a great way to keep track of your money. I personally found it a little too simple for me. I have an exact image of the way I want my budget to be and I’ve just had to keep using a spreadsheet do so.
I really like how it breaks down spending and shows trends. It doesn’t always recognize certain charges, but for the most part, it puts them in the right categories. It compares cash and debt, which is nice since apparently it thinks I have more cash than debt (it doesn’t know my poor “cash” is really all debt in student loans.) It does know, however, that my most frequent stop is at HEB (grocery store).
The feature that shows ways you can save money by switching accounts is nice, but doesn’t really apply to a college student with little credit. Mint thinks I could save $424 by switching checking accounts and credit cards, but what it doesn’t know is that I can’t just get another credit card because mine has too high of an interest rate.
Of course, there are some drawbacks to a website like this, the most important being that they have your bank information. As a paranoid person, I just don’t like giving other people my passwords to anything, much less my bank accounts. What with all the security leaks recently, I’m even more paranoid. It doesn’t take much to hack a website and steal all of this information. Other than that, sometimes it seems too simple for me. I have a pretty complicated plan for my budget and have yet to find a program that does what I want.
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.
