November 14th 2007
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 8 comments
November 10th 2007
Surprisingly, a lot of students don’t actually know how to calculate their own GPA. I’ve included a small tutorial and a link to a calculator because it is much easier just to plug it in and be given an answer. For those of you who are seriously clueless, GPA stands for grade point average and is an important factor on your transcript.
To calculate your GPA you’ll need to know your average and the weight (number of hours) for each class. You get a certain number of grade points for each class, depending on your grade. Points are awarded according to the chart below.
A=4 points
B=3 points
C=2 points
D=1 point
W/F = 0 points
Multiply the grade points by the weight of the class. For example, if your biology class is 4 hours and you made a B, you get 12 points for that class. Find all the points for every class and add them up. Then add up the total hours of all classes. To find your GPA, you divide total grade points by total number of hours
Here’s an example transcript:
| Class |
Grade |
Hours |
|
Points |
Grade Points |
| Biology |
A |
4 |
|
4 |
16 |
| English |
B |
3 |
|
3 |
9 |
| Calculus |
C |
4 |
|
2 |
8 |
| Economics |
A |
3 |
|
4 |
12 |
| Speech |
A |
2 |
|
4 |
8 |
|
|
16 |
|
|
53 |
GPA = GRADE POINTS / TOTAL HOURS
3.3125 = 53 / 16 –> This student has a B.
If that’s just too complicated and time-consuming or you’re lazy (like me), here’s a GPA calculator for you provided by Back2College. It makes everything wonderfully simple.
Posted in Academic, Tricks with 8 comments
October 22nd 2007
Gearfire is publishing an article about his favorite academic programs for Windows and I’m posting a sister article for Mac users. Personally, I don’t use academic-based software that much. I do have these three applications on my computer and use them sometimes, but so far this semester, I haven’t had too many assignments or a difficult class. I use NeoOffice the most out of any program, for word processing and spreadsheets, but I also use Skim. There are other programs out there, but with my experience, these are great for students. Note taking is usually done in a text editor/word processing program anyway.
Genius is a flashcard-based application to help you memorize things. I use this, especially for political science in memorizing hoards of vocab words. It organizes info using the “Leitner “learning cardfile” system, and it quizzes you using a spaced repetition method.” Based on performance, it repeats certain words.
Schoolhouse is the homework manager for Mac. It sorts and organizes assignments, tests and projects. The smart notebook feature introduced in other Apple software is there, as well as classcasts so you can publish subscribable assignments on the web. My favorite thing about this software is the grade calculations. You can input all of your grades for each class and it keeps track of your average. It’s much better than trying to do it myself. Schoolhouse integrates a calendar/GTD program with keeping track of school work as well, which makes this an excellent tool for students.
Skim is a PDF reader (yes, I know, Preview is wonderful!) that lets you write on them so you don’t have to print out notes to take notes. I use this for my political science class (well, when I actually went to his class, I haven’t in over a month.) The professor gives us a copy of the powerpoint in pdf format and I use Skim to write all over it. It saves me from the cost of ink and paper.
Posted in Academic, Productivity, Software with 1 comment
October 5th 2007
Following up my post about research techniques, I would like to mention a great resource I’ve found, Questia. It’s an online academic library that contains over 67,000 digital books and 1.5 million articles, all available in full-text. They also have over 5,000 free books and an encyclopedia.
If your school doesn’t have an online database, which some of them don’t, but you still need access to academic sources for research, websites like Questia can help you. It isn’t free, but they do offer free trials, which is something I definitely would take advantage of. They have yearly, quarterly and monthly subscriptions, which might be helpful if you have only one paper to write, but for most college students, it’s not much of an option. I would suggest they use advertising to make more money so they can lower the subscription prices.
My favorite thing about Questia is the layout. My school’s library does offer an academic database, but the layout for it is very confusing. Questia’s organization is very simple and easy to use.
Another thing that’s great about Questia is the search feature. The relevance of articles in search results matches very well to what I’m actually looking for. My school’s database is so large that I have to sift through hundreds of irrelevant articles to finally get what I’m looking for. They have very nice categorical structure so it’s really easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Posted in Academic with 2 comments
October 3rd 2007
Online degrees are an upcoming trend that I’m not sure about. Usually, when taking a course online, it’s much easier. There’s not a teacher around you to watch and make sure you’re not cheating. I’ve seen more and more universities pop up that solely give online degrees, for example, Utica College offers Economic Crime Degrees.
For some people, online degrees might be the way to go. If you can’t afford or don’t have the time to go to a physical school, but still need a degree, it’s a nice choice to have. Utica College offers an intensive online cybersecurity degree and a masters in cybercrime investigation, which are subjects I’ve thought about before, but what with all the identity theft going on, wouldn’t be a bad field to get into.
One thing that you’d want to look for with an online university is accreditation. If I spend money and get a degree at this college, is it going to be good enough for an employer? Also, what would the classes be like? Utica College uses WebCT, which is something my university uses and is a nice course management system.
Getting a college education online could save you a lot of time, energy and money if you’re looking for that sort of environment. It may not be for eighteen year-olds, but it might be just the thing if you’re a little older and juggling a full-time job.
Readers, what are your opinions on this? Do you think they’re a waste or just what we need in the education field?
Posted in Academic with 5 comments
October 2nd 2007
We’ve all had to write one before and if you’re one of the very few who haven’t, then you will get there. Some of us are lucky enough (debatable) to have had a research paper assigned in high school where the teachers walk you through everything and some of us are even luckier when our college professors are actually grad students who will do the same thing for us poor little freshmen.
In Comp I, we have three writing portfolios for the semester. The first is an autobiography, the second and third are collaborative research assignments. In the first, we simply gather our research and write source reviews. We don’t actually write the paper until the third project is due, which is the end of the semester.
Point is, research is important and here’s my tips on how to do it successfully.
Most research needs to be academic and professors usually want those sources to be from some sort of scholarly journal and if anyone’s had the privilege of reading one, they’re boring. How to get through all that material without killing yourself? Read the abstract, which most of them have. If you can sit through that, you can sit through the rest of the article. Read it in chunks. A few pages at a time, highlighting important information so you don’t ever have to read it again.
Make sure to bookmark or print out a copy and do your citation now. I keep a text document of all my citations so I don’t have to go find them at the end. Citation Machine is your friend, your hero and your savior. Choose the format (MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian and simply input the information and it prints out the citation for you.
Zotero is a Firefox extension to help collect, manage and cite your research. I personally haven’t used it, but have heard great reviews.
To sum it up
- Read the abstract or summary first
- Read in chunks, taking breaks
- Highlight
- Bookmark the article
- Make your citations now and keep a running bibliography
Other articles and resources
Posted in Academic with 2 comments
September 12th 2007
I personally don’t use Microsoft Office for two reasons. One, I hate it. Two, there’s other options. My mom was able to get me an educational version for $15 last year from her university’s bookstore. The Office for Mac is the same formatting Nazi that it is for Windows. Because of that, I decided to try out NeoOffice, an open-source office suite for Mac (its Windows base is OpenOffice.) It doesn’t have the weird automatic formatting, but it’s able to do everything MS Office can do.
There are also no-download-required options to replace Microsoft Office.
I’ve only tried Google Docs and found it to be very nice. I still prefer to have actual software on my computer for some reason. But it is nice if you’re on a computer you can’t install software on (or don’t want to).
No Download Required: 30+ Apps That Are Killing Microsoft goes into detail about more web apps that aren’t only office suites, but simple replacements of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Mashable has very nice articles, although I find they’re hard to locate.
P.S. When reading Study Hacks, I came across a link to an article, Living with Microsoft Word: Tips for Survival. So if you do like/want to/have to use MS Office, that article will give you some tips.
Posted in Academic, Software with 1 comment
