Games + College Admission

Not gonna lie, when we started talking about that I got the fun little chills that come with hearing a REALLY good idea come up.

What about this: Almost all teens and even their parents now are playing some kind of video game, be that on the Xbox, on their mobile phone or on the internet. (I watched one of the high school kids I work with outside of Anycollege play Bejeweled obsessively on her phone for almost an hour the other night.)

So what about a casual type of game to help with college admissions? I'm not sure yet what this would be... but it sounds kind of cool. Think about the games on Facebook and Myspace that people use: the Mafia Wars and similar games, even the Lil' Green Patch, etc. My guess is that you can think of someone who is crazy addicted to one of these games. So what if it was something like that but centered around a college? Hmmm...

Lots of possibility...

Words!

This is a fantastic video from someone who writes the dictionary. Quite frankly, I never thought writing the dictionary would be a cool job, but shows what I didn't know!

Check it out. It's kind of long so give it a bit to load, then watch, and watch the whole thing. There is a great bit about 10 minutes in. http://gelconference.com/videos/2006/erin_mckean/

Moving Up Commencement...

Remember a few blogs ago when I mentioned that the photographs on a virtual tour are deceiving?

Well, humorist Peter Smith also saw the irony of that in his latest piece asking colleges in Minnesota not to move up commencement to early May because May is one of the few times up here that campuses actually look like their photos!

I highly recommend listening to it, it's quite funny.

Here is the link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/19/smith/

Finals!!!

It's almost that time of year again... finals are looming up for many students, both college and high school.

For high school seniors I have seen an interesting phenomenon in that sometimes these last finals can get blown off if the student is already accepted at the college of his/her choice. Yikes! I know "senioritis" may have kicked in full time at this point but it will be worth it in the long run to hang on for these last few exams.

Why? First, keeping or increasing your GPA may make you eligible for additional scholarships whereas tanking on your last semester/trimester/quarter could take away some money that your school was going to give you. Also, you need to consider if you ever transfer down the road (I know it seems like it will never happen right now but who knows three years later what will be going on!) you very well may have to send in your high school transcripts again, and you don't want to show that your last stretch at the high school did not go so well.

College students, you hang in there too for many of the same reasons!

How to get through it? That varies of course from person to person, but here is what I recommend:
1. Keep the goal in sight.
2. Keep it in sight but don't freak out about it. I've seen many students spend more time freaking out about the test than preparing for it. I'm pretty sure the test won't bite you (unless you're working with animals, then all bets are off) so you'll be fine.
3. Go outside for a little bit. While I don't recommend studying outside due to the distractions go outside for a walk, bike ride, etc. and do something active for a bit. I'm very adamant about the "outside" factor in this.
4. But try to stay away from the computer and video games when you're trying to concentrate for a test. Wondering what your girlfriend's Facebook status means during the exam or while you're prepping for one isn't going to do either of you any good.
5. Remember that in a few weeks this will be all over with!

Then, go do something fun!

Humourous side note: Spell check just tried to change "senioritis" to "senoritas". And people wonder why I don't trust spell check! Have a great weekend everyone!

Admin and Profs Are Human Too...

Continuing on last week's blog about students writing silly things, let's move on to the college staff.

I came across this blog today (see? there's that blog addiction again) and almost fell out of my chair laughing. Turns out the prof writing an email to a student had a little typo (or Freudian slip... depends on your point of view) that said: You don’t need to apologize for emailing me two hours after class about an assignment not due until [much later]. It shows that you’re on top of things, and professors love stupids who are on top of things.

Oh goodness. Stupids?

Now, that's not to say I've never done that myself. I have a tendency to miss the "c" key on my keyboard so occasionally I have found in an email of my own to various colleges informing them of how many "licks" they received on their website the week or month before. Maybe I've got some odd repressed desire to lick a college? I'm not sure about that one.

Well, the point of this whole thing is that the staff at the college is human too... and despite the fact that these folks are the ones grading papers on grammar they are not immune to mistakes themselves. But they're usually pretty funny when they happen!