The Wired How-to Wiki shows you 6 excellent bar tricks you can pull off for free drinks. Make a bet with your friends and collect! They’re not “obvious” tricks but from their descriptions, they all sound as if they would work easily. It also shows you how to open a beer bottle with only a dollar bill (though any sheet of paper would work)! That by itself makes this worth the read. Any other tricks you may have up your sleeve?
This is far and away one of the greatest alcohol consumption concepts I have seen. The only issue for the typical college bar is that they run $50K a pop, and I could see all sorts of ways that people could/would “steal” beer from others.
Still, at a packed college bar where one has to squeeze through an attrocious number of people and wait with an arm dangling a 20 over the bar….this would be heaven.
In recent months Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Cornell have all revised their financial aid calculatio
ns in order to help the low to middle class student who could otherwise not afford to attend. The smaller schools with larger endowments will basically give you a “free” education if your parents make less than $75k while a bigger school like Cornell will cap you loans at $3k if your parents make less than $120k. Growing up on a farm where I was certainly low/middle class it makes me wish I was preparing to enter college all over again - for reasons beyond the fun. Info on each particular school’s program below:
Cornell Caps Loans for Those in Need
Harvard Expands Financial Aid for Low- and Middle-Income Families
Yes, I can be found at Facebook. Just ask, and I can be found.
I do believe that these are excellent. Though I may not agree with all of them word for word…..it is by far the best list I have seen in my mere 28 years on this planet. Be sure to check it out.
An interesting list from my Stanford education listserve. Certainly more lighthearted that last week’s post. I am also proud to note the my alma mater is represented in the list.
Is it just me, or does it seem that the Northeast is more represented than all the rest of the nation?
Have an interesting courses you have taken, or know of that you believe should be included on the list?
Top 25 Strangest College Courses
Published on Monday January 28th , 2008
College is a time for self-expression, freedom from parents, the pursuit of knowledge and exploration of a new career. If Mom and Dad (or the bank) knew what kind of courses their savings were funding, you might be yanked out of your academic bubble and into a much more economical and practical community college. Read on for more of the 25 strangest college courses.
1. Mail Order Brides: Understanding the Philippines in Southeast Asian Context: If you’re an anthropology or women’s studies major at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, consider getting your credits with this class, which is designed to “help explain the stereotyping of Filipino women.” While the class is expected to be taught in all seriousness, PhilippineNews.com reports that Professor Fenella Cannell “cautions prospective students not to submit fake applications for pen pals and/or spouses and to view the information as purely part of academic exercise.”
2. Tightwaddery, or The good life on a dollar a day: Alfred University’s demonstratively anti-capitalist course attempts to debunk contemporary culture’s popular myth: “Spend money and you’ll be happy.” According to the official class description, “On a theoretical level, we will consider how living frugally benefits your mind, your body, your relationships, your community, and the environment. On a practical level, we will examine personal spending habits [and] sharpen bargain-hunting rip-off-detecting, and haggling skills.” While they’re at it, maybe they can help drive down gas prices?
3. The Phallus: When the Los Angeles Times printed the headline “I Got an A in Phallus 101, readers were no doubt confused. But not so confused, we’ll bet, as the parents of the Occidental College students who really did come home with grades from the course simply titled The Phallus. Occidental’s Critical Theory and Social Justice department plans to discuss topics like “the relation between the phallus and the [I have to remove this word to keep filters from blocking some of the e-mails, RR], the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus,” and even “the Latino phallus.”
Continue reading ‘Top 25 Strangest College Courses’
This came across one of the listserve’s I am a part of as an educator…..however I must admit that I was quite shocked and put off by this individuals “Rules of Engagement.” Sure, they include some common etiquite, however I think that some of them go over the top and transport one back to a more formal Victorian-esque era of learning. Heck, now-a-days it is not totally uncommon to see or meet a professor out for a drink and interact with one in a social matter. His rules (to me at least) place the professor well up on a pedestal, way out of bounds for some of the interaction that today’s college students has come to appreciate, and even expect. The article is below:
The Rules of Engagement: Socializing College Students for the New Century
By Neil F. WilliamsIntroductory comments by James Rhem, publisher, NT&LF.
When Professor Neil Williams’ article on how he confronts classroom incivility came over the NTLF transom (and there is actually a transom in our new offices), I reacted to it rather strongly and not favorably. Professor Williams had contributed a nice piece on “shared quizzes” earlier and so his name on an article was encouraging, but requiring students to exchange greetings with him at the door and creating a formal rule about covering one’s mouth if one yawned? These, among others, seemed beyond the pale of college teaching. Did students really need this level of coaching in manners? And if they did, was it a college professor’s job to continue raising these children? The Forum has engaged classroom incivility before - “The Teaching Tribe” (V6 N4, 1997) and “Teaching and Crowd Control” (V6 N6, 1997). Could things have degenerated so much in ten years? The Forum’s discussions in 1997 leaned heavily toward the Zen- influenced work of Robert Boice (First-Order Principles for College Teachers, Anker, 1996); Neil Williams takes a rather different approach. As time passed, while I knew how I felt about it, I wondered what Forum readers would think of Williams’ approach. Let me know: I’ve set up a survey at http://xrl.us/ bbycw. Take a moment and register your reaction. - J. Rhem
* * *
Rude and inappropriate student behaviors in our college classrooms seem to be more prevalent today than at any time in recent memory (Amada). Colleges and universities have opened their doors to a melting pot of students from different states, countries, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds with an ever-widening range of academic ability and interests. As many students come to college ill-prepared and under- motivated for the academic experience, large numbers also arrive without an understanding of the basic standards of classroom civility, etiquette, and socialization the professors think they ought to possess (Clayton). Student demographics are changing rapidly and “professors can no longer assume that there is a commonly understood set of behaviors that will be adopted within the classroom” (Gonzalez and Lopez).
In most cases, our students are not surly or rude intentionally, but they can be immature, disruptive, annoying, insubordinate, or uncivil. Usually these students don’t realize they’re doing the wrong thing even though their behavior comes across to their professors as offensive, inconsiderate, inappropriate, and thoughtless (Young). It’s just that some of them simply don’t know how to conduct themselves any better than they currently do in our classrooms. So . . . what to do?
Common Expectations
Faculty need to be clear about what kind of conduct and actions will and won’t be accepted or tolerated. Bray and Del Favero write that “faculty and students should share common expectations of what constitutes appropriate classroom behavior . . . consistency is a key to this common understanding.” Ignoring low-level acts of classroom incivility in the hope they’ll disappear doesn’t work. Faculty failure to address such behaviors appears to condone them (Feldmann). It’s critical to let students know when they are “over the line,” and professors (like parents) are very likely to be distressed by what they get when they don’t confront the inappropriate behavior of their charges.
What had been loosely structured and often unclear expectations for student behavior in my own classes are now a formal course document called “The Rules of Engagement.” The following examples are a short version of the big list, but these seem to apply across the curriculum. College students, for the most part, benefit from the structure and information the Rules provide. The Rules are easy to follow and apply, and as long as they are explained clearly and “enforced” immediately with consistency and a smile, there are few complaints. In fact, most of the Rules have no consequences, need no enforcing whatsoever, and simply take care 0f themselves.
The Rules are divided into four categories: Academic Integrity - how students will handle the social component of their academic responsibilities, including papers and test-taking; Respect for the Professor- how students will conduct themselves inside the classroom; Respect for the Students - how they will treat one another inside the classroom; and Interactions in an Academic Community - selected key guidelines of general social etiquette on a college campus.
The following list includes samples from the four categories of the Rules of Engagement; they are not listed in any type of hierarchy of importance. They are intentionally written in an imperative style, and the italicized remarks are for the reader’s convenience.
Continue reading ‘The Rules of Engagement: Socializing College Students for the New Century’
Beer pong is as ubiquituous at college itself. If you don’t own a beer pong table over some point of your 4 ( to 8 ) year college experience….you must not drink! I have written on the topic of beer pong and the table before. I still stand by that post. But for you lazy asses with too much extra cash from Mommy and Daddy here are three links to simplify your pong life…
Official Beer Pong Table ($125) - It looks a little lightweight for the kind of shindigs that we used to have. Not to mention its about $100 more expensive than your standard sheet of 5/8″ plywood. But it is portable!
Custom Beer Pong Balls ($56 for 25 balls) - For you real self-absorbed, thinking you are God, beer pong afficinados.
N-ice Rack ($20 for 2) - Freezable cup racker. Our cups were rarely on the table long enough to get warm enough to need a frozen racker, and if they are there that long, you deserve to drink warm beer.
Life as of late has taken a huge bite out of the time that I have to sit down and write. But I do hope that I will be able to continue posting from time to time. So please be patient with me, I have not left!
On that note, if there is anything someone would like to contribute as a post, please let me know….I’d be more than happy to have you!
I do have one interesting link in the meantime….How to Make a Duct Tape Book Cover from one of my all time favorite blogs, Lifehacker.
Enjoy, and hopefully see you soon!
Thus, I present to you the chilled shot machine. You may see them at your favorite watering hole, but now you have have one of your own for your Jager or Sambuca fueled binges.
It retailes for only $129.99 at Skymall. When I was in college the tiny freezer section in my college dorm sized fridge did the trick. But hey, if you’ve got the cash…..enjoy!
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