BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010HIGHER ED: Can getting a degree be affordable?
Lesson 8 : Self-ConfidenceSophomores will watch lesson 8 - Self Confidence and also an additional interview and we will discuss self-confidence.
Self-confidence is an Axle that touches all others. Without it, you are more likely to fall asleep at the wheel and less likely to take risks; with it, you’ll be able to define your life’s work and have the self-assurance necessary to continually work hard defining a path for yourself. Self-Confidence can be inconsistent – some days it may feel like you can do anything and then the very next day you might feel hopeless, confused, and unsure. While this may be frustrating, this is normal, and is part of the process of taking an active role in building your own self-confidence.
Developing your confidence is a continual process of learning to trust yourself in making decisions that are consistent with who you are. Living a life that is consistent with your core is empowering and will become its own self-fulfilling prophecy; the more steps you take to align your life in the right direction, the more positive thinking will consume you. The real challenge, however, is that often the good feelings of being on your own path lag behind the actual point of action; in other words, feelings of hesitation, self-doubt, and nervousness are often felt before the good feelings, which makes it hard sometimes to take action or envision the outcome of that action.
Lesson 6: Hard Work Versus LuckWe will watch the video that goes with the lesson and also see this video:
What is more important, hard work or luck? It’s no secret that luck can often play a big part in positioning you for success – being at the right place at the right time, making connections with people, stumbling across something randomly that interests you. However, it’s your hard work and talent that keep you there and allow you to take advantage of opportunities when they come your way. As world-renowned film editor Walter Murch says in this lesson video, “The world is full of people who are talented, who were not lucky and did not work hard, and washed out.” In other words, there are people all around you that may have found themselves in situations where luck may or may not have played a role; but either way, they did not have the necessary foundations in place to sustain their talent in order to take advantage of opportunities and thus could not make anything of themselves.
In order to understand the concept of how hard work can actually position you to take advantage of luck, we must first explain what working hard means. It is easy to label things that are tedious, laborious, difficult or even boring as “hard work.” But the real question is working hard for what? If you’re working hard at something that doesn’t matter to you, there’s little value in how your time is spent. The goal is to find ways to put hard work in the larger context so that you can see the big picture of where that commitment is taking you. You want to be working hard for something that you believe in.
Fortunately for Walter, he discovered at an early age that he had a gift for sound recording, even though he didn't take his youthful experiments seriously until after he had explored other paths, including architecture and oceanography. Always eager to push things and see what happens, he found himself in good company at USC film school, where he met George Lucas, another graduate student whom instructors identified as a troublemaker for daring to challenge cinematic conventions. Impressed by Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal, a film Walter saw while at USC, he had the revelation that maybe he could create something equally moving and monumental and at the same time earn a living. He had his chance as the sound designer for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, one of many award-winning productions with which Walter has been involved during a long and fruitful career. Known for taking risks and breaking the rules, he attributes his success to three main factors: luck, talent, and hard work. Each factor, he explains, functions like a leg of a tripod. The trick is to keep the tripod balanced, a skill he has mastered.Junior AVID Students will be getting 3 materials:
A progressive curriculum that has worked wonders at local public schools for at-risk, average-achieving students with college in their sights may soon be making its way up the educational ladder to the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.Very interesting.
For the first time in the university’s history, the Advancement Via Individual Determination program — which is more popularly know by the acronym AVID — may have found a new permanent home among some of UTPB’s freshmen seminar classes.
Only two years after its implementation at Ector County Independent School District campuses, the program already has experienced explosive growth and success in local secondary schools by targeting at-risk students with average grades and helping them move toward their goals of going to college.
So AVID’s sonic boom has reverberated throughout the area, catching the attention of higher education officials in the northeast side of town.
Rey Lascano, special assistant to the president and director of continuing education and outreach at UTPB, said the university plans to implement a pilot program this fall semester in two of its freshmen seminar classes that utilizes many of the AVID curriculum’s hallmarks.
"This is a program that’s been successful just about everywhere that it’s been implemented," he said. "All you have coming from something like this is a win-win."
- Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.I wonder what some of you who have taken online classes think about this report?
- Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.
- Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning.
- Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly.
- The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types.
- Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes.
- Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes.
- Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.
A college diploma has long been the ticket to a good job, but the deepest economic slump in decades has dampened the dreams of many college seniors.Please go to this link to read the rest: For class of 2009, degree doesn’t mean a job
Matt Dumont has been looking for work since May.
“I’ve had a couple times that I was told that I was one of the top applicants, went in for an interview, and then I just never heard back from them,” said Dumont, who graduated last spring from Abilene Christian University in Texas with a degree in English and minors in Spanish and the Bible.
Dumont was haunting the college’s Career Center last week, looking for leads and advice. But the prospects are not promising for him and thousands of other new college graduates: Employment counselors and job placement specialists say the class of 2009 faces a daunting task finding work in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Labor statistics for July showed that 15.3 percent of Americans ages 20 to 24 were unemployed, up a tenth of a percentage point from June. That’s compared to the overall jobless rate of 9.4 percent.
Those figures don’t indicate how many were recent college graduates, but surveys by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a professional organization of career counselors at more than 2,000 U.S. colleges and universities, show that the recession has been particularly tough on those entering the job market with a college degree.
More than half of graduates in the class of 2007 had job offers in hand when they finished school, the association said. That figure dropped to one-quarter of 2008 graduates — after the recession began in December 2007 — and for the class of 2009, it was fewer than one-fifth.
Graduates ‘frustrated,’ ‘scared’
Projections for the class of 2010 won’t be final until the fall, but the association said the picture next spring was likely to be even worse.
This is Mr. Duez at his 10 year reunion at Juniata College. These are my two best friends from college. Your friends from college are like family.
HERE’S WHAT SCHOOLS ARE DOINGIs a smaller private school an option for you? According to the article be careful about deciding no too quickly:
Private universities across Texas are coping with the recession in various ways. Here are steps some schools are taking:
Rice University: Will cut next year’s operating budget by 5 percent, while increasing financial aid. Hasn’t announced 2009-10 tuition.
Houston Baptist University: Will cut 10 percent of faculty. Applications and requests for financial aid both up. Tuition for next year up 6.2 percent.
University of St. Thomas: Will cut next year’s budget by an undetermined amount. Will add at least $250,000 to next year’s financial aid budget. Tuition for next year up 6.2 percent.
Baylor University: Applications up, but acceptance rates expected to drop. Tuition for next year up 7 percent.
Southern Methodist University: Will cut next year’s operating budget by 5 percent. Tuition for next year up 6 percent.
Texas Christian University: Will cut next year’s operating budget by 8 percent. Financial aid budget increased by 5 percent for 2009-10. Tuition for next year up 5 percent.
“Without financial aid, I wouldn’t be here,” said Tammy Vo, a freshman at the University of St. Thomas.The financial aid package is what matters. Not just the sticker price of tuition, room and board. What are those smaller private schools willing to give you? It may be increasing in this poor economy.
Vo graduated from DeBakey High School in Houston last spring and applied to universities in and outside of Texas. She said the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic college in the Montrose area, proved a better deal than most public schools.
Private schools are making that argument more often in light of rising unemployment and a weak stock market.
“If you look at the sticker price, people say, ‘I can’t afford this,’ ” said Scott Moore, dean of scholarships and financial aid at the University of St. Thomas. “But you have to look at the sticker with the package you receive.”
iTunes U is a part of the iTunes Store featuring free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and more, that you can enjoy on your iPod, iPhone, Mac or PC. Explore over 50,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world. With iTunes U, there's no end to what or where you can learn.What a great resource!
