I have talked with a few people and they told me: « you don’t have the right background, you will nevet get a job in XXX or YYY » or « your story is not convincing… »

Think about it as a venture. When you start a venture, some people tell you « you will fail! » but eventually you will succeed! Be persistent and you will prove them they are wrong!

I have no network. Can I get a job with my poor network?

You always have a network! You just need to be creative about it: your classmates, your colleagues from your previous jobs, the person you hooked up with 6 months ago, your former clients or suppliers, your social network (linkedin, facebook), your professors, your TAs, your professors from undergrad, your mentors, your peers at other school, some guy you met three years ago who works in your dream company. All of these people will help you get a job. Just send them an email and some of them will answer and help you. It’s a numbers game. The more people you approach, the more opportunities you get!

I am shy and I don’t want to ask people for help. My ego is too big to do that!

It’s statistical. Probably 15-20% will answer your emails or calls if you have no connection with them. If you have a direct connection, 50-60% will answer your request. At the end of day, there might be one or two person who will think: « OMG, He/She is such a loser! What does he want? » « I feel bad for him/her that he/she asks for my help ». These guys are the losers, not you! If you are polite, there is nothing bad about asking.

I am depressed. I think I don’t have the right skills. There are so many smart students in my industry looking for a job.  I feel I will never get a job at Goldman Stanley or Lehman Sisters?

Think positive! You have great skills and there is always something interesting about you: your background, why you like this job, what you would bring to the table. It’s just a matter of connecting the dots. You always have a good story to tell. The way you frame it is what matters. There is always a good job for you! And don’t forget to collaborate with your classmates. It’s a virtuous circle. If you consider them as competitors, you will lose eventually…

I have 22 interviews planned for the next 3 weeks and 14 dinners. Does that make sense?

No! It’s like dating: does that make sense to date 22 girls? You need to make choices. Some of them are tough but life is tough sometimes…

I want to start my own venture this summer but might consider some other job next year. Is it doable?

Absolutely! Some companies love entrepreneurs and hire students who have done entrepreneurship during their curriculum.

If I take an offer at X today, I will never get a job in Y in 3 years. Does that make sense?

Forget about planning your entire career. Just be good at what you do and opportunities will come at some point. It’s just a matter of time.

My classmate who has a 3.1 GPA from University of ChiBerVania and never worked in Investment Banking just got an offer from Goldman Morgan in New York. That’s so unfair!

Well that does not mean that you are won’t get an offer next summer. What matters is that you find the right job for you. Forget about your ego and think about what makes you happy!

I feel career management is useless and I will never get a job because of them.

Again, think positive. There are great resources and they will do their best to satisfy most of your needs but it’s also your job to reach out to the companies you are interested in and expand your network.

It’s end of April and I still don’t have an offer…

Surprisingly, a lot of companies are still hiring later in the year especially small companies. You could even get a very good offer because there is less competition… True story…

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This is a wonderful role for a parent, but math tutoring is far more difficult for most parents.  For many of us, no matter how well we did in school, math skills are simply forgotten when they aren’t used.  The majority of Americans no longer use geometry in their daily lives, and while percentages or simple equations may be easy to remember, more complex math skills are harder to bring out of the recesses of memory.

For this reason, instead of trying to teach your child yourself, good math tutoring sessions are far more productive for students.  To find good math tutoring, first start by asking your professors if they have any recommendations.  There may be older students, for example, who can tutor free of charge as a part of an after school program.

Or, you may find great math tutoring from a local college student who is looking to make some extra money and has recently taken all the classes relevant to your math needs.  If you are particularly fortunate, you may be able to find a local college student who is studying to be a math teacher, so that the student doing the math tutoring is actually practicing his or her teaching skills as well.  That is a win-win situation for everyone!

Overall, just remember that math tutoring can really help a child who is struggling with the subject.  Math is an area that is sometimes difficult for students to grasp and they simply need more one on one time to practice and also identify what they are doing wrong.  Math tutoring can provide that extra assistance, even if you as a parent remember none of your algebra training!

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If you have a full college courseload and social life, it’s probably hard to balance the two already. Add studying for the LSAT to the mix, and you may feel overwhelmed. This post gives you 5 ways to balance studying for the LSAT (or GRE, GMAT, MCAT, etc.) with school and life obligations. I’ll speak about the LSAT in this article, but just apply my advice to your relevant exam.

1. Start your LSAT prep early.
It’s much easier to do a little bit each week over the course of several weeks than to cram all your studying at once. It’s less stressful, and it won’t detract as much from schoolwork or your social life. Plan ahead and treat the LSAT as if it were another college class, and study for it over the course of the semester.

2. Fit in studying wherever you can.
Doing an LSAT Logic Game or a couple of Logical Reasoning questions between classes can keep you in the LSAT mind-set even if you’re not studying for a few hours each day.

3. Set aside specific days and times each week to study.
This will ensure that a few weeks or months don’t go by while your LSAT prep books gather dust in the corner. Create a study schedule and stick to it.

4. Stay off AIM, Facebook, and Gmail, and close your laptop.
I know computers and Internet are ubiquitous on college campuses, especially for socializing. However, you don’t need a computer to study for the LSAT, and having one around will only serve as a distraction. Get rid of these time-suckers and stick to the books.

5. Form a study group.
If you can find people on your college campus (or in your neighborhood) who are also preparing for the LSAT, it may help to form a study group. Try to find study partners whose abilities complement your own so that you can help each other. Meeting on a regular basis will take some of the isolation out of test prep, and, like a gym buddy, a study partner will help motivate you to study.

Steve Schwartz is a professional LSAT tutor living in New York City. He updates LSAT Blog every week with free LSAT tips and tricks.

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1. Download the articles you plan on using, and save them in a single folder. You don’t want to pay the penalty for someone else’s site going down, or free content being transferred to a paid archive. If the source website doesn’t allow you to save the article to your website, there are two workarounds. First, you can hit print as if you were going to print it, and then select Save As File (or something like that). This option will divert the output going to the printer and capture it in a PostScript file, which you can open on any Windows machine. My favorite way to save articles is Yahoo! MyWeb. Find out how to use MyWeb to save your articles
2. Discover new sources using your old ones. Every journal article contains a wealth of research. Look in the bibliography.
3. Take notes with citations.
4. Use Google’s Cited By links to judge a paper’s influence.
5. Read Intro/Conclusion for fast answers.
6. For multiple papers from same author, start with most recent work

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Simplification!

I have used this method for many months and it always works perfectly. The general idea is to write down the heading of the topic, and write down in the simplest way possible what it is about. Try to imagine that you are talking to a younger child. But you also have to remember to include all the complication information towards the end.

The reason this works is that the next time you look over your notes it may have been weeks since you wrote the information down, and you will not remember what you were talking about. Having a simplified description means that you will remember the basis of the notes instantly, and from there you can focus on the complex concepts, equations, or explanations.

While this may sound counter-intuitive, it really does work.

This method is based on the ever popular K.I.S.S idea (Keep it Simple, Stupid). Trying to keep all of your ideas in their simplest form allows you to really understand the principles rather than just memorize facts. It also gives you more time to learn the more difficult concepts.

Learning the basics is key for any student. Most of the knowledge that you will learn are just extensions of the basic ideas given in the first few weeks. Understanding, not only how to use them, but why is very important, and truly is the key to success.

Naturally there are hundreds of different methods of taking notes, but time and time again simplification seems to reign supreme. Although taking notes in an easy to understand manner does not mean that you skip the hard topics. The idea is that you take a hard concept, and re-interpret it in your own words. The use of images or diagrams can also be very beneficial when trying to convert a difficult problem into a series of simple ones.

The main difficulty with converting to this method of note taking is the mental difficulties. Some people will feel that they are leaving out important information, while others will be able to start with little difficulty. The only way to try out this method is to start today. While it may suit some students, others will find it too restricting.

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Most publications and blogs that cater to students will eventually run an article on how to stay awake during class. They offer (sometimes) valuable advice on getting enough sleep, avoiding all-nighters, using caffeine intelligently, cutting down on sugar, etc. I won’t go into details here, because we may decide to run an article of our own

In this article, I will focus less on preventing classroom catnaps, and instead talk about what to do after you wake up. Because let’s face it: some of us can’t do anything about our sleep schedule without cutting into study time, extra-curriculars, or aspects of our social life that are important to us. We know that we are sleep-deprived, but sometimes we can’t do anything about it. We even fall asleep in classes that we love most, sometimes during the lull between two exciting parts of the lecture. If you are like me, and you know that sleeping better and changing your diet isn’t enough, then it’s important that you master the ability to recover from an episode of classroom catnap.

First, a few words on my experience. I’m in my fourth year of college at a very large public university, with three majors and a minor, and since the beginning of sophomore year I have been notorious for sleeping in classes. Here’s the kicker: my professors still like me, and are willing to help. Well, most of them anyway. And it has nothing to do with the kind of grades that I get.

I have a lot of wonderful friends who are excellent students, and every now and then one of them will call me up to ask what they should do, because they either: A) fell asleep in lecture B) overslept and disrupted the class by showing up thirty minutes late C) slept through an exam. In all three cases, their first instinct as to what they should do is usually wrong.

After literally years of experience sleeping in virtually every class, I have developed my very own standard operating procedure (SOP) for coping with the fallout from a classroom catnap. But before I go on, I want to make it very clear what this strategy will and will not do for you.

This strategy will not help you sleep less in class. It won’t help you learn the material you missed, or get stellar grades on tests. It won’t turn you into some slick talker who can convince your professor to give you an A and the shirt on his or her back.

This strategy will help you limit the damage sustained to your reputation from your nap. Very often in college, especially as you get to the upper-level courses, maintaining a good image in the eyes of your professor is an important part of taking a class. In extreme cases, you may care more about whether the professor likes you and thinks you are bright than you do about whether he gives you an A or a B (I’m thinking here about recommendations for postgraduate study, jobs, and scholarships). But even if it’s “just some class with some old professor”, you will feel far less comfortable going to office hours and asking for advice if you feel that you have antagonized your professor (and he or she will be less likely to go the extra mile when providing help and giving much-needed breaks and extensions).

So, without further ado, I present my SOP (patent pending).

1. Open your eyes. Taking long naps is pushing it. The last thing you want to do is start snoring — there’s no forgiveness for snoring in class! Even if you don’t normally snore, when you are on two hours of sleep for the better part of a week, the odds are against you. I learned this the hard way last year.
2. Make eye contact with the teacher immediately, and offer some kind of facial expression. Whether it’s a smile or a wince, all you want to do is indicate that you are embarrassed.
3. Sit up in your seat, with your back straight. For bonus points, lean forward as if you are intensely interested in what’s on the blackboard.
4. Give yourself a few moments to get your bearings. Then, ask the first semi-intelligent question that comes to your mind. Don’t waste everyone’s time, but don’t worry about being wrong either. Your purpose here is to show your professor that you care. If you are stuck here, questions of the form “Professor, I just want to make sure I have everything right: you said x,y,z just a little while ago” are always an option, especially if you are in a lecture that requires taking a lot of notes.
5. Whatever you do, don’t try to act smart by making a pedantic observation or correcting the professor. This will earn you the disdain of both your professor and your classmates. Just don’t do it. On the other hand, if by some miracle you do have a bright idea that actually contributes to the discussion and/or lecture, do share it. It’s always impressive when someone can wake up and immediately join in on the discussion.
6. If you didn’t get to ask a question, then answer one. If your professor asks for hands, volunteer yourself. Unless you are exceptionally bright, or the class is remedial, you will probably be wrong. Perhaps you’ll be horribly wrong. But that’s okay — you’ve just shown the professor that you want to participate, despite your sleeping problem.
7. This should go without saying, but try to get the missing notes from a friend or neighbor.
8. Careful: this won’t work with every professor. If you don’t plan on keeping in touch with this professor after the class ends, you may want to skip this step. I always do it for all my professors. After class, go up to your professor and wait for the students who are busy sucking up to conclude their business. Then, apologize to your professor for sleeping in class. 90% of the time, your professor will respond by saying “I know, I saw.” When this happens, you will be very glad that you chose to speak with him or her. You have two options now. You can either explain how you enjoy the material but simply can’t help falling asleep, or you can offer fervent promises that it won’t happen again. Be honest, and try to choose the explanation that you think will be consistent with your behavior in the weeks to come

And there you have it. It sounds pretty straightforward — even naive. Perhaps many of you think it won’t work — but it does, as long as you are realistic about what it’s going to get you.

So what do you all think? Anyone have a great story to share about falling asleep in class (I’ve can think of a couple good ones myself..)? As always, feel free to post a comment or email me at (uh oh here comes to spam): info@studenthelpforum.com

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You know what I’m talking about — you started reading something great, bookmarked it, and then when you went looking for it two months later the only thing you can find is 404 Page Not Found? Or maybe you found it, but now the website wants you to fork over some cash in order to see it?

I hate emailing myself a link, or bookmarking it, only to learn later that the material is off-limits. The biggest culprit was the New York Times. Until recently, they would charge you for access to articles that were more than 10 days old. That meant that if I read a great editorial and the topic came up during a discussion with someone two weeks later, I couldn’t send him the link (how many students pay to read archived news?).

But there were other sites too – for instance, a couple of years ago, Poynter.org ran an amazing article series called Fifty Writing Tools. It was the best writing advice I’d ever received, and I bookmarked the index page so that I could come back to read it again and again. A few months ago, I went back to Poynter to find that half of the links were broken. I wish I could have saved those articles somewhere, and shared them with some of my friends who are aspiring journalists. (Incidentally, in writing this article I went back to Poynter and was absolutely delighted to find that the writing tips are back in the form of podcasts. Check them out at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=103943).

Digg and del.icio.us are fantastic social bookmarking sites, but they don’t allow you to save your own copies of a web page.

Yahoo! introduced a very handy resource for bookmarking pages a couple of years ago. It’s part of Yahoo! MyWeb, which is still in Beta – I guess they were taking a page from the book of Google, no pun intended. (Alright, maybe a little.)

Head over to http://myweb.yahoo.com, and once you’ve signed up, click on My Bookmarks. Since you’re just starting out, you don’t have any bookmarks. So let’s add one. On the MyWeb banner with the search box, find the link for Add Page. When you click it, a pop-up window will open up asking you for the url of the page and some other details. I took a screenshot of my own MyWeb Bookmarks page, with the window open.

As you can see, it is possible to set both public and private access levels. However, the option we are most interested in appears all the way at the bottom, in the form of a checkbox next to “Store a copy of this page.” Fill out the form, making sure that this option is checked.

When you submit the page, you’ll see something like the display in the background of my screenshot, in the main browser window. As you can see, I have saved four articles (more, actually), and for three of those articles I have added the note “For use in blog”. I got tired of linking to articles only to have them moved to paid archives (see earlier rant about New York Times). Those dates say 2008 but they are actually 2005 (I edited something small so it updated the date). If you click the titles, you will be taken to www.nytimes.com. However, if you click the little link that says “My saved copy” that I’ve circled in red, you’ll be taken to this page. Isn’t that cool?

Some convenient toolbars for your browser are available here. And if you want to use Yahoo! MyWeb for your social bookmarking, you can share saved pages with friends and colleagues under the My Contacts tab. You’ll have to add a contact first, but after that you can share easily. Try it out — my user is sadp182.

I use MyWeb occasionally to bookmark my favorite articles, to save a link when I’m putting it up on my blog, and for saving internet-based references when I’m doing research and need to be able to come back later. I hope you’ll find it useful as well!

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1. without re-writing notes, students may forget vital pieces of information as well as what abbreviations and other marks mean
2. re-writing your notes helps you memorize and understand the information you copied during the lecture, the best way to memorize a lot of information is in small pieces over a long period of time
3. if you have questions about things you’ve heard in lecture, re-writing your notes may either help you understand what they were, or point them out clearer, encouraging you to ask about them during the next lecture
4. while you are re-writing your notes, you are also able to re-organize them, put them in a format that works best for your learning style; visual learners can add color-coding and diagrams, auditory learners should read the notes aloud a few times, and kinesthetic learners (me!) learn by re-writing notes into outline formats
5. a note on outline formats: each main point should be on its own line, details for the point should be indented to the right. A fantastic way to either learn or set up an outline is to use a word-processing program’s “bullets & numbering” feature; hard returns and indentations create the next appropriate character for outlines
6. oftentimes, professors speak too quickly for a student to get all the notes written out; by re-writing your notes, you are able to fill in those blanks that you may have had to leave during lecture. The details are still fresh in your mind and you will be able to clarify them sooner. All of the abbreviations that you create during class should be spelled out and explained while re-writing your notes.
7. re-writing your notes prepares you for your next class, reminding you of what you were to learn in previous lectures and cementing the foundations
8. one thing I’ve found particularly helpful in many classes is writing out a short “summary” of the lecture at the end of each set of daily notes. Then, when I go back to study for the exam, I am able to paste all of these summaries together and read a page-long essay about what I was supposed to learn.

It helps best if a student can re-organize and re-copy their notes within 24 hours of the lecture, but if that cannot be done, then at least do it before the final few lectures, just in case you have any leftover questions or misunderstandings. Research shows that 80% of new material can be recalled if you review your notes within one day of presentation.

Want to bring those test grades up? Want to impress your classmates with your typed study guides? Re-write those notes daily and cement things sooner rather than later!

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Don’t surf the internet on study time.

Some buildings on my campus don’t have wireless. I remember being stuck inside the Political Science department once in a rainstorm. My class was still hours away, but I decided to hole up in an unused classroom with my laptop rather than brave the heavy rain.

At first, I didn’t have anything to do. My routine is to check my gmail, then read some news, then check my gmail again, then my RSS Reader, then more gmail. After that, I do some work, and check gmail again. (Does this sound familiar?)

With no internet, I couldn’t check my gmail, and the whole process was stopped before it started. Then, a miracle happened. Wanting desperately to avoid boredom, I started working on the first thing I could find — and finished, rather quickly. Then I found something else, finished it, and moved onto a third task. By the time class started, I had finished three rather unpleasant tasks that I had been putting off for weeks.

Since that incident, I’ve taken myself off the internet on a number of occasions, and it has resulted in productivity gains every single time. One of the secrets to being productive is to schedule uninterruptible periods. Even if you are working diligently most of the time, the thirty second break to check email or facebook can set you back as many as five or six minutes when you consider the time spent getting re-focused.

“Very well,” you may be saying to yourself, “but what if I need the internet for my work? Is there any way I can have the best of both worlds?”

It turns out that there is. Invisibility Cloak is a Greasemonkey script written by Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani. It allows you to create a blacklist of sites and specify a time period during which they will be blocked. For instance, you can block *.facebook.com and youtube.com between 12:00 AM and 8:00 PM, which means that your browser will prevent you from accessing that page except for four hours at night.

You can configure the script in Firefox by going to Tools => Greasemonkey => Manage User Scripts, and selecting Invisibility Cloak from the menu on the left.In order to change the period, you will need to edit the Javascript file with an editor (Notepad works just fine). Just click the Edit button in the lower left hand corner on the pop-up window and it will open the associated Javascript file. Find the following four lines:

// EDIT THE NEXT LINE TO SET THE HOUR AFTER WHICH SITES SHOULD APPEAR
// HOURS IN MILITARY TIME, SO 15 = 3PM
var surf_time_after = 15;
// END EDIT

Edit the value of surf_time_after as per the instructions, save, and go back to Firefox. If you want, you can also change the message that appears when you try to access a blocked site. I changed it to something rather derogatory. Here’s the line you need to alter. Just change the text inside the parenthesis (keep the quotation marks).

alert(“You can surf after “+ readable_time + “; right now, get back to work!”);

Do give this script a spin – it works remarkably well, even though there is a very simple way to disable it (if enough people want to know how to do this, I will post an answer in the comments). Also, if you have anything to add on the subject of going offline to increase productivity, please feel free to comment for the benefit of other readers. I’m also an avid comment reader, so I look forward to it as well.

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The 5 Things You Actually Need At College

1. A Calendar
Like I mentioned before, bringing and then using a calendar is one absolute needs at college. Whether you use it to write all your assignment due dates and your test times, or just the frat parties and sorority events that you’re attending, it will come in hand either way. I recommend getting a white board calendar so that you can change it every month, add to it and erase from it when you need to.

2. Flip Flops
Unless you want to end up with strange foot fungus, add flip flops to your list of must-haves! I had a pair I would wear specifically (and only) for showering. I also had a pair that I would wear down to the laundry room, a pair that lived in a plastic bag in my gym bag (for the gym showers) and a pair that I would wear around randomly for comfort and ease. Flip flops are $2 a pair and you can get them in color; these things are a necessity! $10 will save your feet!

The next three things were things I forgot, but bought within weeks because they were that important and useful!

3. Duct Tape
Window won’t stay open? Duct tape it! Window won’t stay closed? Duct tape it! Notebooks falling apart from being dragged around everywhere? Duct tape it! I am telling you, duct tape will fix anything! You can buy it in multiple colors (although I am partial to the original grey) and it’s not expensive. Invest in duct tape!

4. A Cushion
You’re going to be spending a lot of time on your rear-end in college, and unless you spend a huge chunk of change on a specific chair for your room, studying is going to make you hurt. Get a $4 chair cushion at Target or Bed Bath & Beyond and use it. If you’re really feeling adventurous, buy a waterproof cushion and take it with you to the football games. I even saw a woman once pull a cushion out of her messenger bag in class and use it in a lecture hall! There is no wrong time for a cushion.

5. Ear Plugs
Even if your roommate doesn’t snore, it’s helpful to have a pair of ear plugs. Maybe you need to study in silence and your neighbors are being loud, maybe you’re headed to a bar and you know the band is going to be incredibly loud, maybe you really don’t want to hear the professor’s lecture; a pair of ear plugs can help out in many situations. Other things my friends told me that they would have been better off having included: a minimal first aid kit, your own caffeine source, a strong book bag, multi-colored pens, work ethic (not something you can drop $3.49 on, by the way), a good dictionary and a laptop instead of a desktop computer. Your list may differ, but I assure you, that with the five things on my list (along with your own essentials) you can start off the year (or the term) in a great position!

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