automaticable

With Finals just around the corner, I look back at my college career thus far and I see all the good decisions that I’ve made. I switched from Medical Science with a hopes for Orthotics and Prosthesis to Recreation Management and I couldn’t be happier. I came back home from SIU to finish up my general education classes and receive my AA from College of DuPage and I love every minute of being home. I’ve switched around from a couple jobs and finally found something that I enjoy doing and that gives me hope for a brighter future. The relationship aspect of my life couldn’t be better. I have a steady girlfriend of over two years now, and we’re always talking about what the future brings, planning little trips with each other, and we can never stop smiling when we’re with each other.

With the weather turning nice I’m becoming more and more optimistic and becoming less stressed. Finals should be pretty much a breeze this year due to the classes and the requirements that they have for me. I gave two huge project presentations yesterday that I worked for 6 hours straight on over the weekend, and I found out immediately afterwards that I had aced both of them. I feel a sense of accomplishment this semester through all the trouble and stress that my classes brought me. I feel I did the best I could in all my classes and I’m not afraid of anything that future classes throw at me.

I used to sit in my room with the blinds closed to keep the heat in my room so it doesn’t get too cold, but I came home the other day and my mom had opened them, and I realized how beautiful of a view out my window I have. There’s a beautiful backyard with trees lining the perimeter of the half acre backyard, thick green grass, a flower island in the middle of the yard, and horseshoe pits in the back. I could probably sit and look out my window all day and watch the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and the neighbors cats run through our yard all day and be content.

Basically what I’m getting at here is that through all the stress and hard work that have been hitting me this entire semester, I’m glad that it’s finally over and I have a bright, relaxing summer to look forward to. The warm afternoons, the stormy nights, the bonfires, the hookah parties, or just relaxing on the screen porch, falling asleep in the chase lounge are all things that I have to look forward to. So all you college students out there fretting over finals and worrying about grades and their futures, take a step back and look at all the good things you’ve done so far and all the great things in the future that lie ahead of you. Realize that ultimately they’re just grades and a beige piece of paper, and that what you should be worrying about is how many times your going to ride Superman at Six Flags this summer.

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We have all read the news stories: students kicked off of sports teams for incriminating pictures on Facebook or recent graduates not getting jobs because the employer Googled their name and found controversial discussions on message boards. These kinds of stories are generally met with frustration, but are ultimately accepted as OK since it was the individuals decision to incriminate themselves on the internet. But what happens when activities that happen often offline, such as student study groups, start moving online? According to TheStar.com (via Slashdot), Ryerson University believes these actions should end in expulsion.

I’ll give you a quick overview, but for a full understanding of the story check out the link above. One student set up a Facebook group where he and other students would ask questions and provide tips, not solutions, to homework problems. Over 100 students had joined the group and have treated it as a virtual “study group.” They even named the Facebook group the same as the popular group study hall on campus.

Because the actions of the students are nearly identical to how students have been studying in groups for decades, this issue is a slippery slope. What if the students were to bring a tape recorder to their offline study sessions so they could refer back to the conversations? What if copies of this tape were made for all the students that participated in the study group? What if this tape were then shared online for other students wishing to participate in virtual study groups? Where is the line drawn here. Because this started as an offline medium, is it ok? Or do these faculty members think students should only be working independently in the first place? I can’t imagine what college would have been like without guidance from my peers.

What this comes down to, in my mind, is a lack of understanding on the part of the faculty. If precedence is set here, then I don’t know a single student that has not “cheated” his or her way through college. Everyone relies on their peers for help, and any university that tries to quash this is in serious denial.

I started using LaTeX for a few of my classes this semester, particularly because they were offering extra credit. But now that I’ve learned it, I’ve fallen in love, and am ready to apply it to more scenarios.

So what is LaTeX? Well, it’s a markup language, similar to what you might be used to for editing wikis and such. But, it’s more robust, and very capable for mathematical or scientific articles. I’ve only scratched the surface so far, but it can automatically keep track of references throughout your paper, for automatic numbering as well as bibliographies. Also, it is very clean in the way it lays out math. And the biggest reason to use it, is that it’s cross-platform, and it’ll always look the same, no matter where it’s rendered. You can’t say that about Word documents.

So, if you’re in school now, or you’re ever planning on going to grad. school for engineering, I recommend learning LaTeX– it’ll make you life easier in the long run. I’m sure it would overkill for a high-school math class, but I bet your teacher would be impressed.

(photo from flickr)

I recently read an article from HowToGeek about finding and replacing formatting within Microsoft Word documents. This is useful for laying out your document, but also reminded me of a tip my roommate passed me about stretching your research paper to make the length cutoff.

Of course, everyone knows the obvious tricks– extra line spacing, character spacing, bigger fonts, wider margin… But it’s these obvious tricks that your English teacher knows too, and she’s not going to buy it. However, my roommate suggested using this selective formatting technique to search for all your periods, and replace them with a size-14 period. Simple as that. Each period doesn’t add much, but you can image how many periods you might have in your average paper. Similar, bump up the size on your commas, hyphens, and apostrophes. Of course, this hint also applies to OpenOffice.