New Review of “Don’t Be Stupid”

Alexandra Levit has given my e-book for college students, Don’t Be Stupid a 5-star review in her column at Get the Job. Levit is the author of several career guides, including Success for Hire, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, and How’d You Score that Gig?. [Continue reading]

My Advice for Students at Lindsey Pollak’s Blog

In honor of my book, Don’t Be Stupid, Lindsey Pollak (author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World) asked me to write a guest post on her blog, listing some of my best tips for students. Take a look at my post and the rest of the great advice at her site — or pass it on to a deserving student in your life! [Continue reading]

Best Practice for Students: Ideas vs. Formatting in Essays

Every semester, I spend a lot of time explaining the term paper assignments to students. I talk about them when I hand out my syllabus, I spend a good half-hour discussing the assignment about 3 weeks into the course, and I revisit the topic several times up until the last week before the due date. Every time I bring it up, I ask if students have any questions. The questions I get are always about teh same damn thing: formatting. “Does it have to be typed?” “What size margins should I use?” “What style do you want the references in?” I can only imagine that other professors and/or high school teachers hammer students over formatting, without paying much attention to their ideas — which are, ostensibly, what we assign papers to help students get at and express. [Continue reading]

Best Practices for Students #5: Know the System

Universities are complex. Needlessly complex. The modern university represents an accretion of over a thousand years of tradition – why else do you think you are expected to dress like a medieval scribe for graduation? [Continue reading]

Best Practices for Students #1: Keep Everything

This is the first of a multi-post series I’ll be putting together over the summer. The goal is to accumulate a collection of tips that can be compiled into a guide for college and university students. If you have any good advice for students that you’d like to share, please contact me. [Continue reading]