Some rules, tips, and advice for the first college year

The Phantom Professor has posted an excellent list of hints, advice, do's and don't's for students coming to college for the first time. Much of it is the type of thing many older students may wish they had known when they went to college. Readers have been adding to the comments, and some of their hints and tips are very good as well. It makes for good reading. A lot of it is common sense and common courtesy, which are important things to exercise in college as well as in life. Among the basics:

• Show up on time: This really cannot be emphasized enough. If you cannot show up to class on time, do you expect your workplace of the future to put up with it? If you are going to be late, at least try to let the professor know. A short quick e-mail is nice. I know when I was an adjunct, I kept office hours before class. A short call letting me know they would be late was appreciated rather than guessing.
  
• "Do NOT tell profs on the first day of classes that you have to leave early for fall break or that you have to miss the midterm because you're in a wedding, you have non-refundable tickets to Hawaii or your parents expect you to spend the full week with them in Nantucket. Profs don't care. And those are not excused absences. They're just annoying reminders that students get better vacations than the people who teach them." This is a quote from her blog, and again, as one who was there, I cannot agree more. There is no quicker way to alienate your professor or have him/her think less of you than to try to pull this stunt. In my classes, if they did it, they had my "blessing" to go (I could have cared less), but they knew that it was unexcused, and work due usually had to be turned in early. Quizzes were zeroes. The diligent ones usually were ok; the others, well, let's just say the end of the semester was not nice to them.
  
• Get some sleep. This is another little detail that will get you everytime. If you are going to keep up, get some sleep. You may think you can pull those all-nighters regularly, but sooner or later they catch up. Not to mention, looking like you crawled out of the bed, or worse, just walked from the bar that closes late to your early morning class really leaves a bad impression.
  
• And, I am throwing one of mine in: have fun, but please, be moderate and safe about it. College is a great experience. Take full advantage of it, but again, moderation and safety. There are enough young people dying of alcohol poisoning from binges for example. Don't be one of them.
  

On blogging apathy, or what to do when you just don't feel like blogging

Through the Blog Herald, a link to an article by Darren Rowse at Problogger. This article takes Mr. Rowse's earlier series and puts it all in one distilled page. It has some excellent suggestions for ideas and tips to get the creative juices flowing and keep bloggers motivated. Some are things I already do, but there are plenty others I can learn and try to implement. Some useful suggestions include:

• Starting a series where you can pick a larger topic and break it down to explore it over a week. For an example of this, take a look at the series on MLS success over at the Wanderings of a Student Librarian. This definitely looks like something I could experiment with sometime. I just have to avoid the excuse of "when will I have the time to put X or Y together."
  
• Revisit old posts. The author writes that a blogger can often update posts, revisit them, repost them with additional commentary, and come back to old stream thoughts, maybe with a new idea? I know this was always one of my reasons to keep a personal journal and now a blog, so I could back and look at things. At times, I may feel like "eww, I can't believe I wrote that," but other times I can say, "wow, that is great stuff, but now we need to look at such and such."
  
• Write posts ahead of time and keep an idea journal. Both of these are great ideas. One thing that works for me using Blogger is to save ideas as drafts. Having them on the cue reminds me that I need to finish them to post, plus, it allows me to make little notes to expand later. It's kind of like stocking up. As for the idea journal, that's what the personal journal is for.
  
• Develop a posting schedule. Now, here I have to admit that I have not put much thought. I just post as things catch my interest. I think my humble goal is one a day during the week. Weekends I see as a bonus. Now, I have days I put more than one item, and days I don't post, but I usually manage to do some posts (3 to 5) a week. I know, not big in the scheme of things, but a start. I may have to think over this suggestion some more.
  
• Read other's blogs. I think this goes without saying. One can learn a lot from seeing how other people do it. I would add to this read, read, read. Read books, magazines, online sources, etc. Anything to get the ideas rolling and to learn something new.
  

Mr. Rowse has more ideas, but I think these are some good examples. So, go over, read and make some notes, then get back to that blog. And yes, taking a break is ok as well. All writers should be able to step back and just enjoy the scenery.

Starting to read Don Quijote

The two copies we ordered of Cervantes's novel Don Quijote have arrived. I have checked out one for myself, and thus, I am ready to rediscover this great classic of Spanish fiction. We got the nice editions put out by the IV Centenario of Castilla-La Mancha and the Real Academia and published by Alfaguara (ISBN 84-204-6728-6). Since the edition has some introductory materials by various writers including Mario Vargas Llosa, I will take a look at those sections too. Actually, it appears to be a very nice edition, which I suspected from the reviews, so I will likely acquire a copy for my personal library down the road. It looks good, text itself is not too small, and it is a small book (even if thick), so easy to carry with me. I have made two previous posts about the novel and the fact that this year celebrates the Fourth Centennial of the novel. I will try to post now and then about my progress in this journey.

Things that annoy web surfers, or "hey, if you make a website, please don't do this!"

Through the Librarian in Black, a link to a list of the 16 things that really annoy most web users. In my case, most of them are about right. Pop-ups not as much a deal thanks to Firefox. The requirement to register to view anything is probably my biggest peeve, and unfortunately, it is something more and more online newspapers are doing. I often see if I can pick up a particular newspaper on a database like Lexis-Nexis or skip it since I don't like having to be giving out my information all over the place. I have not seen a lot of people with sites requiring an extra software install, but enough of them to find it annoying. Usually though, with Firefox, it handles that a bit better. As for those people who have to put some music to their site to be cute, in the words of Bob Newhart, in his doctor character, to a patient who had certain neuroses, "Stop it! Just stop it!"

Blogging and copyright

Steven Cohen of Library Stuff points to an article about copyright and blogging from the E-Commerce News. It makes for interesting reading, but it also provides some questions that bloggers should be using and considering as they put bits and pieces of outside items on their posts. I know I try to remain within the fair use rules and give credit where credit is due. For me, it's kind of like practicing what I preach when it comes to teaching students about such issues. Useful information to keep in mind.