Avenues to Success Notes

Here are 10 good tips to pass on to your college student

Parents and students,

Here's a link for encouragement to help the college-bound student succeed in school.

Dr. Sylvia Rimm's Top Ten Tips for College Success offers sound advice to ensure success.

You are now informed why you should take it easy once in a while.

Students, here's sharing some thoughts about the usefulness of having some down time.

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It was when he was completely alone, Mozart wrote in a letter, "say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when [he] could not sleep," that his ideas flowed best and most abundantly.

 

The short story writer Grace Paley also spoke up in praise of idleness. "I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing," she said in an interview. "It really is. Kids now call it space around you. It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to my work."

 

"Creative work needs solitude," writes the poet Mary Oliver. "It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching till it comes to that certainty which it aspires to.... Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again."

 

These testiments to the importance of some quite downtime is in an Los Angels Times article

Don't just do something; stand there

Purposelessness is both good sense and good science, many artists and writers say.

By Christian McEwen,  August 14, 2011.

Do yourself a favor and  click on the title to read he article.

Advice from an elephant

Make a big first impression

Don't work for peanuts

Be all ears

Know when to put your foot down

Be gentle, no matter your size

Have big ideas

Charge ahead!

  Willy the Bull African Elephant featured at the Cleveland Metropark Zoo's African Elephant Crossings.

 

NOTE: This advice is on a real cute tee shirt at the Elephant Crossings gift shop. It has a copywrite attributed to YourTrueNature.com, 2008

All student loans are similar, the difference can mean big savings

Here's a link to an interesting article about saving money by taking the time in selecting student loans.

Choose student loans on your own terms, posted July 29, 2011 in Chicago Tribune, states:

Often less attention goes into selecting college student loans. The decision gets shunted aside or made in an instant because tuition is due, loans have confusing names and the financial aid office at your college might provide little guidance. Many students assume all student loans are similar — a mistake that can inflict thousands of dollars in unnecessary debt. . . .

. . . But even if your financial aid office isn't particularly helpful, you can identify the best loans yourself. (continue reading)

 

Here is a useful site to find information about colleges worldwide

I agree with an email I received from a vistor to this site recommending College Atlas as an additional resource to you in your search for colleges.

Along with listings, links and information about colleges, it also has links to recommended college search articles.

I've included it in my sidebar listing For College Students and Parents, too.

Click on the link above and give it a try.

 

 

Here's a good suggestion for conflict resolution:

Conflicts are a normal part of life; how we deal with them can make a big difference. Often when people resolve conflicts, one person ends up a winner, and one loses out. This may solve the problem for the moment, but resentment and bad feelings can cause more problems later. Another way to look at conflicts is to try to find a WIN-WIN solution, in which both sides can benefit. In this way, conflicts are turned into opportunities to grow and make things better. This approach is the cornerstone of "conflict resolution" - an important tool for bringing peace into our personal lives, our communities and to our world.

        - Robert Alan, Born 1959, American Writer, Artist, Social Activist

A good resource for community college students and parents

Here is a link to a post about parents encouraging and supporting their students attending a community college. Community College Students Need Parent Encouragement is posted in a useful site, Community College Review.  

As of this date, the site has

• 46 articles about college
• 33 articles about affording colleges and
• 76 artilcles about courses in colleges

Check it out.

From experience, I am a firm believer in attending a community college and than transferring to complete a 4-year degree. Of course I would because I got my AAS from Mohawk Valley Community College, Utica, NY and my BS from The University at Buffalo, SUNY. I saved a lot of money and got a great education.

Why practice makes perfect

Here is a good explanation of why this saying is true:

There is life after receiving the "LETTER" from the Admissions Office

I'd like to share a piece from CBS's Sunday Morning to consul you in the anticipation of the "LETTER" from the Admissions Office of your A choice.

Here's the link for the video.

May 16, 2010

Oh, No, It's College Acceptance Letter Time!

Ben Stein Says Getting Into the College of Your Choice Matters Less Than Choosing to Use the Talents You Have

(CBS)  The most important lesson some college-bound students ever learn could be the one they're about to hear for free from Sunday Morning contributor Ben Stein:

Now is the dreaded time of year when high school seniors find out if they got into "the college of their choice."

In modern times, there are so vastly many more applications for admission to the really prestigious colleges - Ivy Leagues, Stanford, Duke, Chicago - that it is most unlikely that the applicant gets into that "college of her choice."

It is a disappointment, and one that some people never get over. One of the most talented and famous writers in America kept and framed her rejection letter from Stanford for decades after she was a literary icon.

But, I would like to look back on life from my vantage point of having seen so much of it, and tell those of you who did not get into "the college of your choice" - and your parents, who are probably the most affected by that rejection letter - that getting into that certain ultra-prestigious college really means very little in a lifetime.

Maybe nothing at all.

As far as I can tell, the men and women who have achieved the most in life in terms of getting to do what they wanted, live a comfortable life, and get recognition for it, did so pretty much without regard to where they went to college.

Yes, it helps a tiny bit to go to Columbia or Yale. But it helps a lot more to have good work habits, make a minute-by-minute effort to get along with the people you work with, and (most of all) to harmonize your goals with your talents.
The giants I have worked with in my life - Richard Nixon, Norman Lear, Bill Safire, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Buckley, Goldie Hawn and many others - tried a number of different avenues to success and eventually found the thing that they were very, very good at, and did that with extraordinary focus.

Notice that of those people, only Bill Buckley went to a prestige college. The others did it by using the talents they were born with, not being afraid of taking risks and failing, making sure they were not prima donnas, and staying in the game until they got over the goal line.

No name on any diploma can mean as much as using what you've got in you from day one and using it with extreme focus, flexibility and inner mobility.

You didn't get into the college of your choice? Fine. Neither did most of America.

It won't matter a bit to your autobiography if you don't let it matter to you.

© MMX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

High School Character Matter

That is one of the three conclusions of a Josephson Institute study on

High School Character and Adult Conduct
Character Study Reveals Predictors of Lying and Cheating

According to their press release,

the findings of the first-ever large-scale study of the relationship between high school attitudes and behavior and later adult conduct. The survey found that current age and attitudes about the need to cheat and actual high school cheating are significant predictors of lying and cheating across a wide range of adult situations.

The Conclusions of the Report:

Age Matters
Attitude Matters
High School Character Matters

Click on this link to read the entire release at Josephson Institute of Ethics Releases Study on High School Character and Adult Conduct