EduLink madness.  Time for another dose of goodies.

NUS – Students told to protect themselves from unscrupulous landlords

Advice for students on moving into rental property.  Includes a list of top tips.

Radio 4 Today – Students chose subjects ‘far too early’

A Cambridge principal has suggested that degrees should last 4 years.  A first year of broader study would help students make better decisions for the future.  At present, they believe students are not able to make a proper choice at an early age and without proper understanding of what they are choosing.

Would you have liked a first year with more range of study subjects to help you make a clearer choice?

Mind Hacks – Against Narrativity

Do we understand ourselves through stories, or are there other ways?

From Futurity – Mind-body connection is a touchy subject

Physical concepts such as roughness, hardness, and warmth are among the first that infants develop. They are critical to how young children and adults eventually develop abstract concepts about people and relationships, such as discerning the meaning of a warm smile or a hard heart.

Touch is an important sense for exploration of the world, and so these sensations help create the mental scaffold upon which we build our understandings of the world as we grow older.

e! Science – Memory links to 40 winks

Sleep is so awesome. Nice work, sleep!

Huffington Post – 11 of the craziest things about the universe

The sun could be made out of bananas and it wouldn’t drop in temperature. Every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Marilyn Monroe. And so on.

Every time I type the word ‘universe’, I always instinctively type ‘university’.  Can’t imagine why…

Critical Thinking lecture series

What is critical thinking, where does it come from, and how do we think critically? Don Ward takes us on a journey.

Northwest History – How to Read a Book in One Hour

Reading from cover to cover is something you’re likely to do with a novel, but it doesn’t work so well with a dense academic text.  Especially if you’re looking for core messages and key quotations.  Among the advice given in this piece is one suggestion I often follow myself:

“Read two academic reviews of the book you photocopied beforehand. Don’t skip this step, these will tell you the book’s perceived strengths and weakness. Allow five minutes for this.”

I sometimes go overboard and read as many as 10 reviews if there are that many available.  I prefer to browse as many reviews as I can because they touch upon different aspects and from different points of view.  You may not be able to get the quotations that way, but it should help your search after, since it gives you a grounding for what is in the book.

Times Higher Education – The Great Unknown

How does a university become ‘outstanding’?  Can you accurately rate a university in terms of success?  The author states, “The great university exists, or potentially exists, in all universities.”

I enjoyed HallyMk1’s description of the piece:

“What makes a great university? Man burns lots of carbon to claim that it’s league tables.”

As for the author’s conclusion, I’ll leave you with that:

“In a world of often opposing forces – financial, political, institutional – one thing is certain: the force of higher education, what it is and what it can be, is most certainly human ambition. As this is of our own making, it seems clear that we are much more than tourists in higher education; instead, as its inhabitants we must take ultimate responsibility for it.”

I haven’t received a membership card for Generation Y.  Or any other generation for that matter.  How do I know which group I’m in?  Maybe I’ve been blocked because I didn’t play by the rules.

I wonder if I can get a fake ID somewhere…

What is Generation Y? Or, if you prefer, who are millennials?  Or what is the Net generation?  They are all terms for the same thing.

Generation Y is a huge group of diverse people.  Many current students and recent graduates are apparently part of this group.  A conversation about Gen-Y can begin and end however you want. You can do the same with any group of loosely matched individuals.

Gen-Y is social, Gen-Y is closed off from everyone else. Gen-Y hate politics, Gen-Y are increasingly political. Gen-Y don’t like to get on with Gen-X, Gen-Y don’t know why Gen-X has a problem with them. Gen-Y are all about creativity, Gen-Y are all about practicality. Gen-Y don’t specialise, Gen-Y set their attention on specifics. Gen-Y aren’t using new tactics to get jobs, Gen-Y aren’t using traditional tactics to get jobs.

Can a proper definition be agreed upon?  Nope.  Even a general level you can’t find complete agreement.  Look more closely and the water muddies further.  Were Gen-Y born from 1978, 1980, 1982, 1983…? What year did the next generation begin?  Does the term cover everyone, or a particular part of society?  What elements of a person does the term Gen-Y cover?  Do they live with technology or are they truly tech-savvy?

Many self-help books and management guides offer ‘answers’ and ‘rules’ to problems, as if there’s no other way to succeed.  It’s as if these ‘answers’ and ‘rules’ are magic bullets that explain all.

The same applies with stories of Gen-Y.  Personality traits are described as truths, behaviours are spoken as the norm.  This is hardly useful except as a generalisation.

I’m not suggesting that the ever-growing collection of writing on Gen-Y has no value.  Far from it.  The ability to think critically, however, is of the utmost importance when digesting it.  Without critical engagement, contradictory detail only confuses.  The information, like the grouping of people, needs to be taken together as many things.

Gen-Y is a subjective term.  Gen-Y is a term to debate, not mould into a definitive shape.

When debate starts, it’s all too easy to pick a mould regardless.  People are likely to seek advice they already follow.  What feels like critical engagement could be self-affirmation.  No matter how immune you think you are, we’re all susceptible to a bit of ego-stroking.

No generation is fully understood.  This is no surprise when you realise that the term Gen-Y rests mainly on a range of birth years and little else.  You cannot place any group of diverse individuals in a single, rigid definition.

That’s why debate about Generation X and older generations still prove just as worthy of debate.  As life changes, so do behaviours.  Until a generation disappears, history is still being recorded within that group.

As for younger generations, you get an idea of how such a large group can only ever be described through sweeping generalisation.  For instance, Gen-Z is still making a name for itself.  Even good old Wikipedia states, “Relatively little is firmly established about its composition, character, and even name”.  Since this generation has only been around since the mid-90s, perhaps we’re asking for too much.  Rather confusingly, they are sometimes called the ‘Net generation’, just like Gen-Y has been known.  Yay…

Why am I still banging on about all this?  Well, let’s go back to those self-help books and their magic bullets of advice.

A lot of productivity advice is aimed at people within Generation X.  The focus is very much on ‘Getting Things Done’ (GTD) and managing time as a bunch of tasks you can check off a list.  While there’s nothing wrong with a to-do list, we have so much information hitting us from all angles and so much vying for our attention that a GTD approach doesn’t always cut it for younger people.

Productivity is a different beast in an information age.  I wonder this:

• Is there a method of working productively that can be used collectively throughout Generation Y?

I believe that we’re all learning new techniques to get through a disruptive world.  However, as with all generations, what works for an individual is more important than generalised ideas.  We need generalisations and helpful ideas to give us a jump off point, but those magic bullets will never explain everything.

My tagline for TheUniversityBlog and my Twitter account is the following:

“Celebrating university life in all its diversity. Helping to achieve a full, entertaining, productive, and successful experience”.

I can only give general support and opinion.  I don’t write for Gen-Y or any other collective.  I write for you.  Yes, you! I don’t follow all the advice I link to, but I won’t withhold that information if I think it will speak to a reader.

You know the real reason why your generation is so great?  Because you’re in it.

That’s what matters.  Enjoy your generation.

And let me know where I can get that fake ID.

It’s that time again. As always, happy reading!

Psychology Today – Ten Top Tips to End Writer’s Block Procrastination

Procrastination is something we’ll be revisiting until the end of time.  Academic writing brings out the procrastinator in many of us:

“If you view writing as arduous, frustrating, or ego-threatening, you may “automatically” sidestep the writing.”

Writing an essay takes a lot of effort (arduous), takes you down lots of dead ends and blank points (frustrating), and requires a good standard to be graded highly (ego-threatening).

Clearly, it’s a good idea to check these tips.

onlineschools.org

All sorts of infographics.  From world hunger to striptease, from farts to orgasms, this site covers a lot of interesting stuff.  Stats are U.S. focused, but still good fun.

Ben Casnocha – If You Want to Know How Things Are in Reality

People are different and nothing is certain.  What is your truth?

Minimal Student

I’ve just discovered Minimal Student and I’m impressed.  Written by Jessica, there’s already a wealth of goodness in the archives, such as:

• The Lost Art of Sitting Still
• 5 minimalist principles to help you study
• Creating and Maintaining a Minimalist Desk

If that’s not enough, check out the ‘Most Popular Posts’ page for even more.  And don’t forget to subscribe to the site for updates!

BPS Research Digest – Memory performance boosted while walking

Walking gets a good press and now it’s getting better. When walking at your own pace, mental ability appears to improve over sitting down or walking at a set speed.

Why should the secondary task of walking aid, rather impair, mental performance? The researchers aren’t sure of the mechanism, but they think the attentional pool tapped by a sensori-motor task like walking is likely separate from the attentional pool tapped by working memory. Moreover, physical activity increases arousal and activation, ‘which then can be invested into the cognitive task,’ they said.

Resourceshelf – Concerns Over Facebook and Privacy Continue

Facebook may have introduced a simpler set of privacy settings, but a lot of worry remains.  Check this for detail of issues still causing concern.  Facebook also responds to some questions regarding the current set of privacy settings that have caused confusion for users.

Users should take care and make sure they know exactly how much of their information is going out and who it’s being made available to.  How aware are you?