Advice for a debt-free graduation

Living and studying in Europe my whole life, I ignored for a long time the fact that education can be a very problematic investment and burden. When talking with my American academic friends, they often mention that even after 10 years, they still have to pay or find solutions for paying an impressive college debt. As for me, I went from college to MA and after that, PhD studies, without paying any dime. Just because high education was free, unless I wanted to enroll to some private academic classes, which I didn't. I used to work since 18 and was independent financially since, but I still think that an eventual college financial burden would have dramatically affect my life.

Hopefully, there are more and more books lately aimed to help parents and children navigate the troubled waters of high education in the US. Kristina Ellis, herself a beneficiary of impressive scholarships, is sharing her experience and knowledge in a very systematic and practical way.

'Think of paying for college as a marathon. By maintaining a steady stride between spending and saving, you can make it through each leg of the race and cross the finish line, graduating debt free'. Usually, the average costs for attending college per year can go around 19,500$, for in state, and $44,000 private.

First and foremost, the potential college candidate should start working towards the goal as early as possible. Starting to make a plan, for instance, by creating a budget and starting to save, using the power of compound interest or earning as many credits in advance as possible.

Second, it is important to be informed and in this advanced Internet era, everything is much easier than before. For instance, you do not need to go in person at the college tours, and use instead the virtual presentation. It could be a significant source of financial relief. Information is gold also when it comes to the decision to go to college as such. The potential student should start asking as many questions as possible in order to figure out if this college and no other is answering his or her academic needs and professional plans. 

The application process can be expensive too, as it involves passing various tests and acquiring documents proving the conformity to the academic standards expected from a potential student.  

When it comes to applying for scholarships or federal loans - such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid -, the process should be started as early as possible, taking into consideration all the documentation requirements and criteria necessary. 

With a lot of work and careful preparation, the application can be accepted or various alternatives used in order to eliminate or diminish significantly the financial burden. Otherwise, students are adviced how to find ways to start paying the debt even from the first year of college, by taking side jobs or building their own freelance business. Such an approach can be very helpful for the next professional steps, due to the acquired experience and the practice of work ethics. 

Although with a clear readers target, the North American students, or anyone interested to apply at an an American college, this book is also useful for those without the need to worry about college loans, but that can learn a lot about how to plan the academic and professional career as early in life as possible.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher via NetGalley.

Manifesto for the 'slow professor'

After so many 'slow' movements in food and the everyday life in general, it was about time to approach the high-speed academic life from this perspective too. In previous academic blog posts I touched upon several times the idea of 'publish or die' and other high pressures - such as bureaucracy that I do not fancy at all, regardless its shapes and aims - that taint the fragile intellectual achivements of the academia. 

'Corporalization has compromised academic life and speed up the clock', complain the authors, who continue: 'In the corporate university, power is transferred from faculty to managers, economic justifications dominate and the familiar 'bottom line' eclipses pedagogical and intellectual concerns'. However, as long as the universities are part of the state system and do receive budget funding, a certain scrutinity of the funds and criteria of performance should be considered. Also, universities are part of a larger state conception on education and, thus, they prepare future members of the work force. What can be done?

The authors pledge for a reconsideration of the academic pace: 'We need time to think, and so do our students. Time for reflection and open-end inquiry. 

One of the highest pressure the professors should deal with is time. Time to correct and edit papers, to apply for grants, to write books, to answer bureaucratic demands, to spend time with the family. Although several books were dedicated to the time-management issues in the academia, this does not alleviate the burden and the deep guilt for the time spent not 'at work'. Somehow, the book does not approach the issue of the high level of university graduates, compared to decades ago, which creates pressure for the market and the need of high efficiency at the university workplace too. 

An interesting approach concerns the pledge for 'pleassure' at teaching, a focus on emotions and emotional intelligence in the classroom. Hard sciences as mathematics or nuclear physics, just to mention randomly, do not necessarily require such an emotional involvement, but very often during my academic expriences I noticed the lack of any personal involvement of teachers in the process of sharing knowledge. 

Understanding is more important than knowledge, consider the authors, and I agree, but in the nowadays world, with so many sources of information and so many possibilities to expand the knowledge, it is very hard to resist the temptation of too much knowledge. I am going through this right now and secretely I enjoy the pleasure of not being able to find the right balance.

The book is very important for the stage of academic discussions right now, but it does not provide any specific mean of action, despite the need of more collaboration and 'conviviality' among teachers. I will be curious to find out how exactly the current culture can be institutionally challenged. Maybe then I will finally decide to make the big step of joining the academia. 

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange of an honest review 

Academic book review: Paying for college. Athletic Scholarship Info

This book laguished unopened on my Kindle for a long time because I was almost sure that the information deals exclusively with management of college payment and other financial information that does not interest me too much. After all, I am living in Germany where the high education is free and I do not have too many plans to going back to university either, at least not in the next 6 months. 

I was wrong though. It has very good tips about how to organise your entry to college, step-by-step, taking care of the smallest details such as time management, establishing special learning routines, organizing the extra-curricular activities. Written in an accessible language, it offers directions for going straight on the path to making good academic choices, setting up motivational tools and writing good application letters. 

The information is at the level of 2012 and unfortunally it does not have relevant links or extra materials for the reader, but regardless of your academic level, geographical location or the year when you start reading it, there is relevant information available. My favourite ones are: how to identify and fight procrastination and the advice to be in touch with a tutor or teacher seeking for academic guidance. 

A four-star kind of book, strongly recommended and easy to read - less than one hour if you are a speedy reader as me. 

Back in the academic blogging business

Almost two years without a blog post, and not too many academic achievements...True is that there were a lot of challenging taking place and the academic perspectives and experiences helped in finding solutions. Although academic writing and the improvement of the academic CV was relatively slowing down, or put on hold for a couple of months, it was just a provisory situation.

Right now, fulll of energy and ideas for at least one book until the end of the year, I am back and ready to use the blog as a tool for sharing ideas about books, academic life and academic travels and history. I am preparing a couple of reviews of interesting academic books that caught my attention recently and the blog will be updated at least once the week. 

With plans to upgrade my academic CV and some long time projects for the medium term. 

All being said for now, I am back preparing my next post!

Keep in touch with good academic news! Soon, very soon!

Mental health in academia

I am not necessarily qualified to muse about academic life, but the long-term friendships and my never ending curiosity about intellectual life, often brought me in the vicinity of stories that might involve a drop of mental health. How much mental illness is part of the daily academic life all over the world might probably the topic of a big book dealing not only the statistics and social-economic information, but also the ways in which the 'normal' outside world is seeing the 'intellectual', most often as a strange, unusual, at the limit mentally ill person.

There are a lot of reasons mentioned usually as the cause of the overall alienation of academics: social pressure, the academic pressure towards productivity, sometimes the scarcity of funds or the anxiety of waiting for new sources of incomes, the lack of proper jobs and the high competitiveness of an oversaturated market. The 'illness' that can include various degrees of depression, anxiety, sleep issues and also various addictions, from alcoholism to drugs, is part of a repertoire that I assume there were always around the corner of universities. And I am relying upon not only various literary descriptions, but also various inside stories I kept hearing about academics of all colours since my early years of life. 'Date but not marry an academic' - an advise that sounds so painful when refers to women - is a kind of course that says a lot about how academics can be sometimes perceived in various societies, including in our so-called highly developed Western world. 

Is mental health a real problem in academia?

So, is mental health a real problem after all? Of course it is, and it is very important to discuss about it and find proper networks of support. Although I am a big lover of science and medicine, I am not always sure that therapy is a cure-all. Obviously the qualified help is very important when it comes to dealing with serious mental disorders - how to define them is another issue that has to do with the social perception of different maladies - but it is not enough to help, as long as the academic is going back to the same environment and unsolved problems - among others, how to pay a huge debt and how to find a good decently paid job, while trying to have a minimal social interaction. 

What I think it creates a lot of opportunities for the long-term installation of mental problems is the solitude. Intellectual work is supposed to be done alone, and the many hours spent documenting your articles request almost perfect solitude. The tight deadlines, the crazy schedule of conferences and the long hours of teaching and counselling rarely leave too much time for a normal family or relationships. The academic friendships can be problematic, as long as everyone is focused on his/her own work and competitiveness oblige, there is always a need of privacy and secrecy about what we read and write. 

Life and social challenges

As for the family, maybe they are too far away, maybe we consider ourselves too sophisticated to enjoy their simple and not intellectually challenging company. We assume that we are always in the right company, with our very interesting academic peers, but once the discussion is over, everyone is going home and not many will have too much intuition to call you when you feel sick or lonely.

Maybe such considerations put me in expectation around the real academic circle and always in between worlds. But there is always something more than that. There is something wrong with the intellectual models publicized via academic institutions and works and this should maybe explain some of the failures of intellectual involvement in the 'real life'. The sooner we open the floor to a honest discussion about such issues, the better for the sake of our academic and social sanity.  

Why do we need Masters, and PhDs and so many academic papers?

Source: www.qcc.cuny.edu

It 2.30 in the morning, and I just finished editing the 4th time the two academic papers on my to-do-list for today. 

Theoretically speaking, this kind of work is one of my favourite freelancer assignment because it gives me inspiration for new articles and researches, and it can also come with some free articles and even books necessary for eventual improvements. But it also brings a lot of frustrations, when I realize how much behind I am in terms of pursuing my own academic researches. 

Tonight, I have another frustration though: Why so many people around the world really want to pursue an academic career when obviously they don't have any calling for that? A couple of years ago, it was almost unacceptable to do not go to college. At least in my family was and my mother could not accept that her children are not going to university. Nowadays, if you don't apply for a master, PhD and at least one post-PhD scholarship, you can be considered an intellectual failure. And so you can encounter the incredible situation only a couple of years ago when people in their 30s - late or early, does not matter too much - without a single day of real time work. 

This time, I will not start talking about my reasons to get my PhD (it is a new blog after all and I have thousand of topics that I would love to talk about soon). My main problem tonight is represented by all those people that for a visa in the West or a better family and social status or some more $$ on the salary or for increasing the marriageability chances or for who knows what non-academic reasons take themselves seriously enough to apply for post-graduate studies.

Did you ever heard about companies specialized in ghost writing master and PhD thesis? I did and I hope to write more about them one day. Did you heard about big freelancer network where fresh delivered master or doctoral thesis are auctioned for 100-150$ or even less? What about when the scholar-in-process decides to write his or her own thesis? Good plan, but be sure that you spent some years learning how to properly use the language you should use for writing the thesis. And that you, as an extraordinary writer you want to be understand what you are writing about. 

Otherwise, you may need to hire someone to translate your incoherent thoughts into an intelligible language. 

Dear student, seriously, why you want so much to have this prestigious piece of paper? Is it so important to add the 'Ph.D' on your business card for a title that cannot be yours because you don't have the mind and the training and the patience for being a scholar. 

Or maybe it is time for more serious academic policies based on a strict selection of the candidates for such high academic titles? Otherwise, if I consider my latest editing experiences, it seems that a composition of the 1 grade can have more academic relevance than 25% of the 'scholarly' papers produced by PhD and master candidates.