Scholarship: Accenture Student Veterans Scholarship

Scholarship: The No Bull Sports scholarship

Application Deadline: March 1st, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/no-bull-sports-scholarship/

This Kentucky high school banned dreadlocks, cornrows and twists.

Butler Traditional High School in Louisville, Kentucky shocked some parents when they distributed a dress code that banned students from sporting “dreadlocks, cornrows and twists.” The code also banned extreme hair colors and highlighting on girls and any hair coloring for boys.

Kentucky State Representative-elect Attica Scott slammed the dress code and tweeted out a picture of it. (Above)

“We feel that a student’s academic success is directly correlated to appropriate attire and appearance,” the dress code reads.

The ACLU of Kentucky fired back at the school’s justification with 2 brilliant tweets.

follow @the-movemnt

Scholarship: Freeman Awards for Study in Asia

Application Deadline: March 1, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/freeman-awards-study-asia/

― How to write an essay as an undergraduate history student

These are general guidelines to help undergraduate students write better essays. *Note that every assignment is different. You should take the time to closely read the instructions and meet with your Professor if necessary. I hope you will find these useful and good luck writing your papers!

B E F O R E   Y  O U   S T A R T

Make sure that you have closely read the instructions as presented by your Professor. There are many different types of historical essays (argumentative essays, historiographical reviews and so on). It is imperative that your style is adapted to the type of essay you are required to write.

Gather all your information. Some Professors want students to write essays using only class material, others expect them to do more research.  If the latter, make sure to gather all (most) of your information beforehand. If you are a university student, you  have access to a library and many academic journals. Use this access and make sure to ask librarians for help when needed.

Take careful notes as you are reading in preparation for your essay. If your Professor provided a specific question, make sure to read critically for information that is susceptible to help you answer this question. If your Professor has not assigned a question, you should still read carefully and try to find the different ways in which historians address certain issues. 

Some students prefer not to plan essays, others do. I suggest planning as it may be the best way to map out your ideas and begin forming an argument. It is impossible to cover all the facets of a problem in one essay, therefore, planning your essay may be the easiest way to make sure your work covers important aspects of a given issue. Planning will also help ensure that all your arguments remain connected and support a central claim.

Find a few (preferably history) essays that you find well-written and pay special attention to their structure. While you should be careful never to be so inspired as to be tempted to copy (this is a very serious academic offence) the goal of this exercise is to find more academic vocabulary and see how it is used by actual scholars. 

W H E N    W R I T I N G 

If your Professor gave you a question to answer in advance, make sure you answer this question and this question only. While you should always supply your arguments with pertinent examples, these should be succinct and focus on the main contention debated in your essay.

Make sure your essay has a thesis statement (yes, even when you are asked to answer a question). Your Professor should know from the very beginning of your essay what you will be arguing and what position you will take. All subsequent paragraphs until your conclusion should serve to better make the case for your thesis.

Try to follow the “classical” essay model, that is: introduction, body and conclusion. 

Began each paragraph with a topic sentence announcing the focus of the next few lines. Conclude the paragraph by rephrasing the main idea and possibly by trying to make a connection with the next body of text.

Always bring evidence to support your arguments. This evidence may come from the work of other historians are from a passage of a primary document. Whatever the case may be, make sure that your arguments are solidly built and “defended”.

Introductions and conclusions are (usually) not optional. Your introduction should help the reader understand what the text will argue and how it will proceed to do so, while your conclusion finishes the text by summarising key points and perhaps even making a suggestion for future studies. (An additional tip may be to write a simple introduction at the beginning and then rewriting it when the essay is finished. Once you are satisfied with your introduction, you may copy and paste it as your conclusion making necessary adjustments and avoiding copying the exact sentence structure. The point here is to use your introduction as a guide to write your conclusion.)

Be precise, you are writing a history paper, dates and names matter. 

Be clear and concise but make sure that all your points are well-developed. 

G E N E R A L   T I P S 

Locate your argument in historiography. As a historian in training, it is important that you show your Professor that you understand there are debates regarding specific interpretations. It is also important that you demonstrate that your line of argumentation is supported by the work of experienced researchers. Even if your essay primarily focuses on primary document analysis, surely some have analysed this text or object before, make sure to mention these scholars and their contributions to the debate.

Citations should be used wisely. As said before, it is important to ground your argument in the work of other historians. In this sense, citations are immensely useful. That being said, depending on the length of your paper, too many citations may suggest laziness as you have made little efforts paraphrasing. A few carefully selected and well-integrated quotes in your paper should do the trick.

Unless prohibited (for some odd reason) by your Professor, use footnotes to give additional information. Using footnotes to engage in discussions that are important but that otherwise cannot find their place in your text will show your Professor that you had a strong command of the topic at hand. It is also the best place to suggest further readings.

 Free Online Course on Managing Finances

The course will start on 6 February.

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Making People Connected

Its not the matter of status and age people get alienated. The idea is how we interact and respond to situations we believe to be unusual to our senses. We tend to make distance from them believing that the feeling of security will not threatened. Makes sense?

Marshall M. Schulman Writing Competition

Dear Sir/Madam,

2016 Marshall M. Schulman Writing Competition is available for the students who are enrolled in Law schools or colleges. The competition is focused on contemporary issues of concern in the State of California.

Competition Deadline February 15, 2017.

We thought your students might find this information.

http://usascholarships.com/marshall-m-schulman-writing-competition/

Scholarship: Accenture Student Veterans Scholarship

Application Deadline: March 31, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/accenture-student-veterans-scholarship/

The king of veterans, Shuutoku High School!

Scholarship: SAWE Scholarship / Frank Fong Memorial Scholarship

Application Deadline: April 1, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/sawe-scholarship-frank-fong-memorial-scholarship/

14.02.2016 // one essay written this weekend and now it’s on to critical pedagogy. ☀️

VSGC Community College STEM Scholarship

Application Deadline is February 13, 2017.

http://usascholarships.com/vsgc-community-college-stem-scholarship/

Just applied for 3 scholarships!

Wish me luck in getting some financial aid because I’m already so in the hole from my previous college that it’s not funny…

The McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism

Dear Sir/Madam,

2016 The McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism is open to anyone with at least five years

professional experience in journalism.

Application Deadline is December 15, 2016

We thought your students might find this information.

http://usascholarships.com/the-mcgraw-fellowship-for-business-journalism/

Scholarship: Nordson BUILDS Scholarship Program

Application Deadline: May 15, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/nordson-builds-scholarship-program/

I Lie About My Teaching

Here is an interesting article I came across in The Atlantic. 

The story of a Teacher and how we portray our lives to others in the field. What are your thoughts? 

————————————————————————————————

I liked Devon. We were all first and second-year teachers in that seminar—peers, in theory—but my colleague Devon struck me as a cut above. I’d gripe about a classroom problem, and without judgment or rebuke, he’d outline a thoughtful, inventive solution, as if my blundering incompetence was perhaps a matter of personal taste, and he didn’t wish to impose his own sensibilities. When it fell upon us each to share a four-minute video of our teaching, I looked forward to Devon’s. I expected a model classroom, his students as pious and well-behaved as churchgoers.

Instead, the first half of Devon’s four-minute clip showed him fiddling with an overhead projector; in the second half, he was trotting blandly through homework corrections. The kids rocked side to side, listless. For all his genuine wisdom, Devon looked a little green, a little lost.

He looked, in short, like me.

Teachers self-promote. In that, we’re no different than everyone else: proudly framing our breakthroughs, hiding our blunders in locked drawers, forever perfecting our oral résumés. This isn’t all bad. My colleagues probably have more to learn from my good habits (like the way I use pair work) than my bad ones (like my sloppy system of homework corrections), so I might as well share what’s useful. In an often-frustrating profession, we’re nourished by tales of triumph. A little positivity is healthy.

But sometimes, the classrooms we describe bear little resemblance to the classrooms where we actually teach, and that gap serves no one.

Any honest discussion between teachers must begin with the understanding that each of us mingles the good with the bad. One student may experience the epiphany of a lifetime, while her neighbor drifts quietly off to sleep. In the classroom, it’s never pure gold or pure tin; we’re all muddled alloys.

I taught once alongside a first-year teacher, Lauren, who didn’t grasp this. As a result, she compared herself unfavorably to everyone else. Every Friday, when we adjourned to the bar down the street, she’d decry her own flaws, meticulously documenting her mistakes for us, castigating herself to no end. The kids liked her. The teachers liked her. From what I’d seen, she taught as well as any first-year could. But she saw her own shortcomings too vividly and couldn’t help reporting them to anyone who’d listen.

She was fired three months into the year. You talk enough dirt about yourself and people will start to believe it.

Omission is the nature of storytelling; describing a complex space—like a classroom—requires a certain amount of simplification. Most of us prefer to leave out the failures, the mishaps, the wrong turns. Some, perhaps as a defensive posture, do the opposite: Instead of overlooking their flaws and miscues, they dwell on them, as Lauren did. The result is that two classes, equally well taught, may come across like wine and vinegar, depending on how their stories are told.

Take the first year I taught psychology. I taught one section; my colleague Erin taught the other.

When I talked to Erin that semester, she’d glow about her class. Kids often approached her in the afternoons to follow up on questions, and to thank her for teaching their favorite course. Her students kept illustrated vocab journals totaling hundreds of words. They drew posters of neurons, crafted behaviorist training regimes, and designed imaginative “sixth senses” for the human body. Erin’s mentor teacher visited monthly and dubbed it an “amazing class” with “incredible teaching.”

Catch me in an honest mood, and I’ll admit that I bombed the semester. I lectured every day from text-filled overhead slides. Several of my strongest students told me that they hated the class and begged for alternative work. I wasted three weeks on a narrow, confining research assignment, demanding heavy work with little payoff. One student openly plagiarized another. I wound up failing several students who, in hindsight, I should have passed. Yet I know that this apparent train wreck of a class was, in truth, no worse than Erin’s.

That’s because I made Erin up. The two classes described above were the same class: mine. Each description is true, and neither, of course, is wholly honest.

I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my teaching. When talking to other teachers, I often play up the progressive elements: Student-led discussions. Creative projects. Guided discovery activities. I mumble through the minor, inconvenient fact that my pedagogy is, at its core, deeply traditional. I let my walk and my talk drift apart. Not only does this thwart other teachers in their attempts to honestly evaluate my approach, but it blocks my own self-evaluation. I can’t grow properly unless I see my own work with eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.

I had a private theme song my first year teaching: “Wear and Tear,” by Pete Yorn. It was my alarm in the mornings, my iPod jam on the commute home. The chorus ended with a simple line that spun through my head in idle moments and captured the essence of a year I spent making mistake after rookie mistake: Can I say what I do?

It’s no easy task for teachers. But I think we owe it, to ourselves if to no one else, to tell the most honest stories that we can. I’ll only advance as a teacher, and offer something of value to those around me, if I’m able to say what I do.

Source: The Atlantic

Share some feedback. What are your thoughts of the article? 

MedEvac Foundation International Children’s Scholarship

Deadline is July 31, 2017

http://usascholarships.com/medevac-foundation-international-childrens-scholarship/

07.05.16 It’s crazy to think that my freshmen year of college is over. I can’t wait to go to Italy this summer and begin my sophomore year in September.

xx Sunny