The Future of Print

It seems everywhere we look we are faced with news sources. Newspapers have their own websites and bloggers are considered respected journalists. Because of these growing mediums, we are told that, like campus colleges, print media is growing extinct. The same is true with magazines. Why purchase a subscription when you can view the content online for free?

Well, I have to disagree. For example, the internet has not killed book research, although it has changed it. Libraries and book stores are still around. And newspapers are a century-old media, I highly doubt they could die all due to bloggers and Google News. As for magazines, if anything, having sites will help them. It allows more people to get a taste of it so they are more confident investing the money in a subscription. Aside from that, I have tried not renewing my subscription because I figured the site was enough. However, I was wrong and went back to print.

Besides, does anyone really think magazines and newspapers are going to continue to allow their readership free access? Some already have site content that is only available to readers, and I predict more will follow. Others may charge for the site access. And when faced with paying for print or for online content, I suspect more people will be tempted to pay for print.

Here is a blogger that seems to agree with me:
http://news.newspaperproject.org/

And an article that may contradict me:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38165962/ns/business-motley_fool/

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7 Reasons Why You Should Always Have Dress Clothes in Your Closet

1. Many clubs and sports will require that you dress up on a certain day of the week.
2. If you have an internship or student teach, dressing up will make you appear more professional.
3. You may have to attend nice dinners.
4. If you are in any type of national or international organization, it is a good idea to dress up when you attend conferences in order to make a good impression.
5. During your junior and senior years, you will be going to interviews where you will have to dress up. Doing so prior to that will help you to feel more comfortable with it.
6. Many teachers (I've noticed this especially in my business classes) expect that you dress professionally for presentations. Even if they don't mention it, doing it anyways will mean you went the extra mile.
7. I know this sounds crazy, but when you dress up, you feel better about yourself and people will take you more seriously.

Halloween Costumes

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If you are like me, then you probably plan your costume way in advance. Of course, that doesn't help me much because I end up still not knowing what to go as, or not being able to put my costume together in time. What are you going as this year? How do you get your costume? Do you make or buy? Finally, what do you like to do for Halloween and how long does Halloween (every day you go to a Halloween party) last? I apologize for going a little crazy with the links.

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Health Care in College

Many schools offer medical services free of charge to their students as well as other care such as counseling. Unfortunately, not all schools offer this. Some cannot afford it, others only offer limited services. At my school, there is a family practice around the corner, but it is not very good. Most of the time, you are just sent to the hospital. Not to mention, their hours are 8 a.m. to 4p.m., when most students are in class and at work.

Many college students, along with other young adults, are uninsured. They are not covered by their parents' insurance anymore (which will soon change) and they cannot afford to pay for it on their own. I have read brochures for student plans and they are far from inclusive. They often do not cover sports injuries, mental health care, dental, or pregnancy care. While the insurance may be cheap, it is often still a waste of money.

And what about sexual health? Getting pregnant while still in college is far from advisable, but colleges don't do enough to prevent it. At some schools, giving out birth control is the health clinic's biggest responsibility. At others, the best you can hope for is free condoms.

What are your biggest concerns about health care and what can be done to fix them?

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Marriage

Marriage is not something a lot of college students think about regularly, although many students do get married before they graduate; some even have kids. However, once upon time the tradition was to at least be engaged by the time you graduated college, maybe even high school. My own parents met while in college, and for a lot of my friends' parents, that seems to be the norm. These days though, it isn't unusual to graduate college unattached.

Today, college is seen as the time when you should meet new people and try new things. "Hooking up" with someone even though no emotions are involved is not that unusual. Couples may date for a long time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will get married.

I have a friend who once said she expected to be engaged by the time she graduated, which for her would have meant 21. That just seems so young to me. It certainly is comforting to know who you will marry when you graduate; it will help you make all kinds of decisions that before you may not have even known where to start. Where to live is one such decision. When another person is involved in making the decision, that limits your choices considerably. Not to mention, you know you'll have a roommate that you trust and can split the rent with.

At the same time, that wide range of options may be exactly what you are looking forward to. Graduating can be an exciting time, and without another person in the picture, your choices are endless. Joining the Peace Corps is not really an option when you are engaged or married, but it may be the perfect choice if you are single.

The dating scene after college is confusing. In college it was easy enough to meet people and you had plenty of chances to get to know them. But what about when you are working or in grad school? You are no longer around just people your own age whom you are likely to have some things in common. Some people find it comforting to know they won't have to worry about that.

It's a choice that you cannot know how you will choose until you are faced with the choice. Few people expect to be married or engaged while in college, and those who do may be wrong.

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My First Blog Fest (A little Late)

Over at Cerebral Lunchbox the author is hosting a blog fest specifically for blogs with 150 followers or less. This is perfect because I once wrote a post about how I love smaller, undiscovered blogs and wanted a way to find more of them (http://newintheblogosphere.blogspot.com/2010/07/blogs-of-note.html). Anyways, the topic is about my favorite Holdiday Special.

I am a sucker for Halloween TV specials, and the TV show with the best Halloween specials would have to be Home Improvement. My favorite would probably be the one where Wilson fakes his death and pretends to frame Tim. At the very end, Tim pulls another prank on Wilson at which point Tim appears with Wilson's parrot who says "Tim's the King!" Of course, it also helps that at the beginning, they were at a costume party and Jill comes dressed as the Wicked Witch and Tim is a flying monkey.

By the way, I'm sorry I got this post out a little late for the blog fest, I'm celebrating a lesser represented Holiday (at least by TV specials) known as Homecoming.

Meetings

If you have ever been in charge of an organization or had to run a meeting, you know it can get tough: time gets wasted, people get impatient, and the leader of the meeting suffers the most. Entrepreneur.com has some helpful tips for maximizing the usefulness of a meeting. My favorite tip is to make people stand. That way, there will be no useless chatter.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/management/operations/article207490.html

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Yearbooks

In middle school and high school, yearbooks were an important part of end of the year rituals. Everyone looked forward to the day when they would be handed out and a lot of students got  credit for putting together the yearbooks. Now that we are in college, the importance of yearbooks has not changed all that much. What may have changed is the format they are in.

A few years before I came to my school, they switched from a print yearbook to DVD. I don't know any statistics on how many people purchased them, but I do know that by the time I got here in 2007 hardly anyone purchesed a copy of the DVD. Even people who did buy them did not  seem to to appreciate them; I found a few copies in the DVD bin once at  Salvation Army. For my sophmore year, the school decided to go back to print yearbooks, a decision people were pretty happy about.

Let's face it: Twenty years from now our kids are not going to slip in DVDs so that they can make fun of our hair. Heck, we probably won't even own DVD players by that point. But print yearbooks are never going to be obsolete.

Advertising in Textbooks?

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This semester I am taking my first marketing class. I thought I would enjoy it but a lot about the class has fallen short of my expectations. My biggest complaint? The textbook's approach.

I understand that we are learning about advertising, but marketing, especially in its modern day form, is much more than just throwing ads and products at customers and expecting them to buy what you're selling. And my textbook certainly stressses the importance of knowing your customer and understanding them, but I can't help but wonder if the book itself is one giant advertisement.

Proctor and Gamble make many appearances in the book, especially concerning Tide, and I'm not even halfway through the book. I read through an entire list of many products that P&G make, including all of the Tides as well as other laudry detergents. I found this list in the book.

Another issue is when corporations are painted as nothing but good. Even if the company has had problems in the past, the goal of many marketing campaigns is to show that everything has changed. And in the class, the campaign is all we see. One negative concern I've seen addressed is about WalMart. Many dissatisfied customers will start websites criticizing the company and get thousands of visitors daily. While fixing the concerns (which even WalMart has to admit are valid) seems to me like the best fix, they instead try to take down the offending websites. And my book blames the starters of these sites for ruining WalMart's image.

Even in my management classes, whenever we watch a video case on a company, I always feel like I am watching a commercial. You have a narrarator with a cheery voice listing all of the benefits this company has as a result of a new leadership initiative. I understand that the teacher wants us to have a frame of references, but I think we deserve to know what is going on that may not be so wonderful about the companies we are studying. And I certainly shouldn't feel like I am always looking at ads during class.

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Giveaway

So far I have yet to feature any giveaways of my own, however I would like to direct your attention to Lovely Undergrad where the blog author is giving away a $20 gift certificate to be used online. Check it out.

"Forever"

"Forever" is one of my favorite Judy Blume books. In my opinion, it does a better job of speaking to its audience than any of her other books. At the same time, it is still sincere and not exaggerated.

For those of you who do not know, "Forever" is about Katherine, a high school senior who has sex for the first time with her boyfriend, Micheal. It is about their relationship over the next few months as well as what is going on in their friends' lives. When they are together at first, they think they will be together, a summer spent apart proves that things will not work out.

Published in 1975, "Forever" is frequently challenged because of the descriptions of sex, and the presence of birth control. However, I feel that it gets information across to its audience in a honest and unbiased way without talking down to them. While it does not encourage sex, it does demonstrate that it is a reality. I recommend this book for anyone in high school above (I do not feel that it would be inappropriate for middle schoolers, but they may not get as much out of it) although I think it speaks especially to girls more than boys.

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