5 Ways for College Students to Earn Money Over Winter Break

Students could get paid for 

taking down holiday decorations.

By Julie Mayfield, Lindsey Mayfield

December 18, 2012 U.S. News & World Report

5 Ways for College Students to Earn Money Over Winter Break

College winter breaks vary in length by school, but many of them are quite long.
Still, finding a job over winter break can be a challenge. Breaks often are not quite long enough for that.
Here are some ways that college students can stay busy and earn a little cash while home from school.

JULIE:

After the holiday celebrations and reunions with old friends have taken place, winter break can become unproductive for a college student. And while traditional jobs are sometimes in short supply, a little out-of-the-box thinking can turn up ways to turn that extra time into extra money.
1. Previous employment: While the break might not be long enough to start a job application from scratch, your student's former employers are already familiar with his or her character and work ethic, so a formal application may not be necessary.
Your student has the added advantage of already being trained, so a quick refresher is all that stands in the way of hitting the ground running. It is definitely worth having your child make a quick call to former employers to see if there are some hours to be had over break.
[Find out why the holidays are a good time to look for a job.]
2. Babysitting: This can be lucrative work, even for college kids. And holiday social events and regular daycare providers taking vacation means that there is a need to fill as well.
If your child is good with kids and enjoys them, he or she should be able to fill the calendar with babysitting dates over the break.
3. . Christmas light removal: Taking down decorations from the holidays is never quite as fun as putting them up was. A college kid with a ladder and some flyers should be able to pick up a few bucks taking down lights and other seasonal décor.
[Explore other ways to make money over winter break.]

LINDSEY:

Once I finish finals week for the fall semester, all I want to do is go home and relax. In addition to some much-needed time off, however, students can spend their winter breaks earning some extra cash for the school year. The holidays are one of the best times to get a part-time job because school is out and lots of businesses are looking for temporary workers.
1. Holiday retail: Although the holidays are a stressful time for retail employees, they can also be the best time to earn holiday money. Lots of retail stores are looking for extra help around this time of year and, if nothing else, a job will be a conversation piece for your résumé.
Hit a mall or shopping center and ask around at your favorite stores, or just ask your friends if they've heard of anyone hiring temporarily.
2. Pet sitting or house sitting: My mom mentioned babysitting above, but another option for students is pet sitting or house sitting for neighbors or friends.
Lots of families go out of town for at least a few days over the holidays. If your family is staying in town, this may be the perfect job for you.
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/twice-the-college-advice/2012/12/18/5-ways-for-college-students-to-earn-money-over-winter-break

Florida Sought To Disenfranchise College Students In 2012 Election, Lawmaker Admits

ThinkProgress.org, By Aviva Shen on Dec 18, 2012 

Election Day in Florida became a nightmare due to several changes to election law, resulting in marathon lines and more provisional ballots. Now that the election is over, Florida Republicans are beginning to admit the mess was intended to suppress votes.

State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-FL) and GOP chair of Alachua County, Stafford Jones, cooked up one of Florida’s many new laws specifically to keep college students from voting in the 2012 election. The vote-suppressing measures were inspired by the 2010 victory of Gainesville’s first openly gay mayor, Craig Lowe, which Republicans claim was stolen by Florida college students.

Baxley’s law prevented people from voting if they did not change their address a month before Election Day. Many of the people affected were college students or young people who were moving for a new job. Jones explained this vote suppression was intentional and accused liberals of bringing in students to swing the election:

Baxley said Jones told him that voters from Tampa and other cities shifted their voter registrations to Gainesville for a day to vote in the city’s 2010 mayoral election in which Craig Lowe became the city’s first openly gay mayor by a 42-vote margin.
“It wasn’t right for people to move in and steal an election like that,” Baxley said.
Jones said he wanted the county transfer provision to keep college students from voting.
“The liberals do a good job of bringing in college kids to vote on local issues,” Jones said. “The kids vote on raising our taxes, but don’t have to live here to pay the consequences.”
Jones said he has no proof to support his claim, only recollections of liberal blog posts that people were moving to vote.

Gainesville is the home of the University of Florida, one of the most diverse universities in the nation. College students tend to hold more liberal views, and favored President Obama by 30 percent this year. Disenfranchisement of students is a tried and true Republican tactic. During the recall election of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) in June, election officials ruled that some student IDs were not eligible for voting and passed a law that made it harder for Wisconsin students to claim residency in the state.

Beyond hijinks at the local level, the Florida GOP admitted soon after the election that the goal of these new laws was always to keep Democratic voters away from the polls. Their efforts at voter suppression succeeded; the number of provisional ballots jumped an average of 25 percent in each county from last year.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/12/18/1350331/florida-sought-to-disenfranchise-college-students-in-2012-election-lawmaker-admits/?mobile=nc 

International Business Etiquette, Manners & Culture

 International Business Etiquette, Manners & Culture. Successful business transactions often depend on cross-cultural competence; through this website, visitors can research the cultures of 32 countries and six regions around the world. The home page serves as an introduction and a portal, with links to individual country pages, regions, and other resources. All country pages contain basic country information and fun facts . . . sections containing key information on religion, appearance, behavior, and communication; and a brief set of links to country-specific books and Internet resources such as the CIA Factbook country guides and other travel and international business works. All sections link to the related International Business Center and the International Career Center sites.

Navigation is easy, text flows nicely, and presentation is straightforward and flexible. One may print just-in-time country information for portable review while traveling. The site could benefit from more attention to link maintenance, as links to resources in several sections did not work or linked to incorrect pages, including sections on Italy, Argentina, and Australia as well as the newsletter sign-up link. Overall, this website has many strengths as a resource for international travelers and professionals preparing to conduct business in other countries or shape an international career. It is affiliated with the International Business Center site, directed by Stephen Taylor, who boasts impressive executive/managerial experience in international business with extensive worldwide travel. Global MBA graduates at the University of Texas at Dallas participated in collecting information for the site. See related, Centre for Intercultural Learning http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/cfsi-icse/cil-cai/index-eng.asp  Summing Up: Recommended. Business collections at all levels. -- D. Truty, Northeastern Illinois University. ACRL Choice, Nov 2012.

GovSpeak: A Guide to U.S. Government Acronyms and Abbreviations

GovSpeak: A Guide to U.S. Government Acronyms and Abbreviations,
Presented as a LibGuide, this website provides links to the actual "identified department, agency, office, program or publication" for hundreds of government acronyms. Based on Appendix A of the U.S. Government Manual http://usgovernmentmanual.gov/ , its content has been greatly expanded and enhanced. .... Military abbreviations are excluded; instead users are referred to the DOD Dictionary of Military Terms www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/. Acronyms are arranged alphabetically. If an agency has merged or changed names, links to the new acronym are provided. The site is searchable, within confines of the capabilities of LibGuides software. Links are checked monthly; no dead links were found during searching. Of the Internet's various acronym sites, this one stands out as the most thorough for locating government acronyms. Searching Acronym Finder www.acronymfinder.com/  or Abbreviations www.abbreviations.com/ presents more difficulties in locating desired acronyms and yields less detailed results. A comparison of this site to the 2012 edition of the Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary ... revealed some abbreviations in GovSpeak that were not in this annual publication from Gale.... The Dictionary contains a wider variety of government-related acronyms, including those that correspond to defunct agencies, the military, location identifiers, and foreign governments; however, it lacks direct links to agency information. Not surprisingly, GovSpeak is incomplete; creating a complete government acronym list would be nearly impossible. However, this site will be useful . . .  since it allows users to quickly locate many government acronyms and find corresponding information. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and general readers. -- C. A. Sproles, University of Louisville ACRL- Choice Dec 2012

Einstein Archives Online

Einstein Archives Online, originally created in 2003 was updated and relaunched in March 2012. It will ultimately provide access to the large collection of scientific and nonscientific manuscripts held by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the digitized manuscripts in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein , edited by the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology. The website presently contains a thorough online Finding Aid to the collections. Though links are not clearly indicated, placing the screen cursor over the bold text of some section headings in the Finding Aid will reveal links. There are lists of persons, geographic names associated with the manuscripts, and directory folders for scientific, nonscientific, and biographical materials. The folder numbers in this Finding Aid can be searched in the Archival Database using the field limiter Call Number.

Most of the 80,000 records in the Archival Database currently provide only metadata on the manuscript items, but digitized manuscripts are continually being added. The goal is to provide access to some 7,000 images, up from the approximately 3,000 images available from 2003-2011. Users can view any digitized manuscript by clicking on a thumbnail of the manuscript. The digitized manuscripts checked for this review were crisp and legible. The website also contains a Gallery that provides a sample of manuscripts from the Einstein Archives, reflecting the breadth of materials that will be accessible online when this project is completed. The Finding Aid and Archival Database sections in their present form should prove useful to science historians and Einstein scholars. As more of the manuscripts are digitized, the site will become an essential tool for the scholarly community. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic and professional collections. -- S. A. Curtis, University of Missouri--Kansas City Choice

LibrarySpot

Simplifying the Search for the Best Library and Reference Resources on the Web Welcome to LibrarySpot.com, a free virtual library resource center for educators and students, librarians and their patrons, families, businesses and just about anyone exploring the Web for valuable research information. Thanks for stopping by! We hope that you find LibrarySpot.com to be a useful, engaging and invaluable resource for online research. We created LibrarySpot.com to break through the information overload of the Web and bring the best library and reference sites together with insightful editorial in one user-friendly spot. Sites featured on LibrarySpot.com are hand-selected and reviewed by our editorial team for their exceptional quality, content and utility.

National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), located at the University of Colorado at Boulder, focuses on polar and cryospheric research. NSIDC is supported through collaborative agreements with several agencies including NOAA, NSF, NASA, and other international data-producing organizations.

The center is well-known to researchers seeking archived remote-sensing data sets on polar ice sheets and glaciers, but it usually makes headlines when referenced in news stories on shrinking sea ice coverage, the melting of glacial ice due to global warming, threatened Arctic species endangered by climate change, and ice-free Arctic summers attributed to increasing greenhouse gases. To its credit, NSIDC maintains a website that is top-notch.

The access to archived and current data sets, news, program information, research profiles, pictures, and expert analysis is impressive. The About the Cryosphere section is especially useful for general audiences and students; it provides extensive information about sea ice, snow, glaciers, etc., with links to related information, educational resources, and a glossary. The site is well designed, with easy-to-follow tabs that give everyone from novice high school students to researchers clear guidelines and tools for navigation. These include instructions for downloading data, contact sources for further information, metadata records, and related permissions. What makes this resource handy is NSIDC's ability to provide not only pertinent data sets, but analysis through graphs, modeling, pictures, and research summaries, offering expert and peer-reviewed research free of charge. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic, professional, and general audiences, all levels. -- I. D. Gordon, Brock University, Choice, October 2012

College students and the flu

Every year, the flu spreads across college campuses nationwide. Close living quarters, shared restrooms, and a lot of social activities make a college student more likely to catch the flu.
This MedlinePlus article will give you information about the flu and college students. This is not a substitute for medical advice from your doctor. Topics included:

• WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF THE FLU?
• HOW DO I TREAT MY SYMPTOMS?
• WHAT ABOUT ANTIVIRAL MEDICATIONS?
• WHEN CAN I RETURN TO SCHOOL?
• SHOULD I GET THE FLU VACCINE?
• WHERE CAN I GET A FLU VACCINE?
• HOW DO I AVOID CATCHING OR SPREADING FLU?
• WHEN SHOULD I SEE A DOCTOR?

MedlinePlus is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Health

Additional information can be found at:

As Flu Season Approaches, Why Do College Students Ignore the H1N1 Vaccine? 

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) — "Get your flu shot" is advice that many college students ignored in 2009. Findings of a researcher studying the problem highlight the influences of a complex set of interrelated factors, such as students' baseline knowledge, their information seeking, and the credibility of information sources. Students' low response rate is of particular concern because up to November 2009, almost 80 percent of confirmed H1N1 flu cases in the United States occurred in people below age 30. Read more . . . 

College Students Report Low Flu Vaccine Rate. ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2012) "With influenza virus already being detected this November, it is likely to increase in the next one to three months and may overlap with exam periods. Although it is hard to predict the severity of the coming flu season, we usually have more influenza activity after a mild season like last year's." Read more . . . 

Flu Vaccine Linked To Reduced Illness, Impairment Of Academic Performance Among College Students. ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2008) — College students who are vaccinated against influenza appear less likely to develop flu-like illnesses, require related health care visits or experience impairments in academic performance during flu season, according to a new report. Read more . . . 

Google: Flu Trends: http://www.google.org/flutrends/ "We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity."

Florida Department of Health: Acute Respiratory Disease Surveillance report Floridashealth.com 

CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: FluView: weekly influenza surveillance report

Where can you get a flu shot? use the Vaccine Finder ! ! 

James Joyce's Ulysses Not Obscene

This Day in History: US Federal Judge Rules James Joyce's Ulysses Not Obscene (1933)
For more than a decade after its debut, James Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, was banned in the US. A literary magazine had attempted to publish it in serial form, but the series was cut short after the publishers ran a rather suggestive passage and were convicted of obscenity. When the implicit ban on the book was finally challenged in 1933, Judge John M. Woolsey praised the work for its literary merits and ruled that it was not obscene. How did a publisher force the issue to court? More . . .  Discuss . . .
TCC Library Resources on James Joyce and Ulysses, including video, books and e-books.

Studies reveal effectiveness of online learning

These days, it is not uncommon for many students to have to work while getting their degree.  Fortunately, online classes are becoming increasingly prevalent, thus offering students the opportunity to work and attend school at the same time . . . .

Students and parents may have concerns about these classes not being as rigorous as those offered in the brick and mortar setting, but as it turns out—the opposite is actually true. . . .
that students are actually more likely to excel when they participate in “blended learning,” meaning some offline and some online education. One reason for this being that they spend more time engaged with the actual material when they have to go online to learn it. 
Complete article available
TCC offers flexibility for students, with online courses, hybrid courses, self-paced instruction, and campus based courses. Check us out and see which option is best for you!