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The Most Ridiculous School Mascots You’ve Never Seen

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School mascots serve as rallying points for the school’s programs, with a particular focus on athletics. While mascots are usually silent, they get a crowd screaming like a bomb threat. Mascots can turn a cool crowd warm, and whip a warm crowd into a frenzy. So it makes sense that every serious sports team has their mascot costumes, to keep traditions in place and keep up with the other team’s mascot. Here are some completely ridiculous ones you may have never heard of.

Artie the Fighting Artichoke from Scottsdale Community College

An artichoke is a relative of the daisy family, believe it or not. Artie the Fighting Artichoke is just one of the violent plants cultivated by colleges out of a combination of heart and spite. When the 1970s-era student government put artichokes up against rutabagas and scoundrels, it must’ve been an easy choice. Everybody knows rutabagas are wimps.

Fighting Okra from Delta State University

Okra is a plant in the same family as hollyhocks, which undoubtedly qualifies it as a serious contender in the sports world. Delta State students were once known as “the Statesmen,” but apparently visions of Abraham Lincoln and FDR just couldn’t handle the brutal ferocity of okra. If you don’t eat your vegetables or if you try to play with them, they will exact their revenge by forcing you into a pitched battle. Fear the okra.

Green Wave from Tulane University

Believe it or not, the Green Wave wasn’t named for polluted water, but for a song. The Rolling Green Wave was published in Tulane’s school paper in 1920, and eventually became a traditional “salute” to opposing teams. People at sporting events issue green gloves, and when the opposing team leaves the field everyone waves to them.

There are a lot of ridiculous sports mascots, and many are fairly obscure. Sometimes the strangest thing about a mascot is its origins. While you may have never heard of the above-mentioned mascots, checking them out can lead to some serious “can’t believe that’s for real” hilarity.

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Home Schooling For Your Child ? An Option Worth Considering

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Group of children in a primary school in Paris

Image via Wikipedia

How would you react if you were advised not to send your child to school? You would probably reject the advice outright because such a decision will be very bad for the future of your child. Further, your local government will be very interested in knowing why you have taken such a decision when education is such an important aspect of an individual is life.

Well, you always have the option of trying home schooling, right? Many persons are critical of home schooling because such a child will miss interacting with other children of his or her age. Well, there are many ways and means where you can achieve this goal. Do not make the mistake of dismissing home schooling outright.

If you have a spouse at home who is not doing any work, then you would do well to utilize his or her skills to educate your child. There are numerous online teaching resources that can help parents plan education properly. Your child may have a good grasp of certain subjects and may be weak in certain other subjects. In such a scenario, you can speed up the process of teaching and learning as far as the strong subjects are concerned. In the same way, you can slow down and focus on the minute details as far as the weak subjects are concerned.

You can use the money that you have saved to get the best educational resources for your child. You can organize visits to museums and sites of cultural importance on a regular basis to give the best education to your child.

 

 

 

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Why Do People Criticize The Option Of Home Schooling?

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Children in Khorixas, Namibia

Image via Wikipedia

Why are you scared of the option of home schooling your child? You may have studied in an educational institution and may be comfortable with the idea. However, what if your child performs better if you opt for home schooling? It is an option that you must consider and analyze properly.

Discipline

Many individuals are afraid that the child will become undisciplined if he or she stays at home. Well, what is stopping you from setting up a separate space that will be the study room for your child? When you enter this space, you will be the teacher and your child will be the student. You can keep all parental concerns outside and treat the child just as a teacher would behave. Discipline is not something that is attached to any specific place. A lot depends on how you treat the child. In any case, you cannot presume that your child will learn discipline just because it is sent outside the house for school.

Exposure

Lack of exposure to other individuals of same age is not an insurmountable problem. You can encourage your child to participate in sports and this will present numerous opportunities to interact with others. You can encourage your child to be outgoing. Make sure he or she is a member of clubs related to nature and education. A lot depends on how you approach this problem.

Home schooling will be less expensive as compared to sending your child a school. You will utilize your talents better and would have wonderful role model to present if you decide to go in for another child.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Colleges & Courses, General, Online Education Tagged With: , ,

College At Your Fingertips

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High school students today are planning their college educations as early as sophomore year.  It is assumed that everyone will be going to college or trade school of some kind.  This was definitely not the case just a few years ago, when someone could make a good living with a high school diploma.  While the high school diploma is a very important step, being able to make the big money is almost certainly contingent on a degree or certificate in higher education.

Some thirty and forty something people are finding that they are definitely not ready to retired, but are at the point in their careers where they need to get a degree.  Fortunately, college for adults is not as hard as it sounds.  There are community colleges with classes at all hours, including weekend classes.  There are complete degrees able to be garnered taking on-line classes from your home computer.  Take the time to look.  You can find the college that is right for you.  Perhaps an on-line education is just right for you, if you have time to sit at your computer a few hours a week.  Some colleges even allow legitimate college credit for your life experience.  If you are obtaining a degree in the field that you work, the college may take into consideration the many years you have put in and the knowledge you have gained from experience, giving you college credit and saving you money.

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General Studies Degree Programs

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There is some wisdom behind the idiom that any degree is a good degree. While people who aspire to launch the space shuttle might not benefit from an English degree in their career path, they are dramatically better off than someone with no degree.

At the same time not everyone is born with a drive to focus on one specific area for the rest of their lives. While most of us do want to live comfortably and have the money to sustain ourselves, we don’t always share a common drive toward a particular career.

Still, knowing that any degree will improve the current state, a Bachelor’s Degree in a General Studies program is often a good solution. For those who aren’t completely driven towards a specific type of work, getting a General Studies degree just automatically opens up doors and opportunities which weren’t there before the degree.

Most universities offer them, and many offer them through distance learning. You can essentially pay for the credit hours prior to the course, and then take care of everything else online. Get your syllabus, communicate with instructors, turn in and review assignments through your home computer. While many programs will require a certified proctor to administer tests, there are almost always local options which mean you won’t have to travel to a distant university campus. Get a high school principal or librarian to administer the tests, many times for free.

General Studies degree programs are going to offer a broad range of class types without delving too far into any one field. There will be a mix of sciences, languages, math, electives and and some classical studies. Coursework will gradually become more complex throughout, but the end goal is usually 120 credit hours in a wide variety of subjects.

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Boston College Apartments in the City

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With over 80 universities and colleges within the Boston area, residents are accustomed to the September influx of university students flooding the housing markets. Every late August and September, you can see cars loaded up to the breaking point and mattresses precariously positioned on car tops as students make their yearly pilgrimage. One of the cities’ most sought after university addresses is Boston College, which is listed by Forbes magazine as one of the best colleges in America.

While Boston College is a very tough school to get admitted into, the same could be said of the notoriously difficult Boston apartment market. Finding a college apartment in Boston can be intimidating. While the selection of apartments is vast, good Boston apartments have a habit of getting swooped up as soon as they become available, especially when the apartments are close to the campus of a school such as Boston College.

You have much to consider when finding a college apartment in Boston. The most important factor should definitely be accessibility. You will likely be making trips to campus at least once if not multiple times a day, so while it may be a bit more expensive to live closer to the school, you could actually save money on food or commuter cost. Another factor to look at is transportation. Boston traffic is notorious, and parking is a nightmare, so it is well worth the effort to find an apartment that has good public transportation links. Typically, those apartments closest to transportation links are also a bit more expensive. However, when dealing with a harsh Boston winter, many people would rather be closer to the T-line than walking a mile to save a bit of money. You might end up spending that extra cash on cab fare.

Regardless of where in Boston you choose to live, you must make sure it is a safe area and well serviced by public transport to your school.

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GED Improves Your Earning Potential

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There are many reasons that people drop out of high school. Some are good reasons, and some are reasons that people regret. In today’s job market, receiving your GED improves your earning potential.
High school dropouts are not stupid. They have simply had difficult circumstances in their lives. If this happened to you, a GED not only gets you a better job, but it even allows you a chance to apply for college.
If you get a job at a fast food restaurant that doesn’t require a high school education, and you demonstrate that you are leadership material, you’ll be limited in how far you can advance by your lack of a high school diploma or GED. If your are interested in becoming a certified nurse’s aide, you will need a GED. Nurse’s aides are one of the most needed professionals in the medical field.
Why stop at nurse’s aide? If you are good with people, and you are interested in becoming a nurse, you can get a nursing license in about two years. However, you must have a GED to enter nursing school. If your financial situation is too difficult to further your education, you may qualify for grants and scholarships. Education is the key to financial success.
The top reason people get their GED is to improve their finances. The other reason is to pursue career goals that require some college or technical school education. You may know people who have been very successful without a GED, but you may also have noticed that those people are rare. Many of them are in business for themselves, but those types of businesses may not suit your dreams.
If you decide to get your GED, check with the local high school for study courses and also for test locations and times.

Filed Under: Colleges & Courses

MIT Offers Free Education

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This sounds too good to be true. MIT offers free education.  Believe it or not, it IS true.  Through the school’s OpenCourseWare, anyone can access free lectures and course material.  The best part of this free education is that it covers more than technical subjects.  The worst part of MIT’s free education is that you will not receive a degree from MIT.  This is for the life long learner, researcher, or even student at another college.

It makes a beautiful kind of sense that MIT would offer this.  One of the strongholds on the internet is sharing information at no charge.  The philosophy is that we build stronger, more secure systems by sharing our knowledge and creating common discourses at no charge.  Some good examples of this are OpenOffice, Creative Commons, and Wikipedia.

By visiting http://ocw.mit.edu, an adult education buff can browse many subjects.  There are 36 departments at MIT that offer online course materials.  Not only will adults find this website compelling, but some high school teachers may find innovative ways to improve their study plans.  Certainly an AP teacher would find great value in sharing course work from one of the top schools in the United States.

Even in more traditional subjects, such as literature, learners will find some extremely forward thinking concepts.  For instance, there are two graduate level courses available in non-linear narrative.  This means that the course studies the written narrative as it is told through a computer.  Multiple voices, points of view and media content are added to the story, thus bringing a whole new dimension to reading and story telling.  Pretty exciting stuff.

If the adult learner is looking for a specific content, that may be a little difficult to find.  However, if you’re just a curious person looking to improve your knowledge base, MIT’s free education courses are definitely the place to gain expert status.

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Earn More with a Degree

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Do a search in the business classifieds section or go online for a job search, and you’ll find one common theme: most employers are looking for qualified individuals. By “qualified” that means someone with a degree. Ranging from a bachelor’s to a master’s or PhD, it doesn’t matter. Degrees matter, period, to businesses because that’s where the experience and job quality exists. Even raises are calculated by attaining degrees, so it’s easy to say that when you’re holding onto that little piece of paper with your name on it that says you’ve graduated from X University with the Y Degree of “Something-or-Other,” you’ll know you’ll sit at the top of the prospective employer’s list of applicants.

Bottom line: Degree holders make more money than non-degree holders. Plain and simple. So you do the math. Degrees open doors to more opportunities. Do your research and figure out what would best suit you in terms of the kind of degree you want: traditional or online? Technical or liberal arts? Whatever it is you’re looking for, be sure to pick something you enjoy; something you’re gifted at. Sites such as EarnMyDegree.com would also help you in searching for the very best online school, if virtual education is the way you want to go; and there are numerous other resources and options to go after when pursuing a degree. Just know that it will take work, commitment, and a no-quit attitude that won’t ever back down.

Because the fact is if you want to provide for your family or future family, if you want financial security and to avoid unemployment, if you want to be able to put food on the table, you’d want the most ideal in income potential possible. And without a doubt the way to go is to obtain a degree from an accredited university, online or traditional. Once you make that step, you can be assured that your bright future has been etched in stone.

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What is an Accredited College, and why do I Need One?

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Commencement 2009
Image by NIU Business via Flickr

When a college states that it’s accredited, it means that the college, it’s programs and performance of the staff are impeccable and trustworthy, and the credits earned at an accredited college are usually transferable to universities and trade schools. Any school having a state license means nothing when it comes to accreditation.

Being accredited results from careful scrutinizing of colleges, universities and other institutes of higher learning by a board of peers whose members are on staff at other various colleges and universities. The board examines closely each school and learning facility and gives it accreditation, or not.

Beware, however, of colleges and universities that claim accreditation by a small, unknown company. Although there may be many good, honest accreditation companies out there, just as many of them are fly-by-night scammers who will accredit anyone willing to pay a fee. For this reason it’s a good practice to only look at schools accredited by the United States Department of Education (USDE).

Accredited Colleges Help Your Career After School is Out

Why is a school’s being accredited important? Recruiters for jobs and employers won’t hesitate to accept the training of someone who’s been to a reputable institution of higher learning. Also, other universities and colleges will usually accept degrees and transfer credits from such a school.

Accreditation also helps a potential employer to weed out possible new hires that don’t have their standard of education. An applicant who’s been to an accredited college has been taught certain standards that will be passed on through job performance, and recruiters do look for that. It takes less time and money to train someone who’s been educated about the business first. Time is money to a business.

If deciding which school to attend or whom to take online classes from, look for the USDE accreditation, and then continue the search from there. Neither you nor your career will suffer for it.

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