DISTANCE LEARNING | CONTINUING EDUCATION | ONLINE DEGREES

I thought we’d depart from education-based themes to examine what students are looking forward to — namely, work. Or to be more precise, the "vertical workstation." The vertical workstation was recently featured on a MSNBC.com segment entitled, appropriately, "What Were They Thinking?" Evidently, what some researchers at the Mayo Clinic were thinking was that American workers are a little too beefy, which is why they came up with a treadmill-mounted desk. Evidently, by walking while you work, you can burn about 100 calories an hour or about 66 pounds per year.

Now the associate editor at MSNBC.com poked some fun at the vertical workstation, which is probably well-deserved, but I happen to think the idea is genius. Here’s why.

First of all, it enables a new generation of legitimate excuses for getting out of work. Think about how many days-off you could secure with a high ankle sprain or a severe blister courtesy of your new workstation? Best of all, because these are work-related injuries you may be entitled to workers’ compensation.

Second, the vertical workstation could become a handy scapegoat for the usual work-a-day gaffes, like misspelling a co-worker’s name or forgetting to submit a weekly report. After all, it’s hard to walk and type at the same time, right?

Next, the vertical workstation will totally revamp the idea of business casual. Polo shirts and slacks will soon be replaced by dry-fit shirts, baggy shorts, running shoes, and iPods — all bearing the corporate logo, of course. Still, who wouldn’t want to dress down a little more for the sake of health and fitness in the workplace?

Finally, three words: "vertical workstation high." It is a common phenomenon for experienced runners to get a rush of endorphins about seven to ten miles into a strenuous run. And although I’ve never experienced this "runner’s high" myself, my calculations indicate that if I stepped onto a vertical workstation in the morning and slow-walked feverishly at a three-to-five-mile-an-hour clip, I could get several all-natural chemical fixes every day.

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough incentive to make me a vertical workstation junky? What about you?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benjamin Welch has been a college instructor in writing and composition for nearly six years. When he’s not teaching or playing golf, he offers advice for students seeking information about continuing education, online education and online degrees.

“Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong — and usually at the worst possible moment.” This universal truth — also known as Murphy’s Law — can apply to many areas, from economics to sports, as anyone who lived through either of the Great Depressions knows. (By that I mean either the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929 or the one in Chicago following the infamous “Bartman episode” in the 2003 NLCS.)

A website entitled "Murphy’s Laws Site” has created a catalog of Murphy’s Laws and has organized them around specific subjects such as love, technology, nursing, lotteries, graphic design, and parenthood. There is also a section devoted to education and teaching. As a former college student and a current college instructor, I can certify that these laws are absolutely true. A few of my favorites include:

The time a teacher takes in explaining is inversely proportional to the information retained by students.

When reviewing your notes before an exam, the most important ones will be illegible.

Eighty percent of the final exam will be based on the one lecture you missed or the one book you didn’t read.

The one course you must take to graduate will not be offered during you last semester.

The closest library doesn’t have the material you need, and no matter which book you need, it’s on the bottom shelf.

The library will close five minutes before you remember that you left your book bag inside. Corollary #1: It will be Saturday, and it won’t open until Monday. Corollary #2: Your half-finished term paper, which is due Monday morning, and all your research will be inside.

When you study for easy tests you fail miserably; when you don’t study for the hard ones you pass with flying colors.

For my part, I would add one more Murphy’s Law to the collection. I’m calling it “Murphy’s Law of Course Evaluations” — it is that the only student that provides detailed feedback at the end of the semester is the one that absolutely detests me and that rarely, if ever, attended class.

What are your Murphy’s Laws?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benjamin Welch has been a college instructor in writing and composition for nearly six years. When he’s not teaching or playing golf, he offers advice for students seeking information about online education, continuing education and online degrees.

NOTE: The neutrality of this blog is disputed.

As a college writing instructor, I can vouch that there are certain questions that come up again and again during the course of every writing class. Questions include:

When do I use "then" and when do I use "than"?

How do I write a good thesis statement?

Where do I put the page numbers?

Then there are more general questions, such as:

Do you always have to start class on time and end class on time?

Is there anyone else who teaches this course?

You’re married. Really? You? (Often followed by a "That poor woman" muttered under their breath.)

But perhaps the most common question I get is whether Wikipedia, the ubiquitous online encyclopedia, can be used as a viable source for research papers. In response to this question, I try to explain how academic discourse works — I talk about accuracy, credibility, objectivity, peer-reviewing, and the like. Most of the time, students just stare at me blankly and say, "So … ah … is that a no?"

As such, I’ve been searching for a better response, one that I hope will finally put to rest this question, which has been lurking in the halls of academia and feeding on the unsuspecting brains of my students like a zombie from one of the old Simpson’s Halloween Specials. At long last, I think I finally found the answer, which was provided by, of all people, the founder of Wikipedia.com, Jimmy Wales. To quote from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Speaking at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Mr. Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

Mr. Wales goes on to say that Wikipedia is good for getting a general overview for a subject but notes that academic papers should draw from real sources — you know, like the kind you find in the library.

There it is — straight from the horse’s mouth — Wikipedia is not a viable source for college papers. Thus, I think it’s finally time that students and educators accept the fact that serious academic discussions must be conducted in serious academic forums. Websites like Wikipedia simply cannot function as the means for conveying crucial information on scholarly topics. As such, I can think of no better way to strike the death knell for Wikipedia and its kin than by having candid discussion in an academic setting that is truly deserving of that name — namely, this blog.

I welcome your anonymous, web-generated comments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benjamin Welch has been a college instructor in writing and composition for nearly six years. When he’s not teaching or playing golf, he offers advice for students seeking information about continuing education, online education and online degrees.

Right now, many college graduates are in the process of exchanging their caps and gowns for "business casual" and their diplomas for paychecks. The question is: what is the exchange rate?

Recently, CNNMoney.com published an article on precisely that topic, entitled, "Most Lucrative Degrees for 2007 Grads." Overall, the news for recent graduates is good — employers are hiring 17.4 percent more college graduates than they did last year, and most — though not all — starting salaries are increasing (sorry fellow liberal arts’ majors, but we knew what we were getting into).

Here are some of the more lucrative college degrees, along with their percentage increase over last year, as reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE):

Chemical engineering: $60,054 (up 7.4%)

Electrical engineering: $54,599 (up 3.2%)

Mechanical engineering: $54,587 (up 7.7%)

Computer science: $51,070 (up 2%)

Civil engineering: $47,145 (up 4.8%)

Management information systems: $46,568 (up 5.5%)

Business administration: $43,523 (up 9.2%)

Marketing: $41,323 (up 14%)

Accounting: $46,508 (up 1.7%)

And here are some of the less lucrative:

Liberal arts: $30,502 (down 1.1%)

As a recipient of both an undergraduate and graduate degree in the liberal arts, I think I can speak for the entire liberal arts’ community when I say, with utter shock and indignation, "$30,502 a year? You’re kidding, right? That’s much more than I expected."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benjamin Welch has been a college instructor in writing and composition for nearly six years. When he’s not teaching or playing golf, he offers advice for students seeking information about distance learning, online education and online degrees.