Alexa K. Apallas
122

Do you have a take-charge personality? Can you handle a wide variety of complex tasks? Are you good at seeing the big picture? Can you get the job done right, even on a tight deadline? If so, a career as a project manager may be right for you.
In today’s workforce, teamwork is more important than ever. But team projects have a tendency to run over-schedule and over-budget. According to a 1998 Standish Group survey, 56 percent of projects failed to meet their deadlines, and cost overruns averaged 189 percent.
As companies focus more and more on the bottom line, efficiency has become of the utmost importance. Cost overruns and missed deadlines are no longer tolerated. That’s one of the reasons why project managers are in such high demand. Project managers are team leaders who have the management skills necessary to coordinate complex projects. They are responsible for bringing the project in on time and within budget. Project managers may work in a variety of fields, including computer and information systems management, engineering, and financial management. They typically earn salaries in the high five figures, depending on the industry, according to Vault.com.
Project managers help develop the scope of the project and then monitor the progress at every step. They generally work with diverse groups of people at every level within the organization, so diplomacy and strong communication skills are a must. Project managers must also motivate team members and keep them focused on the task at hand. Finally, project managers analyze information and are responsible for decision-making.
Often, project managers start out as members of a project team and advance by demonstrating leadership skills. They may ultimately become consultants or partners in project management companies.
Most project management positions require at least a Bachelor’s degree and some business experience. That’s why American InterContinental University Online (AIU) has developed a specialized course program for those interested in this lucrative, rewarding field. And for project managers looking to further advance their careers, AIU Online also offers an MBA in project management.
AIU Online’s programs allow students to make a career change or climb the corporate ladder without giving up the security of their existing position. Distance learning is also perfect for students who do not live near a traditional campus or who have family obligations that prevent them from attending regularly-scheduled classes. AIU Online offers a number of resources to its online students, including a “Cybrary,?or virtual library, that’s accessible around the clock. Students have lots of interaction with their peers and instructors through message boards, online chats and email. AIU Online also has programs in place to assist students with career planning. And at AIU Online, students can complete their studies quickly. A student who already has an Associate degree can earn a Bachelor’s degree in project management in as little as 13 months. An MBA in project management can be earned in just 10 months.
AIU Online has designed its project management courses to be readily applicable in the real world. For instance, the framework developed by the Project Management Institute is the accepted industry standard, so AIU Online uses that framework in its classes. Also, AIU Online’s instructors have years of experience in the field of project management, so they can share their practical knowledge with students.
Students earning a BBA in project management can expect to take courses in project management, managing project risks and opportunities, and project cost and time management. In the MBA program, students take courses that focus on the integration, scope, time and communication aspects of project management, as well as in cost, quality, risk and procurement.
AIU Online students gain hands-on experience through individual and team projects. They must develop a project scope, budget and timeline, and they must also identify areas of risk and create a risk management plan. The team projects allow students to build their leadership skills.
With a degree in project management from AIU Online, students are prepared to start a new career or advance an existing one. Project managers can seek careers in a number of fields, including general management, human resources management, advertising and marketing, logistics, computer and information sciences, and financial management. Put that take-charge personality to work, and take charge of your career with AIU Online.

Laurie Hurley
179

“We have a science project due in two days and I don’t know when I’m going to get the time to finish it.?
“I did research on the internet for the social studies report until midnight last night.?
“We wrote the spelling words ten times before they were finally right.?
“I made flashcards for all of the multiplication and division facts in preparation for the big math test.?
Do you think the above comments are from students, committed to working hard to get good grades? Unfortunately, not. These are just some of the things I hear from parents who enable their children to take short cuts in school or who are too heavily invested in their kids?homework and school assignments. Parents who feel the need to do the work for their children aren’t helping their children. “We?do not have a test or a project due, the son or daughter does, so why is mom or dad doing the work?
As a professional educational consultant and owner of a busy in-home tutoring service, I hear these comments at least three times a week from the clients I visit. My job as a tutor broker is to match qualified tutors with students. To make the best match possible, I meet every student and parent(s) in their home to get a better idea of the students?academic needs, as well as personality and learning style. I interview the student, with the parent present. We talk about school, the subject in which they need tutoring and their study habits. What I discover is an increasing number of parents are more stressed out than the kids because they are doing the work for their children instead of teaching them good study skills and independence.
It is difficult to break the bad habit of doing too much for your children, however, the following suggestions might help:
1) Realize that not all kids have the potential to get straight A’s. Some parents believe that if their kids don’t get all A’s there is something wrong. Absolutely not true! A well-rounded student is one who tries their very best scholastically and is involved in social activities as well. Not everyone can achieve a 4.0 average. There is nothing wrong with a passing grade in all subjects, regardless of whether it’s an A, B or C.
2) Keep your expectations realistic. If your child is doing all of their homework every night, studying to the best of their ability and taking school seriously but not pulling all A’s, it is possible that they are just not capable of living up the high expectations you have for them. If one excels in reading and is less talented in math, accept that. Not everyone can be excellent in every subject.
3) Make sure your child has a healthy mixture of academics and other activities. A child who gets all A’s at the cost of having no friends or social outlets is definitely going to suffer for it down the road. When colleges look at a student’s academic record, they also look at extra curricular activities, volunteer work, involvement in sports or the arts. Grades and test scores are important, but so are being able to balance the good grades with a well-rounded lifestyle.
4) Teach your child early on to be independent when it comes to school work. In the primary grades, it is important to help your youngster establish good study habits. Sitting with them and guiding them through homework assignments, explaining or reading the directions to them is perfectly normal and acceptable. By third grade, they should be able to do their homework with much less involvement from you. Checking it over for them and pointing out errors for them to correct is a good habit. By fourth grade, homework should be reviewed by the parent. If there is a mistake, for example, suggest that they review their work again because you found three mistakes on pages one and two. Let them find the errors with limited guidance from you. Fifth grade and onward, they should be totally on their own.
5) Help your child establish a homework routine and provide a quiet place for homework. Some kids come right home and do their homework immediately. Others need to wind down and do it right before dinner. Others are productive after dinner. Tune in to your child’s most productive time and try not to deviate from an established schedule. They will get so much more done if homework time is defined for them. As they get older, changes will probably need to be made to accommodate other activities. The key is consistency. Provide the right environment for homework and studying. If you have children who are toddlers or younger, be mindful that it is distracting for a brother or sister to try to concentrate if the television is blasting or the other kids are being loud.
6) Communicate with your children’s teachers. Know what is happening in class and what is expected to be done at home. Be sure to attend back-to-school night and all parent-teacher conferences. Get to know the teachers and establish clear lines of communication with them. Be aware of how and where homework assignments, quizzes and tests are communicated to the class. Many teachers utilize a school website to post assignments, etc. Check the site regularly and ask to see the completed work. For older students, DON’T correct it, but instead make sure it’s done neatly! Know when the exams are and when big projects are due. This way, if your teenager informs you they are heading to a friend’s soccer game and you know a big exam is the next day, you can inquire as to whether they have studied. Knowing what is happening in a class is very empowering for a parent.
7) Encourage your student to think for themselves. Provide a dictionary, thesaurus, calculator and any other tools they may need to do their work. By fifth grade, if your child is still asking you how to spell words, they haven’t learned how to be independent. When my fifth grader asks me “How do you spell ‘special??I reply, “I don’t know, how you spell special??She gets infuriated, but she knows I won’t tell her and she begrudgingly looks it up in her dictionary. I could have given her the answer, but then she would always ask me and not learn to do it on her own. After all, I’m not the one who has to take the spelling test or write the book report, she is.
If your child is consistently confused and always has questions about school work, your antennae should go up. One of three things is happening:
a) They are not asking questions in class when they don’t understand. Shyness, embarrassment, or drawing attention to oneself by asking a question is the most common reasons for not asking. Encourage your child to speak up and that it is “OK?to not know the answer to everything. Chances are if your child has a question, others in the class have the same one and are also too embarrassed to ask.
b) They are lazy or something else is going on that you may not know about. When any student, regardless of age and grade is over their head, it is common to just shut down and tune out. To this kind of student, there is no point in taking notes because they don’t get it anyway, so why bother? Homework is too confusing for them; they have scored poorly on every test, so why try? It is also possible that something else is bothering them. Have they recently changed schools from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school? Some kids don’t handle transition well. Has their group of friends changed? Have they suddenly become loners or too social? Tune in to your students?behavior and talk to them about it. Elevating their self-esteem will do wonders and is often the cure for the lazy syndrome.
c) It is possible they might have a learning disability. A child who has struggled since the early grades might have a learning disability. For example, if your sixth grader is still reading at a third grade level or your ninth grader hasn’t mastered his math facts, there may be a legitimate problem. The best thing to do is talk to the school first. You have a legal right to ask for your child to be tested by the school. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts in education nationwide, this process is not always as easy as it should be. Talk to your pediatrician and ask for a referral for a qualified psychologist who specializes in learning disabilities.
Teaching your child to be independent will result in a much healthier relationship between you and them and a much more peaceful home life. I have heard from so many of my clients who have not fostered independence in their children that homework time results in tears, screaming and a general sense of rebellion and indignation from their children. This can be avoided by setting your children up to be winners ?and that doesn’t mean straight A’s, it means they are capable and willing to do their best and you are capable and willing to accept the results.
Laurie Hurley is the Founder & President of Bright Apple Tutoring Service, Inc. based in Southern California and Home Tutoring Business, available for purchase in the U.S. and Canada. If you are looking to begin a tutor referral service in your community without the high cost of buying a franchise, contact Home Tutoring Business, http://www.hometutoringbusiness.com, at 1.805.376.0033.

Reg Adkins
376

When examining instructional models we are offered a multitude of models focusing on the curriculum and the best instructional approach for the teacher based upon his or her particular style. Less often we find materials which target the learning style of the student. A recent “google?search on instructional models yielded no less than 7.5 million hits.
When examining counseling techniques the number of models from a search result is slightly less plentiful 5.5 million, but hardly less varied.
Many of these models and techniques are considered key to achieving educational success. I have taken the long way round to bring you to this elemental question: If all these models are important to educational success and many of them seem unrelated, then what is “educational success? Is educational success the equivalent of “academic success?
Because academic success is more definable, for the purpose of this examination we will postulate that educational success and academic success are interchangeable.
How educationally/academically successful one is may be measured by how well one is able to perform in the following proficiencies.
1. The ability to gather, interpret and usefully apply information.
2. The ability to effectively communicate both verbally and in written form.
3. The extent of knowledge in geography, history, mathematics, science and technical skills.
4. The ability to work effectively with others.
5. The ability to complete multi-phase projects.
6. The ability to make competent decisions.
7. The ability to “read?the current social and political environment.
8. The ability to incorporate personal ethics and values with those of society.
Here again, we face the question, why do these criteria indicate success?
We prove these are characteristics of success by the impact they have on other realms. For example, the National Alliance of Business, Inc provided a study which stated individuals who demonstrated the above characteristics were:
a) more stable in their employment;
b) more likely to have health insurance;
c) less dependent on public assistance;
d) less likely to engage in criminal activity;
e) more active as citizens and charitable volunteers; and
f) more healthy.
Indications are, as these are surface evidences we must look more closely into the temperament of those perceived as successful. Do the external trappings of success contribute significantly to how successful one considers themselves to be.
Such will be the topic of the next article.

David Lithman
161

Whether you are moving into the dorm as a freshman, or a senior looking for a nice house close to campus, odds are you will be living with roommates. There are very few college students who live by themselves, mostly because it is too expensive. In college towns, rent for a single apartment can reach up to $750 a month. It might not seem like a lot, and maybe it isn’t if your parents are paying for it, but for the majority of students $750 a month is not reasonable. The solution to lower rent is living with roommates. In this article I will talk about the pros and cons of living with roommates, how to find roommates, and I’ll share some of my experiences along the way. This will be a two part post due to its length. Part I will discuss dorm life, while Part II will discuss life after the dorms.
Since I just graduated from college in April of 2005, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in the college living life. Not much has changed in the few months I have been on my own. I am living by myself for the first time in my life, and let me tell you, it is quite different than being in college.
Most students start off their college experience living in the dorms. When I moved in, I elected to live in an old fashion dorm. Twenty some odd rooms on the floor with one large communal bathroom. The guys section was separated from the girls section by a lounge/kitchen with one stove, one oven, a few couches, and a TV. Not quite the same as living at home with your own bedroom and bathroom. Most dorms (at least the old fashion ones) do not have single rooms. Everyone has a roommate, and sometimes there are triples in one room. Most schools give you the option to choose your roommate or have one randomly assigned to you. My freshman year, I chose to live with a friend. Make sure you are good friends with this person or else you may end of wanting to kill each other. I have so many friends that wound up hating their roommates. They were friends on the outside, but in the room it was hell.
I was lucky for the first semester of college. I got along with my roommate for the most part. We led different lives, which was a good thing. I was on the meal plan and he wasn’t. We took different classes at different times and hung out with different people too. In my opinion this is how it has to be if you choose to live with a friend. You can’t be too close or else your friendship will crumble. (Please note that the dorms I am talking about are the ones that are about 12×12 with two twin beds and two desks and enough room to stand up. The new age dorms where people have their own rooms and bathrooms are totally different.) My friend who I roomed with ended up transferring to a new school after our first semester for various reasons. I thought I had it made in the shade. Would the school not know? Would I get the room to myself? The answer was no.
Enter Kraut (my new roommate from Germany). He was American, but grew up in Germany on a military base. This was one of the best and worst experiences of college. Living with a complete stranger who is the complete opposite of you. This is every incoming freshman’s worst nightmare. Andrew (who I referred to as Kraut… please don’t take offense to this. It was just a friendly joke between us) moved in with me because he was voted out of a triple dorm room by his previous roommates. Wow. After living with him for a semester, I know why they voted him out.
First off, he was in the ROTC. I have nothing against being a proud American and wanting to serve in the military, but when you have to wake up at 4:00 AM every morning to go run with that squadron, that’s when I start to lose it. His alarm would go off at 3:45 AM everyday and he would snooze for about 30 minutes. He never went to class, so he was there to bug me on all my time off. He played Counter-Strike (which I’m sure all you guys know what it is. Counter-Strike is a terrorist/counter terrorist video game). He played it all through the night with the sound up. You would think me dorm room was a war zone. I tried to take him out with me, or eat lunch with him at the cafeteria, but I just couldn’t take it. I learned a lot from Kraut and will never forget him. My most memorable moment is when I turned the volume all the way up on my PC and blasted the Salute Your Shorts theme song right in his ear while he was sleeping. I captured it all on video. He flicked me off and went to bed. I haven’t seen Kraut since I moved out of the dorm.
Some Pros and Cons of living in the dorms (once again, I am talking about the old fashioned dorms, not the apartment style ones).
Pro ?Right on campus. You can wake up 5 minutes before class and walk there in your boxer shorts.
Pro ?Right on campus. Food is close by (especially if you are on a meal plan).
Pro ?Social life. You meet a lot of new people living in the dorms. Some become friends for life. Dorms often have mini-parties and social events where everyone hangs out.
Pro ?It’s new. College is about experiencing new things. Dorm life is one of them.
Pro ?It’s cheap. Not nearly as expensive as renting an apartment.
Pro ?It’s very easy to find pick up games for sports.
Pro ?There is an Ethernet computer network. High speed internet access and everyone is connected. Awesome for playing video games. (When I was a freshman things like Napster were brand new. People were downloading music left and right on the high speed network and sharing music like you’ve never seen. And as far as we knew, it was all legal)
Con ?No privacy. People will just randomly walk in your room. Keep it locked.
Con ?Old and dirty dorms are no fun. I got sick once a month living in there. I still have breathing problems.
Con ?Dorms are very small. You won’t be able to fit everything you have in your closet.
Con ?Having annoying roommates that you can do nothing about.
Con – Internet firewalls. Some dorms are real strict now about what you can and can not do on the school’s internet. Sorry guys, no downloading music here.
Con ?Cooking food can be quite a problem. You have no fridge or oven in your room.
Con ?Bugs and rats. Depending on how old your dorm is (mine was built in the 40s I think) you might find rodents running around. We had a rat problem one week. I saw one run right across the floor in my room and then he disappeared into the wall.
Well that is all I have for today. Come back tomorrow (or Monday) for Part II of College Roommates. If you have any questions, email me at collegesos@yahoo.com

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