Skeptic Project

Two answers.

1. Work on writing well and clearly. Given my own experience with college students (I teach them on a daily basis), someone entering college who can string well-chosen words together in a coherent sentence is likely to go farther than some nimrod who can't express him/herself worth a damn. Cogency of thought will get attention, more so than explicit advertising that you don't believe in woo or BS. Practice writing. I know it sounds like a drag, but it will serve you well in the long run.

2. Good chart.

I'd add like to add that when people tell you that something you do is GOOD, take it seriously - especially if they're in a position to tell you that you did well. After reading this thread I decided to check my student portal which stores information about all my grading for my classes.

Last year I was studying a film degree but for all sorts of reasons decided that I hated the shit out of it and that I should've gone with my first instinct to study audio engineering (which is what I'm now doing).

Anyway, my memory of every assessment item I submitted was that they were all really shit. After reading this thread I was going through my marks and came across this about one particular essay I wrote on popular culture, and this was my teacher's marking comments:

"Brenton, you’ve presented an informed overview of the selected work, utilising visual material as support. The information provided is clearly expressed to the audience, it may however require condensing. Using expert language and technique, your paragraphs flow seamlessly into each other, demonstrating an outstanding ability to examine the chosen work and effectively and articulately link it back to the key design elements. A very powerful and well informed article on post modernist pop-culture, adapting correct referencing as well."

I hated that essay to death and deleted it as soon as I'd submitted because I never wanted to see it ever ever again. But, apparently, academically it was very good.

So I guess the essence of this long rambling post is have confidence in your own abilities. Not to the extreme that you think you're capable of being a high achiever at anything without hard work, and also not to the extreme that I easily fall into of feeling like my work is constantly not good enough for academic standards.

I'm one of those people that easily falls into the trap of being insecure about my own abilities. I'm nowhere near as bad as I used to be, but the key I guess is not to despair (ever) because hard-work is all it takes, really (to generalise).

Kind of LOL-ing that the only criticism in that marking is that I ramble ("needs condensing"). HAH. SO TRUE.

P.S., If you had good English teacher in your final years, you'd be a good essay writer anyway - I'm lucky in that respect. :p

Also if you can't touch-type personally I'd reccommend learning to. It's invaluable if you're taking a laptop into lectures and even when you're just doing research and want to be able to type as quick as your mind is ticking over. I learnt to touch-type about 8+ years ago when primary school teachers made us cover keyboards with a sheet of cotton so we couldn't look down, but if you can't already, definitely learn. Pretty sure there are tons of free download-able programs that can get you started on that.

Ah well any touch-typing is better than none. I'm a monster. I can touch-type for ages without looking at the keyboard. Kind of makes me look robotic sometimes but I'm sure it'll be a very good skill if all my career ambitions fail and I just end up being someone's secretary... lol.

Ahah, I ought to repost an FB status I posted yesterday that's totally relevant:

My only motivation to study is to make sure I don't end up like people I despise, to feel legitimate in saying that I'm better than them if I put myself in a position to achieve more than them. Just reminding myself...

I do have far more and greater motivations than that... but, when I really feel like I can't be bothered I just think of those people who have been asses to me that I can't wait to walk past and sarcastically be like "HEEEEY, HOW YA GOIN'!?" with the satisfaction of knowing that they will know that I'm in a better place than they are. The ultimate revenge is being better than the people that treated you bad. Oh god, now we run the risk of a deep philosophical conversation about the best kinds of revenge... lol.

But yeah, motivation and hard-work: keys.