Maybe you can get a degree for pennies in Europe. But to get an American degree or credential, you pay several years of your life and money. If it’s a selective school, they may want only the fanciest students—and the pressure may be high and funding low. If you…
I got my BA from a university which attracted the rich daughter of a CEO, who wiggled her manicured toes on my bunkbed, while pretending to study in our group and mostly studying her own fingernails. (Her father had a jet. I assume she’s done quite well for herself.) The…
When I was a kid, my business-dwelling father liked to critique professors working in higher education: they’re not living in the real world, they don’t answer to sales mandates / the market / supply and demand. Imagine my astonishment when he suggested I go to grad school to become…
In my continuing series of cheesy walk-throughs of online data tools, there’s SimplyMap! My college subscribes, so you can’t easily play with it unless you’re one of the digitally lucky. However… in the interests of education, I’ll point out some fun things you can do with mapping, and some fun things…
I’ve talked about using the US census to estimate your dating options in America, in Maine, and in selected US cities. If you’d like to explore your own area, here’s how to get started: 1) Set up your account and use the online analysis tool First, you’ll make a free…
We’ve talked about craft bookbinding, but how do people repair existing books? Luckily, I have more experts at hand who are willing gullible enough to let me photograph them as they Do Things With Objects. In this week’s object lesson, Chuck, a retired librarian in central Maine, shows us how…
Most books are made in factories, and even boutique presses use machines alongside hand labor to create a small run of books: But you can also craft a high-quality book by hand. A few years ago, I got to watch British bookbinder Jonathan Smith, at his craft in southern Kazakhstan. It can…
I get a lot of readers curious about Kazakhstan, and about working as a librarian abroad. In this post, I’ll share how I got abroad, moved up, and then transitioned back to my home country, the United States. This is one story, so be sure to check out the…
This article was originally posted on PopAnth under the title “Snow goggles and rotten pears: finding public records of anthropology online.” Anthropologists have written about why we believe in extraterrestrials, how your coffee habits affect farmers, and why archaeologists want to study your trash. But how is such research made? Famous researchers…
“…Before we were serious,” I admitted to my boyfriend, “I was scoping out dates using the census. And my odds weren’t good. There were only like 100 eligible guys in our area of Maine.” “Yeah, but my odds were even worse,” he laughed. I was astonished. “I thought it’s…