Research Blog #7: Annotated Bibliography

Swift, Kent. Financial Success and the Good Life: What have we Learned from Empirical Studies in Psychology?. 75 Vol. , 2007. Print. Swift, a professor in the College of Business Sciences at Zayed University, has been teaching business at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and has also published articles on a variety of business topics. In this paper, he suggests that instead of counting your money that you should count your friends, and that will tell you how good your life is. He says that you should be thankful for what you have, and do something that makes you happy, because money isn’t everything.

Xiao, Jing Jian, Chuanyi Tang, and Soyeon Shim. Acting for Happiness: Financial Behavior and Life Satisfaction of College Students. 92 Vol. , 2009. Print. The authors of this article have brought up their own study on the relationship between financial behavior and life satisfaction. Using data that they have collected, they came up with the conclusion that financial behaviors broadly may influence not only financial satisfaction but also academic performance and satisfaction. They say that the magnitude of financial behaviors’ overall impact on student’s life satisfaction is equal to or close to the magnitude of the impact that academic satisfaction has on overall life satisfaction.

Research Blog #6: Research Questions

How important are academics over the campus life at a college or university?

Will the whole "college experience" prepare you enough to be successful in the future?

With the prices of colleges continually rising, are we actually just paying for a good education?

Research Blog #5: Sources in MLA Format (Revised)

Holland, Dorothy C., and Margaret A. Eisenhart. Educated in Romance : Women, Achievement, and College Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Print.

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Campus Life : Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Print.

Levi, Edward H. Point of View : Talks on Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Print.

Moffatt, Michael. "College Life: Undergraduate Culture and Higher Education." The Journal of Higher Education 62.1 (1991): 44-61. Print.

Seaman, Barrett. Binge : What Your College Student Won't Tell You : Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Print.

Research Blog #4: Rutgers RIOT

The Rutgers RIOT reinforces everything that the librarian taught us in class on Monday. It is very helpful in that it teaches you the basics of the beginning of writing a research paper. First, you need to select a good topic using limiters like time, geography, and population so that it is not too broad of a topic. Then you need to find sources by entering the correct keywords in the databases that the Rutgers libraries have. This tutorial also helps you to identify your citations as a book or journal, and you get some practice with evaluating the quality of your sources and learning if they are too old or not by an acceptable author for the topic you chose. One big thing I learned was that the libraries and their databases are a lot easier to use and a lot better than other search engines like google or yahoo when you are searching for information for a research paper. Rutgers RIOT is a very well put together interactive tutorial for teaching necessary research skills. The way they teach you is good in that you can actually answer some questions along the way and really get engaged in the tutorial. To improve it, however, they could maybe make it necessary for you to answer the questions correctly before moving on.

Research Blog #3: Questions for the Librarian

1) I have never been to the library here other than to just print things out from the computers so I am not sure of all that the library has to offer. How would I go about checking out a book? Is there a standard fee I need to pay or do I just use my Rutgers ID card? How long can I have a book out for? How would I search to find the specific books, articles, etc. that i need to further my research?

2) Where could I find any information on academics vs. college life? Do you know of any articles or anything that argues how academics play a much larger role than does college/student life in terms of what people wind up doing with the rest of their lives?

3) Where could I find information and statistics on the cost of higher education?

Research Blog #2: Scouting the Territory

For my topic, I still would like to write about students' social life vs. academic life. However, as you commented on my last post that "there is no possible equilibrium: your future (and the good of society perhaps) depends on success in academics, and 'student life' is openly antagonistic to that success," i'm not sure where I stand on that. College life and living in a dorm, all on your own away from your parents and everyone else from back home, teaches you a lot. You learn to be more independent, to do your own laundry, to make yourself food (when you aren't just going to the dining hall), good time management, and most importantly to be more sociable. With how society is today, in order for you to go far in the working world you need to be social with others and voice you're opinion to get what you want. If you go through life being very quiet and not speaking up for yourself, you won't really get anywhere. Although academics plays a huge role in determing your future, the social aspect is very important too. If it weren't for this college life, I feel that it would make things so much harder for a lot of people when they get out into the "real world." I also looked up the book "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert like you suggested, and he makes some interesting points, but I'm not exactly sure how this goes along with my feelings toward students in college.

Research Blog #1: Initial Topic Idea

As I was looking through all of the different topics for the 201 course, this one with the title of "College!" had definitely caught my attention. I was debating between a couple of the courses but for some reason this one just stood out, besides for the fact that it was the only topic ending with an exclamation point. Anyway, I decided to sign up for it because I feel that by being in college myself, it makes it that much easier to relate to this topic. However, going into the first day of class I honestly had no idea what to expect. I knew we would be writing a research paper about college but just within that itself there are so many different topics that it makes it difficult to just pick one thing to write a research paper on. As we discussed the course in class along with some possible research topics, I found one topic that was mentioned to be very interesting. The balance between a good social life and a good academic life. I'm not exactly sure how I would go about writing a paper on this but I think it would be cool to research it. I myself am finding it difficult to do really well and keep up with all of my classes while also spending enough time experiencing the college life, and I think a good amount of college students are in the same position as me in this particular situation. Whether it is your friends or classmates pressuring you to go out at nights or on weekends to hangout with them, or your parents at home pressuring you to do really well in your classes, or even just your own views on college and how you feel you should spend your time there, I feel that many students are stuck in a rut trying to deal with both of the two worlds.