Opinion

As the mother of a son, I have been observing what seems to be growing panic about the diminished prospects for men and boys with concern, but also with some confusion.

After taking a massive online course from a famous and phenomenal health care expert, Jonathan Marks concludes that he and his faculty colleagues have little to fear from MOOCs.

Exhausted so early in the term? Yes, it can happen. Consider recharging with some positivity, advises Maria Shine Stewart.

I was advised by some well-placed people at CASE not to use the term “fundraisers.” But I wasn’t given a preferred alternative, and nothing else seems quite right. I refuse to use “friendraisers” on the grounds that it’s a crime against the English language, and it conjures a mental image of zombies rising from graves. “Development officers” is politically correct, but it’s both clunky and vague. “Advancement professionals” is even worse. So I’ll use “fundraisers” until I hear something better.

As a former biomedical researcher, a field I left in favour of a different career, I was recently asked to act as a speaker at a careers’ day designed for early careers researchers and Ph.D.s interested in (or forced to explore) alternative careers to academia. Interestingly, there were more women than men both in the audience and amongst the speakers. Is it because women don’t mind admitting they are open to all career options, or is it that they have less confidence in their ability to sustain a lifelong successful research or academic career? In fact, I am not sure.

My Kindle $119 Kindle Paperwhite with $39.99 persimmon leather cover arrived today. I'm already reading more. This is a beautiful device.

Last week was an audio/video adventure. Editing numerous interviews for a client, I became reacquainted with iMovie. In my pre-Mac days (translation: before I ate the metaphorical Apple), I would use whatever software I could find to edit videos. When I lived in St. Lucia in 2001, I used Adobe Premiere to edit/render videos. Oftentimes the power would go out, my laptop battery would run out of juice, and I would have to start over from scratch. It wasn't exactly a delightful editing process. However, I did learn quite a bit from those days of transferring clips from a tape-based camera to a computer and slogging my way through…I literally learned while on the go.

Writer and teacher Debra Monroe, author of five previous books, shares a chapter from her new memoir-in-progress, about being the first in her family to go to college.