StudyBlue.com

… Money magazine compiled a list of the Top 50 jobs in America.

The complete list contains a wide variety of professions; everything from software developer, to hotel general manager, to veterinarian.

Here are the top 10 for your viewing pleasure:

1. Systems Engineer

2. Physician Assistant

3. College Professor

4. Nurse Practitioner

5. Information Technology Project Manager

6. Certified Public Accountant

7. Physical Therapist

8. Computer/Network Security Consultant

9. Intelligence Analyst

10. Sales Director

The findings are based on pay, job growth, and quality of life. PayScale.com partnered with Money in creating the list, and the pair used stats from the department of labor to determine expected growth.

College Professors Make the Grade at Number Three

I think they should celebrate by canceling finals in December. Maybe not. But really, students deserve some props for this ranking. Yes, professors haul in the Benjamins and yes, the job outlook is pretty good. But students make college professors’ worlds go ‘round.

We make their profession way more interesting than most other jobs. Let’s be honest, college is pretty much awesome. Professors get all the perks of college without the studying. They can go to the gym, use the libraries, and attend cool events (all for free). Then, as an even bigger bonus, they interact with college kids on a daily basis. Tell me that doesn’t keep you young. On the whole, college students are a pretty fun lot. We might sometimes be unmotivated, apathetic, etc., but we’re also generally amusing, generous, and friendly. Who wouldn’t want to work with us?

But I digress.

How are midterms going for everyone? Shoot me an e-mail (saul@studyblue.com) detailing your success story or topics you’d like to see covered in this blog.

I also need a good Halloween costume. Hit me up with some ideas StudyBlue Nation!

-Saul

p.s. Professional Beer Pong Player made honorable mention on Money’s list as a write-in.

The days of putting off reading are over, professors are flying through lectures to cover all the material on the syllabi, and students are left wondering what happened to the carefree early days of the school year.

Yes, it’s officially mid-term season. In many respects, I feel like the first round of exams are the toughest and most important.

What makes them challenging?

Unless we’ve had the professor before, it’s hard to gauge what the test will be like. In addition to recalling the information we studied, we have to figure out nuances in the way questions are written and what exactly the professor expects from our answers.

I also find that motivating myself to study for the first exams a little harder than those later in the year. It’s not like finals where everyone is in lock-down mode at the library with their GPA’s hanging in the balance of one test. There is less urgency. I sometimes feel like even if I do poorly on the first exam, I can make up for it later.

Why are the first mid-terms so important?

I love golf, so I’ll use an analogy here. Professional golfers often say that you can’t win a golf tournament in the first round, but you can definitely lose one. That adage applies to grades, too. You can’t guarantee an “A” for the class by doing well on the first exam but if you bomb it, you put yourself in a big hole. Acing the first test makes all the others a little less critical.

There is a lot at stake here, and StudyBlue can relieve some of our stress.

I confess, I did not read every page of the (eight) assigned books for my History of Journalism course. Before I used StudyBlue, I was left with a dilemma: I could either read as quickly as possible through each book and sacrifice comprehension or I could gamble and take my time reading the books I thought would be on the test the most.

With StudyBlue, I can rely on my talented and energetic classmates that posted book notes online. By looking at their notes, I can see what they thought was important from the book and hone-in on those chapters for further details. Then, to return the favor, I’ll post my detailed notes about the most important topics. This process works, too. I’ve used it to supplement my reading, enhance comprehension, and boost test scores.

It’s simple, and we all win.

Wishing you good luck on the exams and happy studying,

Saul

Hey everyone. My name is Saul, and I’m a new intern for the awesome online studying cocktail that is StudyBlue. I am currently a junior at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, majoring in the strategic communication side of Journalism.

I have a unique viewpoint on StudyBlue, in that I work for the same company that I rely on for my own study needs.  I hope to share my work and study experiences with you.

Bottom line: I’m like you.

StudyBlue guides me through exams, papers, and presentations just like you guys. In my posts, I want to share some ways in which StudyBlue helps me become a better student every day. Furthermore, I would love to tell some of your stories too.  If you have great stories about StudyBlue shoot me an email at: saul@studyblue.com

Here’s my tip for the week:

I’m really loving the flashcard tool right now. The communication arts test that I’ll be taking next week will probably be heavy in vocab content, so I’m in the process of creating decks for each chapter. Using StudyBlue is way faster than writing out each card by hand. Plus, I can print these flashcards out and take the hard copies with me when I’m traveling this weekend.

The decks are just one of many tools that I use a lot on StudyBlue, and I’ll be sharing more with you guys in the days to come. So keep checking back, and maybe you’ll see something that sparks a new study habit for you.

I’m not the end-all authority on everything StudyBlue, though. I’d love to hear about all the ways you guys use the site. To that end, part of my work will involve beefing up our Facebook and Twitter conversations.

Check out our fan page on Facebook.

Become a fan and post on the page. Post what you like about StudyBlue, what you’d like to see improved, how you use the site, other study tips, a good joke, whatever you want. I want to hear from you.

Follow us on Twitter, too.

I’ll be tweeting daily on a wide spectrum of subjects. It’s an easy way to stay connected with StudyBlue and discover a bunch of other useful links and information about college life.

That’s all for right now. I will be back again soon with some juicy StudyBlue chatter. Thanks for reading.

-Saul

We’ve beefed up StudyBlue for the Fall semester by drilling deep on the features you love and doubling down with more great study tools.  What hasn’t changed?  You can still search and view all the content on StudyBlue for free. We believe that sharing is caring, so we want to encourage everyone to keep teaming up and helping each other study smarter, not harder – for free!

What has changed? A lot.  We’ve made it easier than ever to add/remove classes.  We’ve also eliminated some clutter, so you can get right down to business. Whether it’s using Notes or Decks or connecting with classmates, the options are more accessible than ever.

We also recently added a new Premium Package.   For a minimal fee students can have access to even more value and tools from StudyBlue.   You will always be able to study, print and download your own content for free.  However, we’ve added some more killer study features that Premium Users are sure to love.  Don’t worry, we added some great features for all users as well.

Premium Users get some added goodies:

1. Study Routine – Let us set a schedule for you based on when your test is and what you need to learn.  We’ll track your progress and update you along the way.  Check it out under the ‘Study’ section.
2. Merge Decks – Search and combine cards from all Decks on the site to make your own super-awesome-all-knowing-mega-huge Deck.
3. iPhone / iPod Touch App – Take all your notes and flashcards on the go with our new iPhone/iPod Touch App. Bookmark any Note or Deck you see on the site, and it instantly appears in the app.

All users will be able to take advantage of these new tools:

1. Printing Decks as Flashcards – Now you can print all your Decks in case you want the hard copy. In addition, Premium Users can print all public Decks.
2. Test Your Knowledge with Brain Games - Now you can study your Decks using popular Memory and Match games.  In addition, Premium Users can play Brain Games with all public Decks.
3. Audio and Video Notes – Create audio or video notes.  Practice a speech, record a lecture, teach your friend something new, the possibilities are endless.
4. Audio Decks – Add audio content to your cards when creating a Deck.  Great for language classes.
5. Password Protect Your Stuff – Now you can password protect any Note or Deck to ensure only those who you want to see it, can.

Can’t wait for what’s next!! We aren’t going to unveil everything all at once, but we’ve got even more cool tools coming down the pipe:

1. Quizzing – Study your Decks in quiz format.  We’ll generate the quiz for you automatically, you just have to get ‘em all right.
2. Ask the Expert – Stumped on that Biology question?  Need help with supply and demand curves?  We’ll have trained experts on hand to answer your questions.

We hope you like the new digs. As always let us know what you like and don’t like, in addition to what you want to see next.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot Rewards is on its way, so stay tuned!!

New Beginnings

Can you believe that summer break is quickly coming to an end?  I was flipping through the newspaper this weekend and almost every ad from the grocery store, hardware store, bookstores, even toy stores were advertising Back to School sales all focused towards welcoming college students back to campus.

StudyBlue is getting ready to welcome everyone back too.  We have been working hard this summer to add additional tools to help serious students study smarter.

As I said, this has been a crazy, busy summer for StudyBlue.  We have added additional members to our growing team, finalized our Board of Directors, attended the Google I/O conference, been working on fundraising opportunities, and as I said earlier added a lot of tools.

At the end of last year we surveyed StudyBlue users and 70% of users said that StudyBlue helped them earn better grades and ease their stress. We were really proud of these numbers, and we took them seriously.  We worked to add new tools to StudyBlue that could help students even more.

A new school year is a time for new beginnings.  Stay tuned for what new features we have in store for you.

We are very excited about this school year and can’t wait to see you back at StudyBlue.

that is the question. We just released Facebook Connect today for StudyBlue.com. For those who don’t know, Facebook Connect is a way to allow users to seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with other sites like StudyBlue.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey StudyBlue -

Well the first Vlog went great so here is #2.  Finals are almost here.  StudyBlue can help you ace those exams! I outlined a few easy ways StudyBlue can help you get the grade you need.

Ben

So, I decided to take a risk this time and produce my first video blog. I wanted to try something different. Overall, I am pretty happy with the results.

Let me know what you think. I am considering “vlogging” more often. I had a lot of fun and think it is a great way to speak directly to you, our users.

Thanks for watching,

Ben

In more “techie” related news, the StudyBlue Developers have been invited to attend and demo at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco this May. For those of you not familiar with Google I/O, “Google I/O is a developer gathering focused on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google and open web technologies.”  We are real excited about the opportunity to represent in San Fran, and look forward to interacting with thousands of fellow developers seeking to make the web a smarter, faster, better place.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week on campuses across the country the words have changed but the stories are very similar.  I am really looking forward to the day I can announce “THE ECONOMY IS FIXED, THE ECONOMY IS FIXED,” but alas, today is not that day.   Obviously, the economy is grim and effecting college students, college faculty, and colleges.  However, that is not the only news on campus this week.  March Madness is kicking off and everyone is wondering if their team is going to the Big Dance, NIT, the College Basketball Invitational (totally the losers bracket, no offense CBI), or in the case of my alma mater probably time to start looking for better recruits.  Also, spring break is on most students minds, and this also means most students are trying to study for exams…good thing you are at StudyBlue.

I don’t know how it is by you, but the weather here is beautiful today and I think we are going to be able to hear more refreshing stories  coming this Spring. If you come across an interesting story in your campus paper, please feel free to email the link to ben@studyblue.com.

…and now without further ado…

Campus News

Warning: Cancun on Hold
Penn State students are holding off on their spring break trips as Mexico has safety issues due to drug cartels.

Why are Textbooks so Expensive?
Iowa State University examines why textbooks cost so much and who is reaping all of the benefits. Read the rest of this entry »