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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Canderous and Cade's Crazy Cantina: a shiny new fanfiction social thread!

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by Commander-DWH, Aug 31, 2012.

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  1. Luna_Nightshade

    Luna_Nightshade Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jan 25, 2006
    Welcome back, ShadowofLures! I remember you! Feel free to PM whatever questions you have. Things look a lot different now.
     
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  2. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    LOL, no not a math problem. I was wondering if we had any writing challenge threads that used sentences as inspiration for a short or long story. I miss writing those and the last one I used has been locked, so I was wondering if there was a new thread in town.
     
  3. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    Luna! Good to see you! How has your writing been the last few years? :p I'm so sorry I blacked out there for a few years, things got real when I left high school. College isn't much better, but still. Looking to reintroduce my brain to some creativity!
     
  4. Luna_Nightshade

    Luna_Nightshade Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jan 25, 2006
    Not thinking of any challenges going on just like that, but we do have several going on. What's nice about these boards is that you can sort what you see in Resource by tag. By showing only the things marked "Challenge," you can browse what choices we have at the moment. I know the Dear Diary challenge just started up again for the new year, and there are others. Have fun playing around--lots of new stuff to see!

    Oh, and the writing goes. I know what you mean about things getting real in college. Just wait until the post-college world, in which things get real and a lot more expensive. :p
     
  5. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    Oh I'm there too. College and paying for everything myself. Can't WAIT until I get my tax return, it'll help with paying off my car, if not all of it. Then I get to save up for a new one :( Hopefully I'll be done with my Associates degree this year, then I can take a break from school and just work my butt off trying to afford things that are more expensive. I know, I know, it's taking me forever, but yes, I'm still working on my Associates degree. What are you doing with your bad self these days? I notice you're a manager now, congratulations! :D
     
  6. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    Just looked around for writing challenges, not seeing much I could get into . . . hey, what happened to the Master-Padawan pairing-offs we had a while back? You know, the whole partner up with someone else to learn how to write better idea? What happened to that?
     
  7. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    And I know what you mean; I'm doing both college AND paying for everything myself. Hoping to pay off my car soon and move into my own place with a bunch of people without damaging my relationship, and hopefully this is the last year I'll be working on my Associates degree, but if not, next year will be the last. I have to take one or two classes at a time because I can't afford anything more than that right now. Can't wait til it's over! :D
     
  8. LexiLupin

    LexiLupin Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2011
    That's still here-
    http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ers-can-get-help-with-their-fanfics.50004109/
    (I think that's what you're referring to, anyway)
     
  9. ardavenport

    ardavenport Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2004
    The Creche thread doesn't look like it's up to date.

    Somebody canceled winter around here; sunny and in the 70's. It is Florida, but this is the northern part and this weather is not normal.
     
  10. ShadowofLures

    ShadowofLures Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    Thanks, Lexi! That's exactly what I was looking for! :D
     
  11. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    Hey. I have a bit of a question for you older people. For a 2nd year university economy class, how much reading is to be expected and how much is ridiculous? I might just be whiny, but for my Econ class this week, we were expected to read like 250 pages of a book we can only borrow from the library for 3 hours (it's a reserve item). Next week and future weeks are not quite as bad. Next week we have to read 6 chapters from our textbook totalling a little over 100 pages. I know for my 3rd year history course, we are only expected to read 40-50 pages a week, which is about average for any humanities or social science course. Does this prof really expect us to read 100-200 pages every week for a 2nd year undergrad class?
     
  12. DarthIshtar

    DarthIshtar Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Winter hasn't been cancelled. It's been moved to my ZIP code. Nearly 2 weeks ago, the power went out on my side of the city. When the power came back on, the heat didn't. I was under a very nice, warm quilt and flannel sheets, but my head was feet away from a sliding glass door. Twelve hours later, I started having trouble breathing. 7 days ago, I started meds for pneumonia. They aren't helping much at all right now and it's driving me crazy. I'm sure I could benefit from having a week off of work, but I'm saving my vacation time for my trip to New York in June. I was able to get Monday, half of Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday off of last week and was stir-crazy by Friday morning.

    In other news, I bought myself a cello. Of course, first thing I did was have the a-string snap, but with the help of a friend who actually has training in building/repairing string instruments, it's fixed and tomorrow morning, I start learning a new instrument. I'm very excited and am kind of looking forward to when I know my instrument well enough to name it. After all, I'm 'Mummy' to Amadeus, Ludwig and Meredith (my viola, violin and piano respectively). I know it won't be named Bela, since that's taken. I don't even know if I think of it as a guy cello or a girl cello. My piano is very much a girl, which is why I named her after a famous female jazz pianist.

    And yes, I'm one of those weird musicians who names their instruments.
     
  13. TrakNar

    TrakNar Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 4, 2011
    Send your winter my way. It's becoming wimpy here again.
     
  14. LexiLupin

    LexiLupin Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2011
    Is it the beginning of your semester? That amount of reading wouldn't seem unreasonable to me for a first week assignment if you had a few weeks notice and if it weren't a reserve item. As a reserve item, that is a lot of reading. Is there only one copy of the book for the whole class?
    In general though (i.e. for assignments that aren't 'start your semester having already read this'), 100-150 sounds pretty normal to me, as a former humanities student. 200 getting on the steep end.
    Honestly, 40-50 sounds pretty light for humanities in general but super light for history.
     
  15. moosemousse

    moosemousse CR Emeritus: FF-UK South star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2004
    We haven't really had a winter here, it's just been like autumn came early last year and hasn't left yet.
     
  16. Ceillean

    Ceillean Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 13, 2001
    Started snowing here this morning. I was late for work because of it. I do NOT like winter. Winter begone!
     
  17. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    It is the beginning of the semester, but we didn't have any notice. My uni doesn't do the whole 'have this read before the start of the semester' thing (back in high school we never had those summer reading lists you get in parts of the US). And there is only one book for the entire class. 100 pages for a textbook is doable now that I reason it out in my head, but there are some weeks that we have to do 150 for a reserve item, which is going to be interesting.
    My background was social science before I quit poli-sci, and reading does tend to be light in some of those areas. When I read that we only had to read that we only had to read one article a week for my history class, I was amazed, but it evens out when you consider we have to spend 5+ hours a week on our research essay. And it is a relatively new history field, so there is no textbook.
     
  18. moosemousse

    moosemousse CR Emeritus: FF-UK South star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2004
    No textbook? That's a bit rough. I guess it's better than having a few dozen and not knowing which to go for. One of my lecturers wrote the book on his subject, and it was the set text for his class too. What's the history field?
    Oh, and on a plus, as it's relatively new you have more chance of getting your work published.

    Oh well. If you need a bit of light entertainment, might I suggest backing this kickstarter? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1328500402/go-get-a-roomie-book-one
    It's for a print copy of the NSFW webcomic Go Get a Roomie (http://www.gogetaroomie.com/) which I absolutely love! I'm so glad it's been funded and it's so close to getting a bonus chapter for the book.
     
  19. Iverna

    Iverna Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 20, 2008
    250 pages in three hours is a lot, I'd say. I studied anthropology myself, although I never went to college in the US so I can't speak for that.

    I always photocopied the reserve items, even though I'm not sure we were technically supposed to. But the big thing about reading in college, for me, is: learn to skim-read. It's an important college skill. When they tell you "read this book", they don't mean "read every word", they mean "know and understand the contents". Not every sentence in a book is relevant, especially in social science or the humanities in general. Scan for and read the bits that seem relevant; if you get lost, you can always go back and find the bit you missed. With practice, you can get pretty fast. I had to re-learn fiction-reading after college because I was so used to skimming through books by then. :p

    If you're really low on time when writing a paper, use the glossary to find relevant quotes for specific things covered in the text. If you need a quote about social stigma, look up "social stigma" in the glossary and it'll tell you where it's mentioned.

    Of course officially, you're probably not supposed to do any of that. Quicker, easier, more seductive, and all that. But from personal experience, it works just fine. By the end of my five years I don't think any of us were still reading books word-for-word.
     
  20. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    That sounds about right. My professors used to assign a ton of reading. One of them wanted us to read 500-600 pages a week. When we finally complained he told us. "Read what you can, but keep good notes."

    A lot of the time the professor has his classes planned out and he keeps that plan possibly for years. Textbooks come and go. When a new text book is assigned he may look at what he planned on teaching for a certain class and try to find that subject in the book. He realizes what he is going to teach is spread over 300 pages...so he assigns those pages...although what he is going to test you on is his lectures. I rarely found a professor that put a question on a test from the reading...but never covered the subject in class.

    If you are getting swamped concentrate on the lectures. Take good notes. What I used to do was literally write every word that came out of the professor's mouth in my weird scribbly homemade version of short hand. I would then go home and type up my notes. I rarely read the book unless there was something in my notes that I didn't understand. I got straight A's in grad school doing that.

    The trouble is you will usually not know if this is the case with a professor until you have taken your first exam. So read what you can and then once you find out if he is testing from his lectures you can adjust.

    I do have to say that I have never heard of checking out text books out of the library. We have to buy all our books...even ones we sometimes never use. I have sold required college text books that I've never opened. Some still had the plastic on them. It is a scam. My brother-in-law writes his own textbooks. Every couple years he revises it so students can't buy used books. Well, that is really not his idea as much as the publisher he works with. His textbooks are sold in colleges all across the country.
     
  21. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    It's environmental history focusing on northwest Canada. Apparently there are some textbooks, but the prof doesn't like any of them.
    And this is an undergrad class. I have no hope or desire to get a paper of mine published at this point.

    Edit: but yes, I have to learn how to skim read effectively for this Econ class. But I figure since we get to pick what weeks we do our written assignments and we pick what question beforehand we do our essay exams on, I figure I'll pick the weeks with the least amount of reading, or at least the reading I can do in the textbook or the journal articles online.
     
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  22. Ceillean

    Ceillean Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 13, 2001
    I never went to college or university. Well, not really. I went to a kind of higher business school. Lots and lots of math. Urgh. But I passed anyway. :p Thankfully, college/universtiy is not necessarily mandatory here. You can get a great job without having a degree. But we have a different learning/educational model.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system]Dual[/url] Education System

    It's a really great system...
     
  23. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    It sounds good. College is not for everyone and half of my college classes were a waste of time. Calculus...really? I hate math therefore it is VERY unlikely that I will ever pursue a career in a math based field...but it was a mandatory class where I went to school. I like the line in the movie Peggy Sue Got Married when she goes back in time and finds herself in high school math class. She tells her instructor (and I am paraphrasing), "I happen to know that I will never have a need for calculus in my adult life.":p

    We have some good tech school here. I told my boys they didn't need to go to college, but they need to at least go to school for a trade because they are not going to be sitting in my living room playing Medal of Honor or some other video game once they graduate from High School.
     
  24. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    Since only 3 colleges in Canada offer library tec programs, I am stuck doing a redundant undergrad degree so that I can get my masters in Library Sciences. It doesn't matter what undergrad degree I get. I am currently doing General Arts, but I am consitering switching to History.

    There are days that I really regret not taking biology and chemistry in high school. The college here has an amazing radiology program that is only 2 years long.
     
  25. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    That just seems like a waste. If you can get an undergraduate degree in graphic arts or physics and it doesn't matter to your graduate work...why make you do it? It's not like college is free (unless it is free in Canada). Why make a person go into deep debt for an undergraduate degree that really doesn't matter to the career field you want to go into? It is all a conspiracy to make money. The entire education system should be revamped.
     
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