Occasionally, I write reader question posts. In this type of post I ask a question, give a short explanation, and give you the opportunity to answer the question in the comments section.
Most college students can think of a particular product or service that has helped them succeed in college. For example, Fast Web, a scholarship search, has been a very helpful tool for me.
What is Your Favorite College Tool?
Today, I am asking you, my readers, to share your favorite college help tool. What helped you succeed in college? Was it a book? A website? A company? Please share it with other students in the comment section below.
Criteria
- Must have helped you.
- Can be free or payed.
- Please share why you liked it.
So, what is your favorite college tool?
Image by Eldar
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The most helpful thing for me during college were planners created by Franklin Covey. I learned about Stephen Covey’s approach to life and productivity my sophomore year, and it totally changed the way I looked at my life and my school priorities.
I was able to do the seemingly impossible and juggle six things at once while retaining my sanity fairly intact.
Highly recommended!
I wish I had discovered it earlier in college, but around junior year I started using Remember The Milk: http://www.rememberthemilk.com
It’s a really elegant to-do list app that is also really powerful. You can enter your tasks on the site, by email, or even by text message, which is really great when you think of things and you’re away from your computer.
For a total procrastinator like me, it’s really handy!
It’s been a while since I was a student, but my best tool then is still my best tool now. And it’s the tool I see the most successful students using every day. It’s a good calendar or day planner. Whether you use a physical book or an online program, college success is all about time management.
I going to college in the fall, but I’ve been collecting college tools because I’m a nervous wreck. I haven’t battle tested these tools, but I can imagine they will be useful.
-Evernote
-For the Blackberry: gFlash. A free flashcard program
-The podcast: Morning Coach
-The tools on the website of the podcast morning coach
-The podcast: Quiet Study Area
-The podcast: Get it Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips
-Newgrounds audio portal: they have some very good classic and non-lyrical music that can be used while studying
-Whitesmoke- a very good grammar program
-leechblock- it broke my Facebook addiction
-Napsounds.com
I really like Zotero. It’s free, open-sourced, referencing software and more, that ‘lives’ in your web browser and is available from the lovely people at George Mason University here:
http://www.zotero.org/
Zotero captures citation information from the web, so you very rarely have to enter data by hand, and allows you to keep detailed notes on the source alongside the citation information. Zotero automatically generates a bibliography in your chosen style, and there are plug-ins available for most word processing software that allows you to add automatically styled citations to your text. And of course, you can change the style in a couple of clicks if you wish to.
While your institution may provide you with access to paid-for bibliographic software, if you ever study elsewhere you may find they use a different package and you have to start over learning to use it. You can take Zotero with you, and export Zotero data to other referencing software if you need to. The only possible down side is that it has such a dizzying array of functionalities I’m not yet familiar with how they all work.
If you’re only writing a short paper, and are happy adding your own citations or footnotes, a very close second place goes to the free automatic bibliography generator, BibMe:
http://www.bibme.org/
Again, BibMe can capture citation information from the web, allows you to enter details by hand, automatically generate a specifically styled bibliography, and enables you to change the style in a couple of clicks. It only generates bibliographies, but it’s simple and easy to use. I’ve used both Zotero and BibMe to generate short bibliographies. It’s so much quicker and less painful than writing your own by hand.
I like to use the website http://www.dealoz.com to search for textbooks. It searches over 100 different sites using the ISBN or Title/Author of the book you are looking for. Most colleges and or professors will list thier required book list before the semester begins and you can search online & have them shipped. I have bought expensive books for $5. Of course once your done you can resell them and even make a profit!