Many fellow graduate students have told me that the thing they like least about graduate school is the pressure to conform. Not only are their ideological and political pressures on every campus, but there are also norms of behavior within specific departments.

There are reasons for this. Institutes of higher learning have a mandate to not only foster discovery but to preserve and conserve knowledge that has been learned in the past. There is an inherent suspicion of challenges to established doctrine. For the most part, this is good, because to become established, new information needs to pass through a very high hurdle.

However, there are also many pressures to conform to ideologies that are just taken for granted and not justified. When writing a thesis, advisers tend to apply pressure to favor their pet theories. This inhibits the freedom to really explore the full scope of ideas because typically one is encouraged to just make a minor adjustment to the current system, not a complete overhaul.

Anyway, the reason the topic of this post came up in the first place was that I read this new article this morning called 14 Examples of Revolutionary Students and it made me realize how prone most of us are to just play the game the way we are told to play it. Sometimes I wish more of us (including myself) had the guts to seek real change.

We browsed the web looking to build a solid list of lists. Here’s what we found when it comes to the best free online tools and software for graduate students. Not all the tools are directly related to research or grad school. Many of them are. Nonetheless, we found that all of these lists are extremely useful.

• The Best Online Research Apps
• Free College Software Guide
• Top 10 Research Tools
• Free alternatives to proprietary software
• Top Web Tools for College Students
• 69 Free or Open Source Tools For Students
• Top Online & Research Tools
• Wikipedia’s List of Open Source Software
• 15 Open Source Tools For Art & Design Students
• 12 Tools For Researchers
• Lifehacker’s Guide to Free Software and Webapps
• 60+ Free Programming Tools
• Run Your Life With Your Cell Phones SMS

It seems that many people are responding to the bad US economy by pursuing more education.  The idea being that in a tight job market you can set yourself apart from everyone else with a graduate degree.

According to US News & World Report, schools  like MIT and Duke saw application increases of anywhere from 15-33% – a remarkable figure.

We advise people to be smart about their graduate school decisions.  Don’t invest the money to go to graduate school unless you’ve done the research and know that the grad degree will increase your marketability in your field.  Going to grad school in a bad economy can backfire:  you could easily rack up debt and find yourself still without a job when you get done.

Just be careful and be smart.  Don’t assume that grad school will solve all your problems.

Based on this report from College Crunch, it looks as if most health is the only industry where starting salaries are keeping up with inflation.  Obviously, as the demand for health careers goes up, the salaries should go up to entice college students to pursue those careers.  Still, it is quite telling that in almost all other industries, salaries turn out to be lower over the last decade when inflation is taken into account.

The reason we take inflation into account is that the same dollar amount is worth significantly less in terms of purchasing power when inflation takes place over many years.

One of the things I have been wanting to do around here on Grad School Journal is find a way to develop a bit more of a community. Part of that is creating a book club where we can read and reflect on books that center around education and education 2.0. One of my passions in education has been the ability to find and reflect upon business and see how the advancement of the human mind. So here I am in search of a perfect book to help inspire you who are studying in grad school.

The First book is called If I ran the Circus, by Dr. Seuss.
One of the least known childrens books by Dr. Seuss it will mark a great place for us to start as be begin talking about education, life, and life after Grad School especially in these crazy times.

So sometime this week pickup this book, borrow it from the library,or sneak into the Barnes and Noble childrens section and read it. Then check back this week for some interesting commentary on this amazing book about life.

I found a great article over on Lifehack.org that talks about hacking your morning routine. While this article applies more to the busy professional it can apply just as equally well to the Graduate School Student as well.

One way to simplify your life and hack your mornings is to spend 15 minutes preparing at night to have a successful day ahead. Getting any homework out of the way, preparing for any meetings, study halls, and exams will bring you positive steps in the right direction for the following day.

This often overlooked 15 minutes at night will bring you loads of success and help you develop ridiculously good habits that will take you to the next level in your education.

If you are trying to save money while going to Grad School one area of savings that can be focussed on is Textbooks. Textbooks are expensive so finding used textbooks online will net you some significant savings. One great website is CollegeSwapShop.com.

This allows you to search for College Textbooks that other students have already used and are looking to sell. Think of this as the ebay for college textbooks. Imagine being able to save 50% on your textbooks that is a massive savings that can be used for food and other commodities.

Talking about getting things done sometimes it helps to have an offline Weekly Planner. OrganizeIT has created some amazing todo list templates, and other great pdfs for getting things done. Now they have updated their weekly planner so I have downloaded it in attempts to create a more organized life amongst the chaos that surrounds us.

There are some great features including

You will notice that there are three sections to the planner. The most prominant part at the top is the hard landscape and covers day (and time) specific next actions. Nothing goes here unless it has to be done on that particular day (and at a particular time, where applicable). If the next action isn’t date specific, it can simply go in the basic next actions box. However, if you have a lot of tasks under a particular context (@phone) or role/responsibility (parent) you have the option of grouping them so it’s all more organizied.

Head over and start getting organized today.

If you are looking to save time in graduate school you had better get organized. i have found online tools to be amazing to get me organized. Offline organization is important as well. We will save that for another day and time. Online organization can be accomplished with some really cool tools.

Remember The Milk
Google Documents
Google Alerts
Mint.com

I utilized Remember the Milk to keep organized on a day to day basis making to do lists to accomplish goals and what not.

Google Documents allows me to keep data organized that I need for class, and other personal projects. I can share them and collaborate as well.

Google Alerts keeps me updated on news that I normally wouldn´t take the time to search for.

Mint.com helps me organized my finances in a way that is responsible and effective.

I hate dealing with financial junk. I personally have the worst of luck with banks and organizing my financial data. I came across an amazing financial planning website that rocks my financially unorganized world. It is called Mint.

Mint is fresh, intelligent online money management. Not only is Mint free, it saves you money. While existing personal finance software packages require hours to set up, a passion for accounting (is that possible?) and hours of weekly maintenance, Mint is virtually effortless.

With Mint, you can achieve better online financial management in less than five minutes. After that, revolutionary, patent–pending Mint money management software does the rest, with virtually no more work required. It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up–to–date and amazingly accurate views of your financial—life from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.

Mint seems to be simple and secure and will make organizing all my finances that much easier and more cozy. Being able to jump in and really see what you are facing is sure helpful.