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.

I was utilizing FriendFeed today and I came across this great article on creating a Resume 2.0.

I love this entire article. But I want to focus on something that I am ridiculously passionate about. Creating professional profiles on LinkedIn,Facebook,WordPress.com, and Twitter so that a potential human resource manage can not only see you are connected with other folks in your field, but you are passionate about it because you create content on WordPress.com about your field of interest, and you network with folks on Facebook and Twitter.

I think this will help make up for a lack of experience and show insight into going the extra mile to achieve success with a new company.

One of the things you are going t want to learn about in building your business part time is Search Engine Optimization. i get asked about this all the time. It is one of my biggest passions so lets head in and talk a bit.

Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of developing content that is recognized by search engines as being quality content that should be shown to a majority of search users.

So let’s talk about what it takes to create search engine optimized content. First off. Ignore all the geeky web sites that are discussing metatags, htaccess, and various tricks of the industry in the long run they aren’t going to help you much.

Here is a great article series that will get you going in the right direction:
Seo Copywriting by Brian Clark

Copywriting is something that is largely all about creating highly valuable content that jumps out to the readers. Focusing on creating readable easily attractable content will bring both readers and search engine traffic. ultimately you want to be able to convert that traffic from Search Engines into Daily Readers.

When it comes to SEO I believe its about keeping it simple. Create great linkable content that readers will love and watch the traffic flow. It’s that simple.

In our current series on building a business and going to grad school I mentioned Social Networking. I have found that social networking is very important to building an online business.

Below are my four favorite social networking hubs
LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn is a great social networking platform that really focuses on your business contacts. Using LinkedIn to find people you know and develop a new network of connections.

Facebook.com
Facebook is great for connecting with College Classmates, but i find it even more powerful for finding new business profiles. Just be careful what you post on here if you are using it for business purposes.

Performancing Hive
Performancing’s Hive is a great community for entrepreneurs and especially social media marketers. This is great for promoting high quality content that you wish to get scene by lots of folks. It is also a great place to find new friends in the blogging world.

FriendFeed Rooms
FriendFeed Rooms is a part of FriendFeed which in and of itself is a social aggregator of friends and followers. Finding rooms related to topics you are interested in or are in business in is essential. I have found mixed success going with this approach. But head in and give it a try it can’t hurt.