Scholarships tied to release of new title, Where’s the Map? Create Your OWN Guide to Life after Graduation

There is an emerging trend in the US of high school graduates taking a gap year before they enter college. The New York Times has recently published several articles about this trend, and Princeton University announced that it is developing a gap year program for incoming freshmen.

The Hoods encourage young people to spend time focusing on their goals and life plans before making any major college or career decisions, and they see a gap year as a perfect opportunity to give graduates a chance to take this necessary time to sort out these decisions. The picture seems ideal for many students who are not ready for college and need time to recharge their batteries, clarify their vision for the future, and explore the freedom of being on their own. But is taking time off a luxury only rich kids can afford?

“There is a stereotype from a previous era that pegs gap years as being frivolous globetrotting by children of the wealthy, at their parents’ expense. This is no longer the case. For years, the concept of a gap year has been encouraged in countries such as Canada, England, and Australia as a way for graduates to clarify their future goals, provide volunteer service, and become global citizens,” said James Hood.

Many gap years now involve internships, volunteer work, caretaking jobs, apprenticeships, or specialized training programs. There are opportunities available in the US and abroad that provide not only room and board, but also a stipend to participants. Some national service organizations even offer a living allowance, health coverage, and an education scholarship award after successfully completing a term of service. The Hoods both participated in a service gap year after college, building low-income housing with Habitat for Humanity through Americorps.

In support of such opportunities, James Hood said, “It’s easy to find scholarships for college, but pretty rare to find someone who will give you money to participate in a gap year. We’d like to start a new trend.”

For additional information about the Gap Year Scholarship Program or a free chapter of Where’s the Map?, contact authors Beth and James Hood, or visit wheresthemap.com. Applications for the scholarship are due August 1st, 2008, and will be awarded in September. Scholarships are available for high school graduates, college students and college graduates between the ages of 18-25.

Plan in Advance

1. Browse online for bargains.  It takes time to hunt for the best deals. You should be able to find the same or a similar item in a wide range of prices.  If you give yourself that extra time, you can obtain samples, judge the quality, and determine the best value.

2. Avoid rush orders.   Remember, it usually takes longer for a company to create custom personalized reunion favors, than it would be to obtain a ready made item.  If you wait until the last minute, you might get stuck paying a fee to speed up your order.  At the very least, you’ll be paying extra for faster shipping to get your reunion favors on time.

Do The Math

3. Watch for hidden fees.  Yes, you might be able to purchase those imprinted pens for 53 cents each.  But before you rush to order, find out what is the minimum amount you need to buy.  If the company’s policy is that you have to buy at least 300 pens and you only have 80 people planning to attend your class reunion, then you’ll have 220 pens left over.  So, it’s really not that good a deal.  You would be better off paying a little extra for an item with a business that allows you to order only what you need.

4. Check to see if there’s a set up fee.  Many times a company will advertise a low price, but then hit you with a hefty charge for designing your custom reunion favors.  Make sure you read the fine print.

5. Pay close attention to the sliding scale in prices, based on the amount that you are purchasing.  Some companies charge you less if you buy in greater volume.  Let’s say you found personalized class reunion magnets for $1.75 each if you are ordering less than 100 favors.  However, these same magnets are only $1.50 each if you buy more than 100 favors. You need 90 magnets as giveaways for your reunion.  If you ordered exactly 90 at $1.75 each, your cost would be $157.60.  However, if you order 100 at $1.50 each, your total would be $150.  So, in this case, you would save money, $7.60 to be exact, if you purchased 10 extra magnets.  If you want to save, then crunch the numbers.

Handmade vs. Custom-Made

6. Beware the handcrafted money pit.  If you’re trying to save money on these giveaways, you might be thinking of making reunion favors yourself or delegating the task to a group of volunteers.  But before you stock up on supplies at the craft store, add up the cost for each of the elements of your favors.  Craft supplies are not cheap.  You might be surprised at what you’re paying for your handmade creations.  It is possible that you could save money by purchasing ready made or custom made favors from a company that specializes in them.

7. Check out cheap do-it-yourself alternatives.  Not all handmade items are expensive to make.  You can make your own class reunion candy bar wrappers, for example.  There are free, printable chocolate bar wrapper templates online.  Or, if you know someone creative, he or she can design a candy bar wrapper with your personalization and school colors.  You have to pay for the candy bars (a 5 oz. Hershey bar is a nice size) and the printing, but it shouldn’t break your budget.

8. Consider the wow factor.  You can get away with spending very little money on class reunion favors, if you purchase giveaways that make an impression.  You can find items such as personalized reunion bookmarks or pocket notebooks with fun facts from the year you graduated for a couple of dollars or less.  Or, take a group photo at the reunion party and print copies of it on the spot with one of those portable printers.  Then give everyone a copy to take home with them.  You could even add a dollar store 4 x 6 inch frame, and your total cost would still be low.   Use your imagination and go for unique.

9. Can’t afford to give it away? Sell it!  Imprinted t-shirts and personalized tote bags are great reunion items, but they’re expensive.  You can take orders for these from your reunion website and sell them at the event itself.  Your classmates will love them and it will help you pay for the reunion favors that you give away and for other things.

So, take some time to check out all your low cost options for class reunion favors.  Go over the price to get the best value and make sure you know what you’re paying.  Then choose something cheap, but unique.  Your classmates will love their class reunion favors, and they’ll never guess how much money you saved.

Take a gaze at the subsequent school reunion ideas and you stand the best possibility of making your school reunion party a triumph.

1. Make you find  as many old classmates as doable by means of using social networking websites such Facebook and Myspace. This make inviting and updating people very simple.

2. A few of your buddies may be coming from many miles away. In order to take some of the anxiety off you, why do not you recruit the aid of a old class mate?

3. Keep in mind that your past class mates will possess their own busy existence. It consequently vital that you offer as much notification as possible. This too increase the attendance rate. Sending out your invitations up to a full year in advance is not unusual.

4. There are lots of professional party organizers that you might call on if you a budget for it!

5. You should establish a Facebook group for your party so that everybody will be knowledgeable about who is attending. This’ll further enhance attendance. It at this point where you should demand an up front settlement.

6. Play music from the time of graduation, this be exceptionally evocative.

7. Employ a photographer and position him at the way in to photograph your visitors as they show up. The photographs might go on your Facebook group or even on a dvd next to their photo as they had been at school.

8. Supply name tags for all your friends. This lessen the odds of anybody being uncomfortable when they forget their classmates names.

9. This is a rare event. The food and drink ought to be a sign of this! No finger buffets, there should ideally be a nice sit down meal.

And the top 10 ways that you can survive graduate school are:

#10. Stay focused. The road is long, but by staying focused on your goal of successfully completing your program, you can make it a smooth ride instead of a bumpy one.

#9. Keep up with assigned readings, project tasks, and research. It is much easier to break your tasks, assignments, readings and research into smaller segments. This alleviates you from having to cram everything into one night or one day.

#8. If you don’t know the answer to something, then ask. There is nothing wrong with not knowing the answer to everything. If you do not know or understand something, then ask a classmate, a professor or someone else who will know the answer. Just to put your mind a little more at ease for asking questions in class, the answer to your question will not only help you, but it will also help your classmates as well. Most likely, someone in your class has the same question, but was too afraid to ask it.

#7. Make a plan and stick to it. Create a written plan that details out your goals, tasks, and deadlines. Also write a plan on the tasks that you must complete to achieve them. You may have different plans like daily, weekly, monthly and semester long plans. Just make sure that your daily plans help you achieve your weekly plans, and that your weekly plans help you achieve your monthly plans, and so on.

#6. Introduce yourself to new people. The people you meet and interact with may prove to be important contacts to you at some point during or after graduate school. By increasing the amount of people that you know you are increasing your chances of finding new and interesting opportunities.

#5. Don’t cheat! Sometimes the easy way out is not the most beneficial thing for you in the long run. With well thought out plans and task lists there won’t be a need for you to cheat because you will be organized and on task.

#4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Everyone needs a little help sometime. Ask you professors if you don’t understand something or if you need clarification on something. That is what they are there for!

#3. Get a study buddy. By studying with a friend or classmate you can compliment each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They may have something in their notes that you don’t have and vice versa. Plus, it makes it easier to study when you have a partner to push you along and they have you to push them along.

#2. Manage your stress. There is no doubt that graduate school is stressful. It is important that you manage your stress. Eating healthy and getting enough rest, along with being focused and organized, will help to keep your stress level to a minimum.

And the #1 way to survive grad school is…

Learn work, school, and life balance. You need to learn to balance your schedule so that you have time for all aspects of your life including school, work and home. It is important that you take time to participate in leisure and relaxation activities that you enjoy. This will help you to live a more balanced life, preventing you from burning out from school overload!

In all seriousness, grad school is a big challenge. It is important that you follow these 10 survival tips to make your time there as productive and pleasurable as possible.

Preparing for your high school graduation is actually a lot more than just choosing the invitations and the color of the balloons for the party. It’s realizing that this is the final step into adulthood and into the stressful but rewarding world of responsibilities, duties, and obligations. Learning personal survival skills are as essential in preparing for your high school graduation as are getting good grades and SAT scores. Although, getting good grades and taking as many electives as possible without compromising those grades is a great way to prepare yourself for graduation, and ultimately, for college and life in the “real world” as an adult.

Personal survival skills are those vital, necessary tasks that self-sufficient people must do for themselves in order to survive. Some of these include getting a part-time job before graduation if possible, getting a driver’s license, volunteering in the community, and learning the basic financial skills needed to function in life such as balancing a checkbook.

A “part-time job” can include household chores and various tasks such as babysitting, mowing lawns, shoveling snow and doing odd jobs for friends and neighbors. Many high schools offer work-study programs that are beneficial to students in that they allow them to earn money while working toward their graduation and college goals.

Once a graduate-to-be is sure that they are capable of taking care of themselves without help from their parents or family, they should be confident in their abilities to succeed in college as well. By learning the basic skills that are necessary to function as a responsible adult before graduating from high school you’ll be prepared for college, work, and life in general. You’ll also be able to attend your graduation with the confident knowledge that you’re ready to successfully take on all of life’s exciting challenges.

There are other parents whose children are also graduating high school this year but they are not that excited for the day. The reason was that they don’t have enough money for the preparation of graduation ceremony. There is couple of things that you need for the day and after:

A sober set of cap and gown for graduation because without it the school will not allow the student to attend the ceremony.
A gift for the graduate to acknowledge his success.
A proper announcement card to tell people that the person has graduated.
Fund to host a graduation party on the success of the student.

All these require a lot of money which out of budget for some parents. They feel helpless and desperate to give a grand treat to their child but things are out of their hands. There are many steps that can be taken by the school and the students to ease the burden of these parents.

The school normally has a database of old students. These students can be contacted and requested to lend their old graduation caps and gown. Many students will come forward to help the school.
Many a time schools keep a stock of graduation caps & gowns which they rent it out to the students in the graduation ceremony. The school can come forward and lend the cap and gown to the needy student without charging anything from them. It is an easy thing and can be followed by the school every year.
Every school has some funds that they collect from the students, in the form of late fees, fines, etc. This fund can be used and a small portion of it can be given to the parent. The parents can return the money in small installments in a relaxed period of time.
The parents who are planning for individual party can act a little generously and allow the needy parent to host their party also. Both parents can then distribute the expenses among themselves.
If hosting the party together is not possible then there is just no need of giving a graduation party. Those expenses can be saved and later used to buy something more useful for the child.

In the days of recession when he prices of everything is going up, you do not need to waste money in showing of. That money can be wisely on something more fruitful and productive things.

You must be wondering what kind of gift would be ideal for a graduating student. Following is a list of high school graduation gift item ideas that you may consider. And this list contains many more items than just students’ laptops.

When price is no bar, you can gift your graduating son or daughter big ticket items like students laptops or college laptops or VGN laptops, money (though I will advise against hard cash), a car, a travel or vacation tour, CD or DVD or stock, a cellular phone with a prepaid plan (it is best if you ask your son or daughter to sponsor his/her own phone bills).

Other big ticket items are baby refrigerators that your teenaged darling will find very useful if living in a dormitory at college or furniture. If your graduating child is moving out of your home, then furniture like a single bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers, study table and chair, dining table and living room sofa set will be the most useful items for him/her.

Now let me give you a list of mid priced items that cost between $50 and $250. Here the choice will be huge. You can gift him/her a digital camera, set of luggage, toaster oven or microwave oven, watch, clothing gift card, briefcase, ipod, DVD player, television and so on.

Your daughter will just love the shopping spree a clothing gift card will allow her to indulge in – it will be like retail therapy to her. Television or different kinds of cooking appliances are ideal for those teenagers who are not allowed such things in college dorms.

If your graduating child wants to be independent and self sufficient while attending college you can gift him/her the excellent present of a packaged resume writing service that will help him bag a job.

Some other gifts you may consider are leather wallet with some cash in it, a money clip along with money in it, a money tree, some kind of a personalized graduation item, engraved jewelry, tool box with basic tools, printer, stereo, a coin in pure silver or gold along with the year of graduation engraved or embossed on it, a book shelf or cassettes/CDs/DVDs and recorder for recording lectures.  

Now you must be wondering where you can purchase or browse through so many student’s gift items. In the world of the internet, there are plenty of student websites which exclusively sell only the most superior quality student gift items online. If you visit a site like this, you will get to browse through all the items mentioned above and more in one single place which will take care of all your student gift needs.