7 keyboard shortcuts I wish I knew earlier

Four years of owning a Macbook in college has taught me a lot about computers, but not everything there is to know. Here's a quick list of seven things I've discovered recently that could be of use to your everyday life!

1. If you select text and click Command + K, you can link to something online or an email address.

2. The button under delete is a nice little vertical divider when you click shift. (|)

3. If you click option + E and then another letter afterward, the letter will have the Spanish accent mark on it. Same thing to get ñ- option n, n.

4. You know those F5 and F6 buttons on your computer? They control the keyboard backlighting.

5. When you highlight a section of text and click the arrows under shift, it moves the highlight forward or back. This sounds pretty obvious, but is cool in action

6. The dash (-) next to 0 is a normal dash, and an underscore when you click shift. But if you click OPTION dash, it's a thicker dash! (–)

7. This one isn't really a keyboard shortcut, but just a nice thing to know if you ever make a bibliography. If you highlight a section of text, right click and click Paragraph --> Special, you can add an automatic hanging indent. It saves you a ton of time from doing it one-by-one!

The benefits of higher education

This semester, I'm working on the community outreach team at the Columbia Missourian as part of my  participatory journalism class. In addition to being a three-credit class, we also work newsroom shifts. In one of our class sessions this week, our teacher Joy Mayer hosted a Google+ hangout with journalists across the country to talk about their publications' commenting platforms. Since participatory journalism looks at how to engage readers, learning about commenting and keeping audiences involved is integral to our course.

However she did it - Joy organized three excellent speakers:

• Jack C., Knoxville News Sentinel, a Scripps publication
• Todd O., Associate Community Manager at Mashable
• Kate M., social media product manager at NPR 

As a class, we learned a lot about three very different types of news outlets. We heard how many comments they receive per month, what their thoughts are on moderation, how they are innovating in the community space and where they see the future of comments.

And we also got to see real-world, working journalists interact with each other. This Google + hangout not only taught us about how various publications are using comment platforms, but gave three journalists a time out in their day to learn themselves. When two of the sources began a conversation with each other, my heart melted.

One fear professors have engrained in students' mind is the idea that once you start to work, you don't get to learn. You do, do, do and don't have time to think to improve or gain new ideas. So this 'hangout' was an honor because not only did it teach me as a student, but I saw the smiles on three working professionals' faces when they got to take some time and learn. When something is for education, the work force realizes it's for the greater good and participates, even if it's a detriment to their day. So hopefully the hangout let them pause, learn and grow in their own positions as they preached them to my class.

Overall, I'm going to miss the daily world of education and hope I can continue to learn and participate in things like this!

One month left at Mizzou

Earlier last week, my fellow senior friends and I hit our "one month left in college" stage. Last weekend, the boys planned a nice weekend for everyone in Kansas City, where we got to spend some time in Westport, on the Plaza and taking our first brewery tour of the Boulevard factory. This past weekend, everyone was in town and we spent three nights in a row going out together.

Despite the fact that we all live next door to each other, it was a big deal that no one had any other commitments. Reflecting on the time, I realized these two weekends were probably some of the most fun ones I've had in college. But what was different? We've been best friends for four years, what made hanging out with each other more fun than usual?

Last month, I wrote a blog post about face-timing – and realized that's where things were different. We accomplished the goal of what I discussed in that post; it didn't matter who else we saw out or wanted to meet up with. With no more than six people, we spent time with each other and went to the bars we wanted to, not where we thought people would be. And since we know we won't have this much time to spend with each other in the future, we started to enjoy the upcoming month and I continued to discover how much I love my best friends at Mizzou. I'm definitely prepared for an emotional and eventful next month of fun 'last times' as a student and in Columbia.

In the lobby of our hotel in Kansas City

Our roommates at Greek Week Fling Finals, watching Kathryn get recognized on stage!

Our last Phi Mu formal

The joys of grad school

Last semester in my qualitative research course, we learned a lot about ethical issues in research and ultimately, the development of the IRB (institutional research board) at every university. The literature from cases before the IRB existed was fascinating, as research studies would impose harm on participants or deceive them, causing insane effects or distress. Nowadays, any graduate student conducting research with human subjects must be IRB-certified.

Yesterday evening, I took my IRB certification online modules and found it quite amusing. Similar to an online class, you read various material and answer multiple-choice questions afterward. My roommate Shaina made fun of how much fun I had mocking the questions, but I wanted to show my friends what type and level of informing upfront goes into graduate research projects.

Check out two of the questions that particularly made me laugh:

Now you know that whenever a graduate student sends you a survey link or requests an in-depth interview or focus group for graduate-level research, they have gone through four hours of extensive training, plus a few questions to make sure they know common sense :).

Congratulations, Helen & Steve!

Earlier last week, I received an exciting phone from my friend Helen, one of my best friends since middle school. She called to tell me that her boyfriend Steve proposed and that they are ENGAGED! Her and her new fiancé Steve have been dating since fall of our sophomore year of college, celebrating more than 2.5 years together. 

The first time I met Steve when Helen and Steve came to visit for Mizzou's Centennial Homecoming in October 2011!

Their engagement means a lot to me because it's one of the first couples that I've gotten to watch grow together. I've had the opportunity to really become acquainted with Steve as a friend and not just "Helen's boyfriend." I know about his classes, his hobbies and activities at school. He has even visited and met most of my friends at Mizzou. I'm not excited that Helen's getting married, I'm excited that Helen and Steve are marrying each other. They are not only a good match as a couple because of their interests, but also their personalities. Besides the lovely little perk of being in the wedding party, I'm sincerely happy that they are happy. 

It's truly amazing to look at two of your friends getting married and know that you have grown up with them. My memories aren't just with them as individuals, but them as a couple. From Steak N Shake nights, to the football game during Mizzou Homecoming, to hanging out at Steve's apartment at Iowa State, to hotel parties in downtown Chicago - there are countless times I've had fun with both of them. And I'll continue to have those times when they are officially together in the future, MARRIED! 

Congratulations to Helen & Steve, and enjoy these photos of some of our good times below! 

Helen, me, Steve and Steve's roommate Colin at Iowa State in September 2012.
Colin and I decided we'd walk down the aisle together at their wedding!

Reuniting at University of Illinois - March 2013

New Year's 2013.
Congratulations!

Chile: The Highlights

I wrote about what I did in Chile everyday, but never really described the overall impression of Santiago as a city or Chile as a country. When deciding to book my ticket for spring break, nearly 10 days, I knew it would be ‘short’ relative to other abroad experiences but that’s how vacations will be the rest of my life. I wouldn’t take back any of the money I spent and feel like the time was enough to become well-acquainted with what the city had to offer.

The two large “cerros,” or hills, define the city of Santiago. Called Cerro Santa Lucia and Cerro San Cristobal, both are full of parks and gardens the entire way up, and people of all ages are climbing at all points during the day. You can climb or pay $1 to take a funicular up, kind of like a ski lift! Unfortunately, Santiago has a huge pollution problem so although the city is bordered in mountains, you only really see fog on weekdays. On the weekends when there are less commuters in vehicles, the mountains are more clearly delineated.

At the top of Cerro San Cristobal, overseeing Santiago and its outskirts

As a working journalist abroad, Elizabeth is very well-versed in Chile’s current events. She explained to me how education is very expensive and that there are a ton of flaws in public education. One visible tradition is that college juniors and seniors steal the items of the entire freshmen class, and haze them with paint, seafood, eggs and more and won't give the underclassmen their bags back until they can on the streets for coins. What a crazy tradition, especially considering our view of hazing like this in the U.S.!

One of the freshmen canning on the streets (she gave me permission to take this photo)

Literature and artisan culture are strong values, and it shows. There are fewer museums than Buenos Aires, but because of that - they are all phenomenal. Every important location has a "Centro Cultural" component with not only a store or vendors, but also exhibits to learn about it. 

The Museum of Memory & Human Rights taught me about the dictatorship of Pinochet and Chile's No! movement and its rich history. Here, the yes and no campaigns to leave Pinochet in office had 15 minutes of TV airtime to produce campaigns. We watched the spots at the museum, as well as watching the No! documentary movie. 

The American community abroad is well-acquainted and loving life. Just like you meet a community when you move to a new American city, all of the English speakers find each other abroad and become friends. I met some of Elizabeth's friends from The Santiago Times, we constantly hung out with her Canadian friend Alicja (pronounced Alicia, but spelled the Polish way) and I met a few people throughout the trip and we kept in touch because we all speak English. It was a great week of traveling and next destination: Europe!

Alicja, me and Elizabeth having dinner at Patio Bellavista, a beautiful outdoor plaza

Never would have expected

As I finish my last semester at Mizzou, I’m beginning to reflect on how much I have learned the past four years. Not only academically, but about myself and the world in general.

Some daily habits have completely turned around 360 degrees since my freshman year, like how we use smart phones. Other routines become habits and when you put them into context, you realize how fascinating they truly are.

Here are both some serious and lighthearted things I never would have believed if you told me them 3½ years ago.

At Mizzou…

• When you're involved in a campus organization, you're basically running a small business - with a lot lower of a budget.
• One day, you'll use your entire print quota.
• 
Your computer will crash.
• Twitter will be incredibly popular and vital to your professional life, and your news consumption.
• You’ll be the only one of your roommates without an iPad.
• You will know your friends’ gas-buying habits, whether they wear a seatbelt and if they’re aisle or window seat-people on planes. And maybe you’ll even iron their clothes.
• You don’t only know all about your best friends’ families, but you know about their friends from high school, and THOSE people’s friends from college.
• Every journalism student frequents Shakespeare's and the Heidelberg.
• Guest lectures and special speakers provide a lot of insight, lessons and are amazing.
• Even universities have business travel. 
• Networking is so rich that you’ll get to have lunch with three CEOs your senior year. 

In society…

• Everyone will use 3G and a data plan on their cell phone, constantly being connected.  
• Every time you send a text message or email, you’ll be able to see it as a thread and not a standalone text.
• You can send a text message from your computer. 
• Five-hour energy will exist and be normal to use.
• Google + would start and be a big fail. 
• 
Outlet seats anywhere, on campus or in a coffee shop, are prime real estate.
• 
Finding housing and signing a lease is one of the most strenuous experiences you will go through.

What would you add to this list? 

Key to traveling South America: confidence

There is no doubt that people change when they study, work or travel abroad. It takes a certain level of confidence to successfully make it in another country, conquer each day in a second language and take care of mandatories like purchases, payments and transportation.

This week alone, there have been multiple instances that require confidence and an overall sense of level-headedness to get through without being the underdog. And I would not have had this if I hadn’t first studied and traveled Buenos Aires.

First, I was buying a ticket to climb a mountain and only had a 10.000 bill, equal to $20 USD. South American countries are notorious for hating large bills and not providing change. But at the end of the day, that’s what the ATM gave me and no one else could break it. The salesperson asked if I had lower bills, no. Could I borrow from someone else, no. Did I have coins to make it easier for them to break it, no. I wasn’t trying to be a jerky customer; I sincerely didn’t have any of these. So what did he do? Took the bill and gave me change. It was right there; it was just a last resort. Pre-study abroad Katie would panic and start asking people in line to break the bill, but traveler Katie knew you had to be strong in your words.

This situation can be repeated in various other contexts, whether it was ordering soda in a restaurant (we don’t have that…but you did before and that’s what I ordered…oh, okay, here it is), or buying tickets for a bus (there aren’t any seats on earlier buses…oh, here’s two on the bus 30 minutes earlier). My personal favorite was going through security at the Santiago airport. The woman tried convincing me that to fly back to America, I needed a paper receipt that was not in my passport that proved the time I entered into Chile. “No one handed me that,” I said, in Spanish. “I can’t let you onto your flight unless you have that paper.” My first instinct was to panic, cry and tear apart my bags, going back to get my checked bag from the airline and search for where it was.

My levelheaded self paused and thought- there is no way everyone in this international flights line has that sheet of paper. I stood my ground, and she just handed me the exact same sheet of paper where I wrote my name, address and passport number. And now I’m back in the United States.

My point in sharing these situations is not that South American salespeople lie. Or that they are always seeking convenience and won’t accommodate their customers. All of these attributes are a part of their culture, and if you can’t assimilate into that in every moment, which not all Americans can, you have to be assertive to not get shorthanded, robbed, tricked or stressed.

At the end of my freshman year, I took a StrengthsQuest exam and learned that my five strengths were communication, focus, woo, responsibility and individualization. I was happy with these results, fairly good attributes and described who I am.

Immediately after returning from my 2.5 month trip to Argentina, I had to take StrengthsQuest again for a campus organization, and was shocked to notice that in 15 months, my strengths were completely different. The results showed that I had learner, input, arranger, responsibility and achiever. I was pretty upset and started crying at this change; I wanted my old strengths back. I hadn’t outgrown them, but these were just new strengths that better described my personality in various situations. The ‘new’ strengths exemplified the independence I gained while studying abroad, when my roommates and I constantly took the next step to assert ourselves, get from point A to point B safely and not settle for natives tricking the gringa Americans.  

Elizabeth and I met some college juniors from Vermont at a convenience store in Valparaiso who were studying abroad in Buenos Aires, and when we established that we were all American, they asked us if we had any suggestions. Naturally, we rattled off a list of the best things to do in Buenos Aires, and as much as they were taking it in, they weren’t writing it down or following up. We muttered how naïve they were for not asking for our names to message us on Facebook, or writing anything down. Then…we realized that how they acted was exactly what we would do our first time abroad too. Not everyone travels with those strengths.

Independence, assertiveness, an inherent eagerness to learn and self-confidence are things people must discover themselves and through their own experiences. They can’t necessarily be taught, nonetheless forced upon people. I urge you to unleash your confidence to have the best experience abroad, and not feel ‘jipped’ when you’re paying hundreds of dollars for a trip. Once you adopt these attributes, they’re difficult to hide in other aspects of your life - look at anyone who comes back from studying abroad and watch how they act when making plans. You’re in control of the life that is yours, and it’s a good feeling.