The Gatherer Demon - What to Expect

The Gatherer Demon - What to ExpectThe Gatherer Demon is the archetypal demonic tutor. This ancient trope has been around for centuries and still works today as a powerful archetype to use in campaigns of role playing games. The Gatherer Demon can act as a popular evil character for an investigator to find, but it can also be used by the PCs as an evil mentor.First off, a Gatherer Demon can be a fearsome adversary to a character. These fierceness is in their appearance, as they can stand up to very strong opponents. Their piercing eyes and claws may not make them appealing at first, but they provide damage resistance when the Demon fights back. They also can make an excellent guardian to their charge, as their physical strength is above that of other allies. The Gatherer Demon also comes with an interesting psychological ability, as it learns the skills of any of its charges.One weakness of the Gatherer Demon is that, while they can grow quickly, their life span is short. This means that while they are relatively tough, they won't last much longer than normal. However, this can be overcome, by changing the attributes of the Demon.To do this, remove the Attribute Change feature from the Demon. This will allow the Demon to perform its functions more effectively, as well as allowing it to learn more attributes. At the same time, it will make the ability harder to use but also help the Gatherer Demon to grow. When the Gatherer Demon grows, they will also be capable of growing into other Demon forms, as well as advanced tasks within the game world.This change might be a little daunting to your group, especially if you are starting out with a Demon. However, you can always opt to follow the more 'traditional' path. First, they should have a SenseMotive, so that the Demon will know what their enemies are up to. As the game progresses, the Gatherer Demon will be able to pick up on the information that the investigators aren't actively watching their every move. This sh ould eventually make for some exciting encounters for your party.The Gatherer Demon has two types of skills. The Demon Body Skill and the Demon Soul Skill. These have two different levels, which determine the function of the Demon. Higher levels of these skills have greater powers, and will ultimately be a more powerful opponent for the investigator.The Gatherer Demon is one of the most popular demonic characters for the investigator to find. It can be used to help the party reach goals, and to become more powerful. Whether they decide to take the traditional form, or choose to just go with the traditional form, the Gatherer Demon is still effective, and great fun to play.

For vs Since

For vs Since Whats the difference between for and since? Whats the difference between for and since? Choosing between prepositions can be tricky. For French speakers, choosing which preposition to use can be especially difficult because the French equivalents are used differently. Dont worry. This article should clarify when to use for and since.     Rules and Examples RULE: Use FOR with a length or time. Use SINCE with a starting point. INCORRECT: I have been studying here  since  2 years. CORRECT: I have been studying here  for  2 years. INCORRECT: I have been working there  since  forever. CORRECT: I have been working there  forever. INCORRECT: We have lived here  since always. CORRECT: We have lived here  since I was born. INCORRECT: I have lived in Longueuil  since all my life. CORRECT: I have lived in Longueuil  all of my life.     Practice exercise for FOR and SINCE For vs Since     Free Grammar Checkers Virtual Writing Tutor grammar checker website Grammarly plugin for Chrome         Please follow and like us:

Interview with Canadian Poet Peter Van Toorn

Interview with Canadian Poet Peter Van Toorn Peter Van Toorn is the author of three books of poetry, Leeway Grass, (1970); In Guildenstern County, 1973; and Mountain Tea, 1985. As editor, he has published various collections over the years: Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry (with Ken Norris), 1982; The Insecurity of Art: Essays on Poetics (with Ken Norris), 1982; Lakeshore Poets, 1982; Sounds New, 1990; and most recently, Canadian Animal Poetry, (1993). Sketch by Kendra Boychuk Born July 13th, 1944 in a bunker near The Hague, Netherlands, Van Toorn has lived in and around Montreal since 1953. A former student of Louis Dudek, F.R Scott, and Hugh Maclennan, he worked for a while as a teacher’s assistant to Hugh MacLennan at McGill University grading papers. During the late 60s and early 70s, he taught at Concordia University. Now, after 29 years of teaching Creative writing and Canadian poetry at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, he is retired. He lives in a small semi-detached rented house with three dogs, seven cats and his girlfriend of 11 years, Annie. I’ve always admired his translations in Mountain Tea, so when I reached Peter by phone Monday evening, October the 24th, 2000, I asked him to talk a little about translation. Phone interview NW: What is translation? PVT: The word itself is interesting: it comes to us from translatus,the past participle of the Latin transferre, ‘to carry across’ without death. Right there you have the mandate of the poetic translator like me. There’s no point translating something, unless it lives in the language into which it goes. If doesn’t live in the new language, it’s like a transplantâ€"it gets rejected. It’s not successful. NW: Peter, where did translation start? PVT: It was Babel, a plain in the land of Shinar, tradition tells us, where they first discovered a need for it. A long time ago, the men who lived there said, “Let us build a city and a tower that it may reach unto heaven. And let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language. Nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Let us go down and confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” And the people of Shinar said, “Let us use slime for mortar and brick for stone.” In other words, they were going to have to extemporize, and adlib, and use materials that were handyâ€"they were being ingenious and creative, right? And they thought this was clever. But they had given up trying to reach God through prayer and meditation. What they wanted was technological power. They wanted a real, physical power to reach God, as if he’s really up there. That, in itself, is problematic. They had become literalists of the imagination. So God smashed the tower and scattered the bricks, and suddenly people couldn’t understand each other. They’d lost their ability to collaborate and got scattered across the earth. That’s where the need for translation started. NW: So translation has been valued ever since, right? PVT: In fact, no. The opposite is true. There’s been a taboo on translation that has beleaguered translators since Babel. To this day, Jewish scholars are not allowed to translate. They are not even allowed to touch a text until they’ve washed their hands and performed certain rituals and said certain prayers. They’re very, very afraid of what they call an irreption, which is a kind of corruption where a little deviation crawls into the text through a smudge or a tired moment of the copyist. Translators to this day have been beleaguered by this taboo. And you see that every time you pick up a book that has been translated. The translator always has a heavy apology in the front saying, “In my translation, I have sought to preserve the alliteration of the Norse text without imposing too high of a diction…” and they go into a whole elaborate explanation of how they’ve translated the damn thing, which nobody really wants to hear. We just want to see a poem that works! If it doesn’t work in the new language, if it isn’t a poem in its own right, then it’s not a good translation, so there’s no point in doing it. I’ll give you a little illustration of the whole problem of translation. During the 1940s there were musicians living in Czechoslovakia during the Communist era who really prized and loved to play jazz. They just loved it. To them, jazz was the symbol of the freedom of America, of everything that was tantalizing. So they would send away for sheet music to New York City and get standard jazz pieces, which they would then play. One piece they got in the mail, one day, was called, “Stomping at the Barbecue.” And this is how they translated it: “Dancing Slowly at an Outdoor Cooking Device.” You can see how clumsy that is. It doesn’t live in the new language. It’s a literal translation, but it isn’t interesting, it isn’t funky. It doesn’t live in Czech. The whole thing then is for the Czech translator to find what Elliot calls the objective correlative, something in Czech culture that is familiar to them like the barbecue, their word, their thing for it. And if there’s no barbecue, then to find another object, to make “Stomping at the Barbecue” live in Czech. Otherwise, they’re not extending the national, linguistic, temperamental, and chronological boundaries of the source text. NW: What do you mean by temperamental boundaries? PVT: A translation has to carry a poem across boundaries of geography, language, and time, as well as temperament. The temperament of the translator may be very different from that of the poet of the source text. Only at certain moments will the translator be congenial enough to the source poet to accommodate that certain point of view that he, himself, would maybe never write about. Then translation becomes the one permissible way for the translator to write about something that’s very personal. NW: Forgive me for asking this: Isn’t translation just another form of cultural imperialism, you know, going around the globe swiping masterpieces and pocketing the proceeds? PVT: It can be. It’s not supposed to be. I know what you mean, though. Translation requires reciprocity. You have to give something back to the original. A translation should always carry the poem further, into the next time, into the next Zeitgeist, into the next cultural mood. If Beaudelaire were writing that poem now, if he were writing in English and he wanted to translate the poem himself, this is what he would have done. You have to ask yourself: what if he were translating his poem into English and not me. That’s what you aim at, so the poem extends its readership. A good translation can give the source text an immensely wider circulation than it originally had when it was just confined to the French readers of that century. Another country or another time may be more receptive to a Beaudelaire poem than even the Parisians were at the time it was first written. NW: How did you get started doing translations? What was your first translation? PVT: First translation? Good question. Gee, that’s a toughie. Okay, yeahâ€"Latin. In high school, I don’t know about you, but I took Latin. That was my first real experience as a translator. In high school, all kids had to translate Caesar and Tacitus and all the groovy guys like Ovid into English. So you learned another language mechanically. I think the first thing I translated successfully is my poem in Leeway Grass, the one about the sword maker, “Elegy on War: Invention of the Sword,” from Tibullus. From there I went on to French, because you learn French at school if you grow up here. I translated Beaudelaire, Villon, Ronsard, Charles d’Orleans, Rimbaud, Manger, Hugo, Saint-Amant… NW: Any Quebeckers? PVT: Sure. Gilles Vigneault and Sylvain Garneau. NW: What about your translations from languages you don’t speak? PVT: Here we get into another thing. [Coughs] I see that problem as being a problem of research. When you do anything in research, you don’t just read one book. You come at it from a hundred directions. You look a hundred different texts by scholars who are very knowledgeable in the original tongue. Let’s say Chinese in this case. So you read the famous scholars who have translated it, and you read other people who have tried it. Because they’re not fully translated in the sense we talked about earlier and since they are still kind of klutzy and eminently forgettable, that stuff gets to be dust in the next century. But if you look at all these different texts, they all seem to be pointing at something. You can find that point by triangulation. When you know points around something you can find where the center is. So I would go to different Chinese translators and found their translations not sparkling enough, but I could sort of smell the original. Goethe said, “Translations are like pictures on matchboxes; they make you hungry for the original.” Often, translators demote poetry to prose in their translations. Robert Frost said something very witty about translation once. His definition of poetry went like this: “Poetry is what gets lost in the translation.” [Laughs] So a poetic translation is as Elliot says, a raid on the inarticulate. Il faut etre poet, d’abord! Translation means taking that poem one step further, back into poetry where it belongs. ‘Cuz if it ain’t got that swing, it don’t mean a thing…[Chuckles]… NW: Thanks, Pete. PVT: Anytime. Related posts Grammar checker poemTranslation card gameTranslate your grammar checker feedback to one of 70 languages How I met Peter Van Toorn Peter Van Toorn and I first became friends in 1987. Our friendship started with an argument over a word. Halfway through the semester at John Abbott College, Professor Van Toorn gave our Creative Writing class an assignment that started an argument that has never been settled. The assignment was “to find ten uses of the word ‘spit’ and put them into ten sentences, each illustrating one of the meanings of the word.” The rest of the class groaned when he announced the assignment because it meant a trip to the library and laborious use of dictionaries. I was intrigued. I took it as a challenge and went directly after class to the library determined to find a use of “spit” that he was unlikely to encounter in the papers from the groaning population of the class. There in the college library, I found several giant dictionaries and went through them looking for the one with the most entries under the heading “spit.” I can’t remember the name of the dictionary I found, but it was so large that a librarian came over to help me lift it. It had 18 entriesâ€"more than enough to complete the assignment. Of course, there were the common uses that most people know: spit meaning to eject phlegm, spit meaning sputum, spit meaning a rotisserie rod, and the idiomatic usage, “spit and image” mistakenly pronounced “spitting image.” Also listed were the ones people usually don’t know: spit meaning to run through, spit meaning a short sword, spit meaning a sandy promontory, and spit meaning the quantity of earth taken up by a spade at a time. But it was the final entry that really intrigued me: spit-kit meaning a tin box used by military personnel to hold tobacco and rolling papers with a compartment to extinguish lit cigarettes and store the butts. Upon reading this, I was reminded of my grandfather back in England who kept his tobacco, papers, and “fag-ends” in a tin he kept in his breast pocket. “Professor Van Toorn is going to love this one,” I thought. “I bet even he hasn’t discovered this usage!” I completed my assignment putting “spit-kit” first in my list with the sentence, “The soldier extinguished his cigarette in his spit-kit,” and gave it in the following week.When I got my assignment back a week later, I was horrified that Peter had given me 9/10 with an “X” next to my first sentence and the word “argot” in the margin. I had no idea what “argot” meant, but I was quite sure of my research and that he had just never encountered “spit-kit” before. I was right. He hadn’t seen that usage before but explained that “spit-kit” was a usage of “spit” not belonging to the general current of English and was therefore unacceptable, as would be slang, jargon, or other highly specialized uses of the word. Well, that got me miffed. I felt he had unjustly penalized my work for going further in my research than anyone else in the class including himself, the professor. Sensing my indignation, he suggested we settle our quarrel over a beer at the brasserie in the village.Peter is a good talker. I learned more in the four hours we spent drinking together than I had learned all semester in any of my other courses. I could not, however, get him to agree to change my grade. He said, “If I haven’t heard of it, it doesn’t exist. You must have made it up.” Something changed inside me. I couldn’t believe how arrogant that was. Peter, by his intractability, had awoken in me the strength to dare to disagree with my professors, to trust my own research, to go further in my reading than them, and, above all, to distrust orthodoxy of any kind in the realm of ideas. Years later, he related to me how his professor at McGill University, Louis Dudek, had taught him never to trust any scholar as having the final word on a subject. “Scholarship,” Peter said, “means maintenance. Trust no one, not even yourself. Everybody gets things wrong sometimes. Read and reread and never stop. Keep going back to your research time and again until it becomes impossible to forget.” “Spit-kit,” I said. “Grade change,” he replied. Please follow and like us:

Are Border Fences Americas Only Hope at Halting Illegal Immigration

Are Border Fences America's Only Hope at Halting Illegal Immigration Despite spending over $4 billion on border fencing, 1,300 miles of the US-Mexico Border remains open to defectors. The majority of illegal immigrants entering the United States do so through the country’s southern border from Mexico, a boundary stretching almost 2,000 miles from California to Texas.   As of February 2012, the United States has constructed 651 miles of fencing along the US-Mexican border, covering just over 33% of the total length of the boundary. A U.S Government Accountability Office report in 2011 found the U.S Border Patrol had “operational control” of 873 miles of the US-Mexico border, but with over 50% of the international border unprotected by fencing and more than $4.5 billion spent constructing more fences in the past five years, are fences America’s best option at halting illegal immigration? Lower estimates derived from recent fencing projects implemented by U.S Border Control put the cost of one mile of fencing at roughly $16 million. With 1,300 miles still fenceless and open to Mexican defectors, estimates show the total cost of fencing the remaining border at over $22 billion, a figure which does not take into account land acquisition costs or fence maintenance. As more illegal immigrants enter the United States, the idea of a physical border is becoming less and less pragmatic during times of economic recovery, but what other options does the United States government have to stop illegal immigration? The increase in drone and UAV aircrafts by the U.S military in recent years sheds light on a new option to beef up border security. Currently the United States has roughly 680 drones, 172 of which are Predator drones, an unmanned aircraft which is used for air-to ground combat, surveillance and intelligence all over the world;  however, the weapons on the aircraft can be removed. Drone usage has been on the rise by the military as the United States gathers more information on potential national security threats, with the added benefit being that drones eliminate the loss of human life when gathering intelligence. A U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle.Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Stanley Thompson Predator drones cost a little over $4 million per aircraft, but recent technology has drastically improved their ability to see a full picture of the area they are scanning. The development of the ARGUS sensor (Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance) by multinational defense company BAE Systems brings UAV surveillance to levels never seen before. The ARGUS sensor can be mounted on any Predator drone and is equipped with 368 cell phone cameras, enabling the sensor to mold together a 1.8 billion pixel video that spans fifteen square miles. With the highest quality video ever produced available to Predator drone operators in real time, the ARGUS sensor has the ability to pinpoint every moving human being in the fifteen square mile area with colored squares, zooming close enough to watch a solitary bird soar across the sky. Surveillance of the remaining open regions of the U.S-Mexico border could be conducted with the use of just under 100 Predator drones, each equipped with an ARGUS sensor. The cost of manufacturing the necessary drones hovers around $400 million, less than 2% of the lowest estimate cost of constructing fencing on the rest of the United States’ southern border. While the estimated total cost of manufacturing the Predator drones needed does not take into account the cost of the ARGUS sensors and drone operators, Predator drones clearly are winning the battle of the most cost-effective options to sure up America’s southern border and put a stop to illegal immigration.

4 Things Job Rejection Teaches You

4 Things Job Rejection Teaches You pexels.com The wonderful thing about rejection letters, as ironic as that sounds, is that they can teach you something maybe not a lesson you want to learn, but in the end, you can use that rejection as something to strengthen you for next time. Perhaps that job wasn’t meant for you or just maybe there is something you could have done better that would have made you a more sought after candidate. You thought your personal statement was great, but maybe it needed a second layer of proofreading. Even rejection can teach you something. 1. Don’t be a fake: Sometimes we go into job interviews pretending to be something that we aren’t. We pretend to be something that the employer would want. Believe me, dedication is a good thing, but lying isn’t. Ultimately, that’s what you are doing. You aren’t being yourself; you are being someone that you think they would like. That can only mean that if they hire you, they aren’t hiring you for you, but for the person that they think you are. Do you think you can pull off that façade for the duration you hold that job? I don’t think so. And honestly, why would you? Be you and if they don’t like you, then the job wasn’t meant for you. Period. 2. Confidence is key: Interviewing can be intimidating, to say the least. You can clam up, go blank when asked a question, stutter, start sweating (a lot), etc. When you are about to go into the interview, take deep breaths and tell yourself you can do this. Confidence is one thing that every employer likes in their employees. They want to know that you know what you are talking about and that you honestly believe in your abilities to do the work. I think they can live with some slight intimidation, but remember that they were in your shoes once and if they are a good employer, they want you to just feel good about yourself fully. 3. Improvement, improvement, improvement: As I said earlier, what you think is perfect may not be as perfect as you think. Maybe your resume needed a bit of a touch-up or maybe you should have elaborated more when they asked you about your past experience. Maybe you should have remembered to take that negative about yourself and turn it into strength somehow. Everything can do with some improvement, even when you think it’s perfect. If you get a rejection, sometimes employers are willing to let you know how you can improve for another interview you may have. You have already been rejected by the company, so what do you have to lose by asking them how you could improve? 4. Rejection: the silent blessing: Lastly, sometimes rejection could quite possibly be the best thing that ever happened to you. Did you ever think that maybe that company just wasn’t right for you? You could have been miserable there and wanted to quit immediately. Sometimes things happen to us and we realize that certain jobs would have gotten in the way of what’s happening at the moment. You never know, so try to move on and move forward with life, putting rejections behind you.

Certified teachers 5 reasons why you should try online teaching (and where to start)

Certified teachers 5 reasons why you should try online teaching (and where to start) Got your teaching license? Want to make some extra cash and build a whole new set of teaching skills for the future? If you do, that’s awesome. And this also happens to be the exact article for you, so be sure to keep reading. Here’s how to decide if online teaching is right for you You might have heard about other licensed teachers who’ve made the decision to work from home - or even to take their teaching careers on the road altogether - by teaching online. Or, you may have read about the many qualified educators who opt to teach English online while looking for their next classroom teaching job. If you’ve done even a little research on the topic, you’ll probably already know that online teaching is also a great part-time option for lots of different types of qualified teachers. Here’s just a sampling: Working teachers looking to supplement their existing salary. Education graduates who have yet to land their first classroom teaching gig. Teacher retirees (and supply teachers) looking to earn some money on the side. Takeaway: Regardless of your current working situation, teaching online is both lucrative and chock full of potential for certified teachers, regardless of your subject expertise or experience level. And the career option with perhaps the brightest future for qualified educators right now is - drumroll please - teaching English online. Teaching English online: The hottest job for North American educators As we’ve mentioned on the Teach Away blog a time or two, there’s really no way to overstate the almost mind-boggling growth happening in the global online English teaching sector right now. This is, in no small part, due to the huge growth in China’s online English education industry. Fueled by the surge in demand for English language lessons delivered by North American teachers, online English teaching platforms like VIPKID, are currently ramping up hiring for a large number of teachers who hold a US or Canadian teaching license. We’ve covered the benefits of teaching English online for graduates of all majors before, There are, however, some specific perks of the job are well worth talking about if you’re a certified teacher. The pros of teaching online if you’re a licensed teacher 1. Freedom One big pro - if not the biggest - is that you can teach at home - or anywhere in the world, really. Balancing online teaching alongside a full-time teaching job is surprisingly straightforward. And getting started is easy - you just need the essentials, like a working computer/laptop, webcam, a solid internet connection, mic and headset. Some additional props you might want to use you’ll likely already have lying around, like a whiteboard and flashcards. For those contemplating turning teaching online into a long-term career, it’s totally normal to worry about missing the buzz of the staffroom. Seeing colleagues each day provides much-needed inspiration, a sounding board and support base for educators. Luckily, online English teaching companies like VIPKID are home to an amazing community of teachers. On the VIPKID forum, you’ll be able to get advice and support on pretty much anything related to teaching online. Recommended reading: Are you ready to teach online? 2. Money The pay can be quite lucrative, especially if you possess a teaching license. Qualified teachers command the highest hourly rate and are in huge demand at English tutoring companies like VIPKID. By teaching as little as three hours a day, you could earn as much as $2,000 USD extra a month. Part-time online teaching is a win-win situation - you get to keep your regular teaching job and benefits and earn some extra income in the process. Bonus for full-time online English teachers: You’ll also save on transportation costs, time spent getting to and from work, buying lunch and other work-related expenses. Sign up to Teach Away today for access to the latest teaching jobs around the world. 3. Flexible working hours We’ve all got busy lives and it can be hard juggling personal and work commitments. Online teaching makes all of that so much easier. One of the main advantages of teaching online is the ability to set your own schedule. This means balancing online English teaching alongside your regular, full-time teaching job is surprisingly straightforward. You can choose to start small, teaching anywhere from a few hours and build your way up to 20 hours a week. There’s no grading or lesson planning required, just your time spent physically teaching lessons. So long as you’ve got some free time in the early mornings or evenings, it should be relatively easy to teach online for a few hours during the working week, as well as on the weekends, if you’re so inclined. If you do choose to teach online on a full-time basis, you’ll get to tailor your online teaching hours to different peak times - mornings, evenings and weekends - depending on your personal preferences. For example, if you’re more of a night owl, you might prefer to teach into the small hours of the morning and sleep later than a standard teaching job will permit. By making online teaching your primary source of income, it also means you’ll have the freedom to take vacation time when it suits you - and beat those pesky peak prices during school breaks. 4. Motivated students As educators, we all want to create a disruption-free learning environment for each and every student in our class. But motivating a class of 20 or more students to listen and remain on task is no easy feat. If you can relate to this common teaching challenge, then teaching English online with VIPKID will be a breath of fresh air for you. All lessons are conducted on a one-on-one basis, meaning you get to fully focus on your true passion - helping your students learn. Thanks to our increasingly global economy, English language skills are no longer an asset - they’re a necessity. There is no greater sense of accomplishment as a teacher than knowing that the knowledge you impart will make a positive, measurable impact on your student's future. 5. New career path? The K12 virtual schools market in North America is expected to grow by 13% per year through to 2021. Because online instruction is in the midst of a historic growth streak in the US, teaching English online with VIPKID is a great way to test the waters for a potential career transition to teaching your chosen subject online at a K12 virtual school at some point in the future. What’s more, English learners are a quickly growing segment of the student population in Canada and the US - meaning that experience teaching English language learners online can be a great addition to your resume. It’s time to make that teaching license work harder for you! Apply today to learn more about a teaching career (or part-time gig!) with VIPKID, including upcoming jobs, requirements, work environment and more.

5 Things to do Before Finishing the 8th Grade - TutorNerds

5 Things to do Before Finishing the 8th Grade - TutorNerds 5 things to do before finishing the 8th grade The end of the school year is not far away, and students currently in the eighth grade will face a major change in their academic life next year, they will soon be high school students. 8th graders have to face finals week just like they did in years past but there are some additional things they can do to help them prepare for the summer as well as their impending future as a high school student. Whether working on organizational skills or self-motivation 8th graders can make their lives a lot easier by refining a few important academic skills before they complete the school year. 1.   Effective study habits Students entering high school will be expected to have pretty decent study habits. They will need to be able to sit down and start homework assignments on their own, take the initiative to ask questions or get help when needed, work effectively within a group, and so on. There are lots of changes going on in middle school and junior high but ninth grade teachers will expect a certain level of commitment from their students so its a good idea to start looking at study habits now and make any necessary adjustments over the summer. 2.   Time management and organization Another thing thats incredibly important for 8th grade students to master is time management and organization. Students might have three hours of studying or homework to complete over the weekend but, if they’re disorganized, it can take forever. So many students dont get things done on time or miss important deadlines because they lack personal time management skills. To be fair, most adults struggle with time management to some degree so its not to say that young students need to be perfect. Rather, they should set a reasonable goal for improvement and work towards it. Students who have at least some organizational skills tend to not only do better academically but also tend to be happier and more relaxed during this major transition (READ: 10 Reasons Why You Need a Summer Tutor). 3.   Becoming a self-starter In the 8th grade teachers will still check up on students on a regular basis and ask if they understand the assignment, if they need any additional help, or if theyre struggling. In contrast, 9th grade teachers will encourage students to be self-starters and take the initiative to ask questions without prompting. If 8th graders have one major goal over the summer it should be to learn how to speak up when they dont understand something. Even if a student is uncomfortable asking a question aloud in class, they should get used to talking to the teacher after class or making an appointment to talk about challenging assignments. 4.   Communication with teachers Another really important factor of mastering the 8th grade is learning how to communicate with teachers. For instance, younger students generally say to a teacher I dont get the assignment or this doesnt make sense. Thats a good start because it lets the teacher know the student is struggling but, by high school, students should be able to specifically describe what it is they’re struggling with. For example, students can ask a question such as I dont understand the concept described on page 23 or I dont understand what specifically sparked (a particular war, revolution, or conflict). Specific questions definitely help the teacher figure out how to explain the difficult passage or concept to the student in detail. 5.   Choosing good role models as friends Another thing essential at this age is for students to start choosing friends based on their attitude and goals towards school and life. Most students stay at one high school for four years, so theyll likely have the same classmates this entire time. However, students moving from 8th to 9th grade will have an opportunity to reinvent themselves and make new friends. Classmates who are serious about getting work done, ask for help when needed, and have a positive attitude about school are more likely to encourage their friends to do well and stay on the right track. Everybody struggles from time to time, but the desire to succeed will make a difference in any student’s life. End the year strong with the help of our private San Diego middle school tutors. We have all the major subjects covered, and will help prepare your child as they make the big transition into high school. All blog entries, with the exception of guest bloggers, are written by Tutor Nerds. Are you an education professional? If so, email us at pr@tutornerds.com for guest blogging and collaborations. We want to make this the best free education resource in SoCal, so feel free to suggest what you would like to see us write.