Welcome to the end of August. For most students, this signals when It’s time to pick the books back up and head back into class. For AU students, of course, we never really stopped.
Still, every September, Athabasca University gets a flood of new students, many of whom are trying to pick up one or two extra courses that they can’t fit into the schedule at their regular university, some of whom simply weren’t able to get one of the seats at a brick-and-mortar institution, and a few who’ve looked at AU and thought, “Hey, this is perfect, I can do all the other things I wanted to and still get my degree!”
For those new students who happen to be poking around the AU site just before their courses start and have stumbled on The Voice Magazine, welcome! Here you’ll, hopefully, find a number of things to help you out, make you think, and keep you informed about issues that matter to you.
Of course, figuring out what matters to you, the readers, isn’t an easy job, so to help us a long with that, The Voice will be putting out a survey to all of our potential audience in the very near future, along with a contest to win a new e-text capable device. I won’t tell you what the device is just yet, because I haven’t yet finalized that, but I want to make sure to get something that makes taking the survey worth your time. Like our last survey, I’m thinking something in the mini-tablet range would probably be the most useful to people, but if you have some ideas, feel free to send them in to voice@voicemagazine.org.
Also, one or two readers have already noticed that The Voice Magazine has now joined the twitter age, and you can follow @AUSUVoice if That’s your preferred way to get reminders about when the magazine has come out each week. And while I’m still not a fan of social media for all things, or even most, I’m willing to give this a try to see if it gives people any benefit. Of course, if You’re a Facebook junkie, you can find us at http://www.facebook.com/ausuvoice, and get the same updates, albeit with better spelling.
Now, what’s going on this week? Well in this issue, we have an interview with Jason Nixon, president of AUSU and also nominated to be the candidate for the riding of Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre for Wildrose. It’s a short interview, but we dig into the policies of Wildrose for post-secondary education and what having both positions means, both for AUSU and for him.
We also have The Study Dude giving us some tips on speed-reading, advice from Barb Godin on personal situations, Barb Lehtiniemi’s article on strategies that can help you take on distance learning courses, and The Writer’s Toolbox letting us know that It’s not alright. It’s really not. Which means that, all together, this is probably a great issue to start off the school year with, and That’s not even everything in here.
Enjoy the read!
