The Pulse

Yesterday, in-between meetings, I was walking through the Student Center where I observed the stage crew for "Girl in a Coma" setting up their equipment on one side of the aisle, and Dr. Denise Barkis Richter and her students putting together the latest edition of "The Pulse--A student newsletter in touch with the heartbeat of the community" on the other side. My literary impulse took over and I stopped for a moment to observe the students putting together the newsletter with grit and focus. Seeing me standing there, Dr. Richter thoughtfully brought me a copy of the newsletter "straight off the press."

Once I got home and watched Haley Scarnato make it into the final 12 of "American Idol", I pulled "The Pulse" out of my bag and settled in my favorite chair (okay, I actually laid on the coach) to read it. If you haven't gotten your copy, I strongly urge you to pick one up--the articles in the newsletter covered a wide-range of topics and were well-written and informative.

The lead story by Jennifer DuPriest on "Persistence Pays Off for College Students" offered helpful advice--without being preachy--to help students through their college journey. Other pieces of information that I found interesting included one provided by Raymond deLeon that noted "...400 current students are using their veterans' benefits at Palo Alto College," and in an article by Brittany Wilton "Trip to Greece Opens Eyes, Warms Hearts" that reveals that there's a waitress in Greece that doesn't approve of guests having breakfast in their pajamas!

The story that really captured my attention was by Javier Lopez, "Web 2.0 Making the World a Smaller Place." I got to read how Alyssa Lazo confessed that "MySpace has consumed my entire life into it," and that, according to Lopez, 3,267 MySpace pages list Palo Alto College as the user's current school. With a Spring enrollment of just under 8,000 students, it looks like approximately 40 percent of our population is a registered user of MySpace! Lopez also noted that there are 262 PAC professors listed on RateMyProfessor.com. The article ends with Lopez quoting Lazo as saying "Imagine the world being without the internet. That would be something."For those of us alive while the internet superhighway was just an idea in Al Gore's mind, I'm sure we would all agree that the world was indeed a different place without the internet.