....thought theft.

If I were in the situation where someone had stolen my original ideas, I would not take too kindly to that, especially if this person were to gain monitarily from it. The appropriate form of action I suppose would to contact a lawyer specializing in these situations. I'm not ashamed to say it, I would try to get some money from that individual, because with thieves, the only way to hit back in a meaningful way is through the pocket book. The only way that someone could take my original ideas, other than anything I might have said aloud, is from anything I write online in my blog, on Face book, or in any emails I might send. With friends and family, the rules are a lot more relaxed on this, because I trust them not to use things against me or to profit and then not share any gains with me. However, if a complete stranger plagiarized my work, it would be a different story. I can see how difficult it would be to try and copyright something written on face book, or submitted to YouTube, etc. If it is willingly submitted publicly on a privately owned site, then the legal ownership of the content remains questionable. In my opinion, if someone were to submit a document to Wikipedia or a video to YouTube, then those sites should be required to seek permission to re submit the content to other sites. The way I see it, because you own the site, it doesn't mean you should have the only say as to where else the content should be submitted.

Students without faces...

Yeah,
that was meant to get your attention. I don't mean literally "without faces," of course. The best part about being an online student is the flexibility, I think. With my busy schedule, it helps that I can go to class when I'm not at work, and access assignments and message boards in the middle of the night, if needed. I find that because of the anonymity of the format at Kaplan, the instructors and the students try very hard to create a sense of community, and a different sort of "student life" emerges. The message boards, chat rooms, and blogging opportunities give us a chance to interact and empathize with one another in a meaningful way, if we choose to utilize them. I think maybe students should make more of an effort to contact each other outside of class, even after the class has ended. Even though we are all very busy people, perhaps it would be a way to bring students closer and find a way to offer emotional support to each other throughout the Kaplan experience.

The only drawback is that we rarely get a glimpse of each other's faces.

Introductions...

Hello fellow Kaplan students,

If you read the first post, then you already know a little bit about me. I am a new mom, wife to a wonderful, down to earth musician type, and I work my butt off daily at a nine to five job, as well as attend classes. It is so frustrating sometimes because I have never been that good with time management, but I am getting better at it daily. Sometimes it seems like I am going to lose my sanity with all of the deadlines and everything else I am responsible for, but if I can learn to keep in focus on the wider goal, then it will all be worth it in the end when I graduate. I wish everyone the best of luck in this class, in their careers and studies in general, and I look forward to reading some great insights from you all.