So I’m a poor college student and I’m always looking out for a good deal, especially if it will help me with school work. A few days ago, The New York Times announced they were opening up their TimesSelect premium content to anyone affiliated with a US college or university, i.e. anyone possessing a .edu email address. As you know, I’m at a university just not in the US. So I was a little disappointed. But, I started thinking about it a bit… I remembered that my alma mater gave me lifetime email forwarding for anything sent to my undergraduate address. Woo hoo! Let the hack begin! Here are some of highlights I’m excited about:

• Access to columnists David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Thomas L. Friedman, Bob Herbert, Nicholas D. Kristof, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. Notice the economists in there?
• Preview of The Sunday Times before it’s published.
• And the best feature… The ability to search The New York Times back to 1851.

I presume most universities offer the email forwarding service to their alumni, which means there are going to be a hell of a lot of people switching to TimesSelect for free. That’s a savings of 50 bucks a year! Whether you’re a student, faculty member or graduate with a school forwarding address, all you have to do is click here and enter your .edu email address to get started. Enjoy and spread the word via digg or your favorite social bookmarking site.

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I’m in the process of working on three research papers this semester, one of which is a collaboration with two fellow economics students on the trade growth of the U.S. and China and it’s implications (topic changed) to what extent the World Trade Organization (WTO) stimulates economic growth in developing nations. Another deals with the economic performance of Irish Counties using census data. Finally, my third paper will focus on the role of the banking sector during the financial crises of Argentina and East Asia.

I have found several great online resources for writing in a connected world. It’s a great time to be a college student…I wish it were this easy 10 years ago.

• Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is an excellent resource for formatting and style guidelines; also includes discipline-specific guidelines.
• Writely, (recently acquired by our good friends at Google) is an excellent online document collaboration tool; work on a group assignment with ease!
• Renowned Harvard economics professor, Greg Mankiw, has a nice post on his blog aimed at economists writing for a general audience - useful for students of other
• disciplines as well.

Feel free to comment with your suggestions for helpful writing resources.

Well, back to my papers…