Instructions for your Second Life visit:

1) obviously, you need to visit www.secondlife.com to sign up

before completing your sign up (this can take a little time) you may want to do some reading about Second Life - there are areas where you can find instructions for "traveling" in Second Life if you don't want to just jump in and try for yourself

2) pay attention to choosing your avatar - think about what choices are available and why you chose a certain look - does your avatar reflect who you are in real life or is it a fantasy?

3) you'll need to download the Second Life client in order to log in - again, give yourself enough time to do this

4) once you've logged in the first time, you'll be in orientation island - you can use this to get used to moving around in Second Life; you might even meet some other "newbies" (hint: try right clicking on your mouse for options)

5) I found it easiest to use the Search button at the bottom of the page to get places, but there are other options too (like the map) - I'd like you to try visiting two places:

a) Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge (search on "phat" in locations)

b) a college or university site - there are several - try searching on "college" or "university" in locations - MIT is an option (search "mit" and/or "newmedia")

6) I'd like you to try to converse with at least one person while visiting Second Life

7) finally, please send me an email describing your experiences: where did you go? did you meet anyone? was it different than your expectations? what did you like best/least? or anything else you want to share

The goal of this exercise is not to turn you into denizens of Second Life but just to give you a bit of a feel for a virtual environment. I'd plan to spend about at least an hour or so over the course of the week in getting your account, logging in once or twice, and writing up your experiences.