My second college degree

It's accomplished! I had a goal of getting a second bachelor's degree, and so I have done.

My side quest was to receive straight A's. I received 15 A's and 1 A-minus (in Copy Editing of all things, but I had good reasons for slipping a little).

I also bought the student version of the entire Adobe collection of programs, many of which I now have some experience on - all of which I need more experience on. I want to be a jack of all design trades, given the fact that I'm very good at most things in life but great at none of them.

I have decided not to touch the programs, though, until I have time to properly welcome in the newborn in my life. I'm considering this time to be both my vacation with absolutely no homework allowed, while also catching up on things like the yard, washing the dogs, reading some informational books about liz...I mean, babies, some movies, friends I have barely seen, play testing the game I built, projects at work that I now have more brain room for, and basically just lining up all my ducks before the arrival of the tiny loaf that's currently in my wife's oven.

Homework is a terrible drain. I understand the need for summer vacations now. It's not particularly hard all the time, but the constant nagging thoughts of having some big deadlines coming up and the pressure to succeed with every single assignment is quite draining.

Still, I succeeded at school. I survived the homework. Soon I get to press the world to find a better place in it. I like my job, but I need more money.

So, the scholastic break is over. Time to tackle full parenthood and the world wide workplace options.

Consider my brain stretched

My wild ride of school is exactly two weeks from being over. During these last 18 to 20 months, I have defeated my sleep-mares of failure by throwing giant letter A's at them. My wife and I have become pregnant. I invented a board game (more on this later). I started and have been successful at a new job.

So far, I have 14 A's and 1 A-minus, with one class to go. My brain is stretched. I have been really past my homework limit for about 3 months. It's time to be done.

Can't wait.

Will be blogging more in the near future.

Keeping up with my classes or my blog

Well, two more classes and two more A's. My favorite teacher taught the first class, Desktop Publishing. She gave us an easier time than other cohorts before us. We only had to do a brochure, not a 16-page magazine. This was a good choice for her. I actually read the design book because I had time, which I wouldn't have had without the easier main project.

The second class was pathetic. I think teachers are trying to put us in unnecessarily difficult situations on purpose. This class made us use 3 Adobe programs we'd never used before - in a 5-week class. Tough. Also, with the Web design program, we had so many problems because it's finicky. The teacher was not available to help us on any days other than classtime. It was a train wreck. Most of my stamina was sucked up by that class. My motivation is low for my current class. I'm trying to survive until Thanksgiving, when I have the week off from work and no class.

That does not actually mean I have a week off for myself. My cohort is the first one to try to do a 15-week online class (homework due on Sundays) at the same time as having a Thursday classroom class. So, basically, my weekends are taken up with online homework, leaving me less time for my other class. Just last Thursday, my current professor attempted to claim that we have an "extra" week (over Thanksgiving) to work on his project. Our class snickered, so I informed him that our online class major project is due the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So basically both teachers think giving us homework over the holiday is a wonderful idea. Our online teacher is great, though, because she is a little negotiable. The others are not.

Also, my Thursday professor is going to give us a take-home test after our final class meeting, due 24 hours later. This is ridiculous. I asked him if we could have more than 1 WORKDAY to do the test. He said that technically he shouldn't be giving us any work after the final class. Because of that excuse and the amount of time he has to turn in his final grades, he would only move the test to Thursday during class time. ("I'm giving you an extra day to do the test.") Also, he's only giving us the test 1 week before, so we cannot work on it early. I can see his problem and his position; I just wanted to complain about it.

I still have straight A's. I am enduring. I seek the goal of a high GPA. Unfortunately, I don't actually need to learn much of anything or read any books to get good grades. I'm a strategic student. I do what I need to get points, but if I am overworked, the situation becomes more like triage and less like learning. I haven't been reading the books, except one, since we started doing 2 classes at once. I don't have the time. That's their fault as much as mine.

Anyway, I'm winning, but I'm tired. With so much work to do (and a new job with new responsibilties), I haven't been keeping up on my blog. I'll be back when I can. :)

Class #8 - Copy Editing

The half-way mark has been completed. This class was the perfect storm for me to fail. The assignments were more busy work than educational, my wife and I went through a miscarriage, and I transferred to a new job. Kind of lots going on to distract me.

My grades went up and down during the 5 weeks. My test scores ranged from 102% to 72%. I think I received 2 of my 3 worst grades on tests in this program in this class. About 1/5 of each test was fill-in-the-blank. This is absolutely my Achilles' Heel in test taking. I left most of the blanks as pristine as when they were handed to me. I know from experience that if I don't know an f-i-t-b answer, guessing won't work.

Heading into the final week with the final project (that was both huge, ambiguously confusing, and required very little actual copy editing), I knew I needed to ace the project and presentation. I only lost 14 points of the 250 possible!

This helped me make the grade. I earned 93% of the potential points, giving me an A- for my final grade.

For a class called Copy Editing, we sure did very little actual editing. The class should have been called Print Media given how much story creation, source gathering, research, and layout was required.

Class #7

Another class with the wonderful Dr. Kelton. Another nearly perfect score. I put a lot of thought and time into the assignments and got an A to show from it. I missed around 20 total points on the tests.

4.0, here I come.

Time wasted, and not in a good way

Class #8 has really sapped my motivation to receive an A. Fifty percent of the time, both sitting in class and doing the assigned homework, feels like it's wasted.

In my last class period, the teacher spent 2 hours, half the class, passing around papers of cute things and showing off stuff. She went over points verbally, which is dangerous for her, because she gets her tongue twisted and ends up saying the wrong things and just confusing the lesson. For instance, at one point she saw the words "He was 30 years old." She said the "30 years old" should have been hyphenated, a side point to her main objective. Knowing this should not be hyphenated, I just pointed the phrase out to her and asked a leading sort of question like, "You said that should be hyphenated?" Another student looked at me and said in her mommy voice, "That's what she said," sounding as if she was implying that the teacher knew what she was saying. Of course, the teacher then corrected herself. I wanted to stick out my tongue at my fellow student.

So anyway, then we were divided into groups to determine which of our selected headlines (cut out and taped to paper like an elementary school project) were the best. We talked aimlessly about what makes a good headline. About an hour later the teacher presented a PowerPoint which gave us this lesson. It would have been nice to have had that information first and then practiced our learning.

Anyway, after wasting two hours, the teacher rushed us through a good PowerPoint, skipped our second break (after she shortened our first break), and handed us the 50-point test with 15 minutes remaining in class.

There's no feeling quite like that of being sandbagged by your teacher when your entire being is crying out for a much needed break.

Hope you enjoyed reading this rant as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Class #6

This was the class where everything went wrong (which I noted here and here). Luckily for me, all things being equal, I only needed my projects to look better than the other students. We had fun. The professor graded a little easier, given that this was our first attempt.

Long and short is that I received another A! It was hard and the most stressful two weeks of the program so far, but it's over. I think things from here on out will be easier. That's based on hope, probably not realistic hope, either.

6 classes and all A's. I'm enjoying the success.

Summertime...the results

GUESS WHAT? WE LOOKED LIKE AMATUERS!

Go figure, right? It was fun, though. Each group had problems. I know I learned tons. I just hope my grade doesn't suffer. There were so many variables to the performance that actually quantifying anything beyond a participation grade would be unfair.

Hope this works out!

Summertime for Degree Completion Students

Our current class has lots of lab work. We're in a television studio on campus creating our own newscasts. The fun level is high; the learning is fantastic with the hands-on approach.

But we've had one consisent problem. The spring semester ended, and all the lab workstudy students have gone home. Normally the studio is fully staffed for most of the day. However, starting last week, the normal workstudy students are gone for the summer. This means checking out the equipment we need for a filming project is nearly impossible, given that the point of the DC program is that we need to study on our own time because we have daytime jobs.

Also, the lab is closed in the evening. So we had 11 of the 14 members of my class show up to work in a lab, and we were on the schedule to be there from 7p to 9p, but no one was there to unlock the rooms we needed. Nobody had our teacher's home number, and security would not come unlock it without our teacher's permission. So we hacked the lab computer (it was unlocked) and found his phone number and called him at home. He called security, who then let us in.

It's just been frustrating not having someone there to answer our questions. I've heard we're the first DC class to do these lab projects. It's a great idea. But when the teacher forgot to factor in the end of the semester workstudy program (and you could see the shock on his face when the implications hit him last week), the "out of our control" elements wreaked havoc with our ability to prepare.

So tonight's lab work will be interesting, considering the lack of assistance we have been able to receive. I began meditating on one of my mottos - what comes, comes. And also a school philosophy I have - grades are like bears; all I have to do is run a little faster than the other students to avoid getting eaten.

:)

PS. And to top it off, our teacher has been really busy outside of class with his daughter getting married. I don't blame or condemn him for something like this. The entire experience is just a nexus of many issues outside of class arrayed against us as students.

Cohort Rep

So, our class Cohort 41C has a position for representative - basically, the front person for our little group who acts as the student liaison between the faculty and the cohort. Our original rep has dropped out. So they asked for new applications to be submitted.

After a long and arduous process in which I filled out a paper requesting consideration for the position, I got the job! They were so wow'ed by my qualifications and experience that they picked me. (Or maybe I was the only applicant.)

When absences and tardies need to fearlessly recorded, I am there. When the cohort cries out in need of a contact list, I am there. I am the cohort rep.

PS. Also, there is a 10% tuition discount!

Classes #4 and #5 complete

I meant to get these out as two seperate blogs, but since the grades came in at nearly the same time, I'll combine them into one post. This is for my communication degree, Jon. I didn't forget your comment; I just thought my first teacher would have my grade soon, so I'd have mentioned what degree I'm going for about 5 weeks ago.

Class #4 was my first senior-level course, entitled Communication Through the Eyes of Faith, though it was basically easy, lots of thinking and writing (which I enjoy). Unfortunately, I missed 1 point, thus narrowly missing the 100 percent for the entire class. I laugh at myself for how much that 1 point rankles me. Sadface. (Yes, I know I could put :( but using words to describe emoticons is funny to me.)

Class #5 was called Media and Feature Writing. The teacher was super fun. She expected quite a lot of us, but I really like to perform well for my favorite teachers. I got an A in her class, scoring about 10 points above class average on each test. This class was difficult at times because several questions on the tests were marked wrong when they were right. This destroyes my faith in "the system," despite some "this system is flawless" rhetoric from the teacher. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR TESTS FOR GRADING ERROR! Also, the teacher's work-study student who graded most of our grammaticals was wrong 80 percent of the time when marking my paper. This is fact, not conjecture. I was keeping score.

So 5 classes with all A- or better. This is good, because I'm a momentum kind of student. I'll keep trying this hard until I get a B. If and when I do, I'll likely slack off more because the straight-A's opportunity will be gone. Momentum.

Classes #2 and #3 finished

This happened a long time ago. I've been derelict in updating my readers on my progress. I've finished with class 4 now. The next couple blogs will be updates.

Both of these classes were taught by the same lady. Class #2 was a grammar intensive class in which I got a 94 percent, which is an A. They do plus and minus, but I really don't care about that. It was tougher than I thought, but I pretty much knew most of the grammar stuff, which was nice.

Class #3 was a tough history of the media class. With about 7 pages of writing per week and 100 pages of reading with a 50-point test each week was pretty rough. Twice she said the testing was over the terminology, but about 10 questions per test were about miniscule facts within the reading. We asked her about this both times after her statements, and she promised to keep to her word, then did the same thing each week. Still, I got about a 95 percent in the class despite the rigged tests. Check yet another "A" box.

So that's three classes and three A's! They are not easy, but since I wish to be a writer, I'm practicing doing well on each paper I write. Due to my diligence, I have rarely lost points on the papers.

Class #1 finished

Well, I fought long and hard for an A, and I got one. It seemed unfair at times, but thankfully, I now have proof that I can do school again.

I only missed 7 points in the entire class. 1 point from being late 1 day on an assignment that I didn't know about. I take about 50 percent blame for that one. The other 6 points missed were from the reading quizzes - proof that the system was unfair. How can I read and take good notes and then fail to properly answer the questions which were supposed to be designed to see if I read the material? Answer, bad questions.

Anyway, I got a 93 percent in the class. Yeah, you read that right. That means that in 5 weeks, we were only graded on 100 points of material.

Final tally: 93%

[UPDATE: I looked at it again, and I actually got a 92.96% in a class where I missed 7 points.

First, if it was 100 points total, I would have had a 93.00 percent.
Second, if it was 99 points total, I would have had a 92.92 percent.

I found the total number of points, though:

Total possible: 99.5
My total 92.5
Percent: 92.96

Go figure. I hate this teacher. Grade-wise, nothing made sense.]

Did my professor even read the book?

My first book for my first class back at Evangel for my communication degree is a pretty generic book outlining what college life will be like for adult, non-traditional students. It speaks on studying, test taking, note taking, and many other topics.

When talking about test taking, it says to skip questions you don't know the answer to, because later in the test, another question may remind you of the answer or give a jolt to your memory links - good advice and a strategy I've used since elementary school.

Our college has a different system of quiz/test taking where you can do it online. This is great for my class because we only meet for four hours once a week for five weeks. Class time is valuable. However, when taking the tests, you must answer the question in front of you. There is no going back to a previous question.

In the past, I would save for the end questions that required me to think hard. This allowed me to know exactly how much time I had to think about it, while allowing me to complete the rest of the test and not run out of time being stuck on a hard question. I guess this strategy is out too.

On another note, I just turned in my first paper. This will go along way in my mind to determining if I still have the capacity to do schoolwork.

Sick as a dog and my first test

I'm so fatigued. I'm sick and taking cough medicine to help me sleep at night. The side effect of getting good cough-mediciny rest is that it carries over all day long.

I have my first test since returning to college. It's a 10-question "test" over 8 chapters of a book. It's worth 15% of my grade.

No pressure.

First Day of School!

Thank God the first day of school is now behind me. For those of you who don't know, I'm beginning classes for a Communications degree. Basically, every Thursday night for the next 22 months I will be in class from 6 to 10.

I'm glad the first class is done. My anxiety has dissolved, like excitement before a long trip that turns into road hardiness once you climb into the car.

It's going to be a long 22 months, that's for sure.