Entries in College Experience Category

Tonight was another Philosophy class. I really like this instructor's style. We have about 30 people in the class, and it seems hard to get conversations going. I suspect that most people are afraid to talk in such a large class.

We did learn that the instructor, in a past career, lead groups on river runs in Alaska. I think we'll learn a lot more tidbits about him as time goes on, it seems that he has lived an interesting life.

We also learned a little something about everyone in the class tonight. It's always nice to get to know the people in the class at least a little bit.

The only problem that I had this week was the reading assignment was not published until late yesterday evening. I did not learn about it until I happened to check his web site at work today. The assignment was only 10 pages and I managed to get it read before class - he promised to get it out earlier for next week's class.

I just finished my first writing assignment for Composition II. It's been a long time since I've done this type of writing (or reading for that matter).

This was a "First Day MSVE Sample Writing", so they can establish a baseline of our abilities. (Hmmm....what does MSVE stand for? I should know, but right now I have no idea!)

We read the poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and wrote an essay in response. The essay was to be 300 words in four "well-developed" paragraphs where we argue what kind of memory was presented in the poem, good, bad or other.

It has been a long time since I've read poetry, thankfully this one was short and easy to understand. I thought the memory was very positive. Hopefully my essay makes that clear and backs it up with some good arguments...we'll see.

Tonight I went to my first class for the Spring semester. At first, I was worried. The instructor did not show up until two minutes after the class was scheduled to start, then he did not have keys to the classroom.

Once we got in there, things went very well; I think he's going to be a great instructor.

The class is a philosophy class and he said he expects us to argue with him during the semester. I like to argue, so that should work in my favor.

His syllabus is on-line and the funny thing is that it only lists one thing in his schedule for the class. He says that he's disorganized and comes to class without a real plan. He did not even know what books were required for the class!

It may sound strange, but I think this guy is more interested in teaching us something rather than following some lesson plan. I look forward to his class and hope he lives up to my expectations.

One of our perpetual assignments is to bring a question to class every week. The question should be about something that we have discussed in class or in our reading assignments. He will use those as a basis for what we discuss in class.

He did let us out of class early, I hope this will be a consistent theme with him.

I got up early this morning to go on-line and sign-up for my Spring classes. Why early and why this morning? Well, there's a point when fees are due at Walters State. That night, people who have not paid get dropped. This (at least for last semester and this one) provides openings in classes that were previously full.

So today, I got in early to make sure I had as many options as possible.

I was able to get the classes that I wanted; a web-based English Composition II class and a Thursday night Philosophy class at the Sevier County campus.

Two classes should be much easier than the four I took last time; hopefully this semester I'll have time to occasionally breathe.

Hopefully this semester I'll do a better job of writing about what's going on at school in the blog. No promises.

My last exam will be for Speech 2010 this Wednesday. Completing this exam will mark the completion of my first semester back at school after a 17 year hiatus.

I took four classes (12 credit hours); Intro to Speech, Human Adventures 1, Intro to Cultural Geography and Intro to Psychology. Given my work history, I felt that I would do OK with web based classes, so I took two web based classes and two that were in traditional classroom settings.

Working a full-time job, a part-time job and trying to take four classes (12 credit hours) left very little time for anything else. I found that I was either at work, at school or doing homework. Occasionally I would get a weekend off where I did not have to work and did not have too much homework to do; those weekends were used to get caught-up on work around the house.

After I was about a month into it, I felt like I was drowning. I had no time for myself and was not getting enough sleep. It did not take me long to figure out that if I was going to succeed I needed to make some changes.

For starters, I gave myself some more time by dropping Karate class. That class was only one night per week, but that one night was the night before my Speech class - a night that I greatly needed to complete the work that I had to do for the Speech class.

Then to get myself organized, I began using Remember the Milk as the tool to make this happen. I created tasks for assignments that I had to do for each class and included their deadlines. I created just over fifty tasks for the ten weeks of class after I started using RTM. I made a smart list for class work that showed me things I should (or could) be working on. Using that smart list as my daily to-do list for school worked very well. I generally stayed on task and was able to get all of my assignments turned in on time.

I found that there were some problems with the web based classes. The biggest problem that I had with the online courses was the lack of interaction. The online system did not lend itself to any real interaction between the instructor and students. Other than that, I think the class went pretty smooth. Being online gave me the flexibility to work it in around my work schedule. Maybe having a set time to "meet" online would have been helpful. Using some type of chat system where we could have a round-table discussion online would have been a great addition to the class.

I'm planning to continue in the Spring semester, but with a lighter load. I am trying to sign up for a couple of classes - one web based, the other a traditional classroom setting.

On Friday night, my wife, son and I went to the Knoxville Museum of Art. We went there specifically to see the "Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee" exhibit. This exhibit is one that is now a permanent installation at the museum. The exhibit features art and artists from East Tennessee.

I've never been one to value art, but I love the scenery around East Tennessee and expected that this exhibit would have a lot of beautiful scenes based on the description that I had read on their web site. So I expected to see a lot of mountains, trees, streams, flowers, and the like; all things that I enjoy about this area. It never occurred to me that I would see pieces that to me are "abstract".

My first surprise came when we walked in the door of the museum. I was thinking that museums are quite places where people go and simply look at art. No talking, much like a library. When we went in, we were greeted and found several people in the museum all talking freely. There were no guys standing there looking inquisitively at a blank canvas with a pipe in his hands - so much for my stereotype! Most of the people there looked very much like us, so we felt comfortable having a look around. We went upstairs to the exhibit that we had come to see.

Walking in to the exhibit, I was presented with a beautiful picture of the type that I was expecting - a nice mountain view. Then I turned left. I was surprised by what greeted me there. There I saw a couple of what I guess would be called statues that were made from what appeared to be driftwood. On the wall, I saw the first of the paintings that were strange - it looked to me like someone spilled a variety of paint colors, but to someone it is art.

It seemed that every time I turned the corner I was surprised by what I saw. Around one corner I came face-to-face with a ram head carved in marble. This piece was created by an Italian man that had relocated to East Tennessee.

The variety of styles amazed me. Some "oil on board paintings" that were there looked almost 3D - I nearly touched one just to see if it was something more than paint, but when I got close I could see it was just paint, but the artist made it look so real! The use of colors also varied among the pieces. Some pieces, such as the carved ram head, were one simple color (white in the case of the ram head). On the other end of the spectrum, there were several prints that used a lot of bright, vivid colors. Among my favorites, the prints of scenes around East Tennessee, the colors were generally realistic which around here still allowed for a lot of color variety. The pieces that were my favorite turned out to be "simple" photographs. The photos were black-and-white prints of the view from Mt. LeConte. These pieces were breathtaking. It was really surprising to me how beautiful these pictures were without the use of color.

The exhibit had pieces that were up to one hundred years old. In looking over them, I realized that the age of the paintings was not apparent when looking at them. For example, I expected the abstract pieces to be more modern, but found that some of them were over 40 years old.

The exhibit was different than I expected. I did enjoy going and seeing all of the pieces they had to show; so much so that we took some extra time and explored a couple of other exhibits that they had while we were there.

I gave my first official speech in my speech class last night. My topic was "grandparents". Not the easiest of topics. In this case, the content was not very important, it was an exercise in structure and presentation. I think it went OK for me. I would have felt better if it were a topic that I felt more comfortable with or if I had more time to prepare. My biggest problem was forgetting what I was planning to say and having to refer to my notes far too often to be smooth in my delivery.

My next speech should go better; it's a panel speech for which I've had a few weeks to prepare.

Now, if I could just find time to prepare

I'm just finishing up my second week at Walters State. It sure is strange to get into the swing of studying and attending classes.

The remainder of my first week was primarily just introduction/orientation stuff and was pretty easy. This week the instructors started with dishing out real work.

So far, Speech 2010 is probably my favorite class. The group of students in the class all seem outgoing (with few exceptions) and are all very engaged with the class. The instructor is upbeat and gets everyone involved and excited about the class. So far, we've had a lot to read in this class; 3 chapters already. In class, the highlights are discussed, but it's apparent that it's up to us to get most of the book learning on our own and to use the class to work on speech skills. This past week we started giving impromptu speeches!

A class that I do not care as much about (so far anyway) is Human Adventures. This is a web based class. So far, we've just read chapter 1 and had to write a short essay. Chapter 1 was about the prehistoric, Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, their art and culture. It's certainly a lot of information, covering a period of about 35,000 years.

Psychology on the other hand has been a pretty interesting class. It's an introduction to Psychology and so far, I'm learning a fair amount which surprises me since I thought I had a pretty good handle on what psychology is. Turns out there are many branches of psychology that I knew nothing about.

The only class where I did not have much to do was Cultural Geography. That's primarily because we did not have class last Monday (Labor Day), however we will have a quiz this Monday on the "global grid" (i.e., latitude and longitude).

Well, tonight was my first actual class at Walters State. This one is Cultural Geography. When I signed up for the class, it was a normal lecture format, but sometime after that it was changed to a streaming video class with the instructor being at the Greenville Campus.

The classroom that we are in is setup nice for the video class; it has four monitors and at least two cameras so we can see and be seen by the instructor and other class mates in Greenville. Apparently this format is new to the instructor as he struggled a bit with the technology, but I'm confident that once he gets it straightened out things will work pretty well.

I would guess (from looking around the class) that I am the oldest in this particular class. There are a few others that appear to be in their late 20's or early 30's, but I think I've got the spot as oldest. Let's hope that with age comes wisdom.

The topic for tonight was a brief overview of the "Global Grid System" - something I am somewhat familiar with and you may know it if I tell you it's simply latitude and longitude.

I do look forward to seeing what all I learn in this class - you know, as I get older, I really enjoy learning. This class covers things that I only know a very little about, so I have the potential to learn a lot and I really look forward to it.

Time from decision to being there was very short, only a few weeks it seems.

Today, I attended an orientation for "The Human Adventure I" a web-based humanities class at Walters State. This is one of four classes that I will be taking this fall. The orientation was pretty short - only about an hour long. I expected to be in class with a lot of folks much younger than myself, but I found the room to be filled with what appeared to be older students. I may be the oldest in the class, but if that's the case, there were several there who are not far behind me.

I'm looking forward to this semester - one never knows where it will lead.