Back to School in 2011

This week was my first week of college classes since 2007, and I can see it'll take a little getting used to. Not necessarily to the classes themselves, but to the homework and managing my time at home. I'm taking undergraduate level classes again to get the prerequisites necessary for the masters I want to pursue.
My first time around, my classes were all related to language, but now I've got to level up to health science! That means "Hello, physics, biology, and statistics!" I never was too fond of math..
This quarter my first classes are Statistics for Health Science and Astronomy: The Solar System. Yesterday it became apparent that for Stats we make our own homework. We have to find practice problems on the internet or in a book that wasn't ordered for our class (and therefore none of the 10 students has a copy - though we do have a general stats book) and keep them in a notebook that we can keep in a notebook to turn in at the end of the 10-week course for credit. A copy of the book we don't have is in the Learning Center, but you can't even take copies of the pages; you have to use it in the Learning Center. I think I'll look into finding a copy at the library of the campus next to where I work.
Astronomy is set up in a more familiar way. We have 10 weeks of class, only meeting once a week and that means doing a lot of work on our own - but at least it's "read the chapter and answer these questions, then email them to me by Sunday". We have our first assignment due this Sunday and our first quiz is on Tuesday!

As far as the rest of this leveling business goes, the soonest I'll be finished with the undergraduate classes is the summer of 2012. That is, if I am accepted into grad school by that time AND I can take 3 courses packed into a compact 10-week summer course. If it doesn't work out that way, I'd have to take those 3 courses over fall, winter and spring quarters and I wouldn't finish the undergrad classes until 2013. We'll just have to see!

Welcome to 2011

It's been a long time since I've updated my blog - and even longer since I've updated my website. For the new year, I figured it might work out best if I combined the two.

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2011 brings about many changes and challenges. I will be going back to school for Speech Pathology tomorrow, while still working full-time as an AmeriCorps member at an elementary school. Plus, a lot of health issues have come up in my family and my boyfriend's.

Aside from the challenges the year brings, in the early fall, my boyfriend and I are planning a trip to somewhere far away. We haven't decided yet between Brazil, New Zealand, or Japan, but we will start delving into our plans over the next few months.

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As far as this blog goes, I hope to update it at least weekly. I hope I can keep it up!

A Real Look at My Future

I have been toying with the idea of going back to school to become a Speech Therapist and today I took the first step to find out how to do it.

I met with a professor at University of Cincinnati about the Master's Program for Speech-Language Pathology. I knew going in that I would have some prerequisite courses to take before I could start the Master's Program, but I didn't imagine that it would be 11 courses!

That will make things tricky because I have agreed to another year as an AmeriCorps member and that means more than 40 hours each week with some days not ending until after 5:30pm. I was informed today that there are no evening classes for this program, but some are offered online. Long story short, it may take 2 years for me to complete the prerequisite courses before I could start the Master's Program.

There's a million other things to think about, like how would I pay for it, when would I start, would I take them online or on campus, etc.

This line of thought is still in the very beginning stages, but I am thinking about it.