I'm Not Kickin' It Old School

Well, I have to say sorry for taking so long to blog lately. As you know, my life has been consumed by a certain Professor Crawford. She is a lovely lady (though I've only seen her in online video lectures) but she was not kidding when she said the coursework for this degree would be rigorous.

Back in the day when I got my Master's from UNT, I had to go to class 2 nights a week and did a lot of my homework on the weekends. I met my friend S at UNT and we kicked it old school. She and I took all our classes together, studied together, graduated together and even found the perfect bathroom stall on the 3rd floor of Matthews Hall. For some reason, that one stall had its own window and the others had boring brick walls. Man, I miss that stall.

Anyway... this new degree plan is definitely new school. Lamar University took their old school Education Administration degree plan and adjusted it to become an online course. I'm reading a lot of journal articles and books, writing papers, watching online lectures and I have at least 4 assignments due a week. One class is just 5 weeks long so the mid-term and final exams are only one week apart.

The coursework takes a good chunk of my time every single day but I was still kinda feeling disconnected from the class and its members. The class members and the 2 professors who planned the class will never meet in person. We do have a private online discussion board but none of the people in my class are interested in discussing bathroom stalls.

During the first few weeks of class, it felt as if I was not even in grad school. My brain was telling me that I needed to sit in a classroom to validate the experience. That was until I took the first mid-term exam. Yowza! That sucker was killer but I aced it! Thank you, Saint Thomas Aquinas! (Incidentally, also the patron saint of pencil makers and lightning.)

That exam was enough to get me fully connected to the grad school life once more. I still may feel disconnected from the other class members, but I can learn to accept that. If I can accept the horrible fact that Daddy Yankee is Harvard's Latino of the Year, then anything is possible.