week 1 of grad school is DONE. and i OWNED it. completed my two discussion posts on time, received feedback from classmates both times (apparently i sound intelligent - thanks to prof. steele for allowing me to refine my bullshitting skills as a lit minor at pacific!); responded to classmates' posts more than the minimum number of times; and completed my first assisgnment with a 100%. if only it would continue to be like this, even though i know it won't...but then i'd be bored, since i don't really feel like i'm doing anything yet.
what amazes me is the large number of my "classmates" (they are from all over the country, we all just log-in and post to the discussion forum) who don't use proper punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc. if they were high school students, i wouldn't be surprised - but these people are all in their mid-30's or older! so far as i can tell, i'm the youngest by many years, which was a little concerning at first but so far i'm holding my own. many of them are switching careers, several are teaching and just want to move up the payscale. so my switching of "majors" from undergrad to grad isn't as big a deal as i had thought.
so far the biggest challenge is motivating myself to log-on to the classroom in a consistent fashion; i did really well the first 5 days but then once i finished all my assignments for the week i took a few days off and am now out of the routine. compounding that challenge is that my "monday" is actually thursday - whoever thought it'd be a good idea to start a class on a thursday so the week is thurs-weds is a complete idiot. it forces to me to do work on weekends, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but cuts into the only days i have completely off from work. i also am going to have to work on using APA format, since i've been trained since high school to use MLA, but am hoping it's not a huge transition. if nothing else, i'll be pro at it by the end of this program!
lastly i'm waiting for my financial aid to come through. i need to spend more time working on scholarships of course (boo) but i asked for an advance to buy a new computer. my dell is running on about 5 yrs now, getting kind of curmudgeonly, and likes to freeze at random, inconvenient times. not too great for being an online student. so the plan is to buy a macbook pro...i'm nervous about switching systems & re-learning everything, but i hope that it goes smoothly & i have less problems. and if there's any extra $$ left i want to get the new iPad when it comes out - just a fun toy to putz around with and pretend to use for "studying"!
on that note, off to start my hmwk for the week...
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