Retold

Since school’s started back I’ve been absolutely crazy busy.  I wish I could say it has only to do with school and not with all the other crap that came with it.  When we got my financial aid, we had so much stuff to catch up on, my financial aid check is all but gone.  One of those things was our car insurance.  It had gotten turned off in the small gap between January 13th and January 19th when I could have paid it.  My insurance company was actually really understanding and turned it back on, but it cost me $495 for 6 months.  I’m thinking, now, that I should have shopped around for an auto insurance quote before just going back to my long-time insurance company.  When it breaks down, that’s about $82.50 a month, which for full coverage isn’t bad at all.  I know other people who pay about that much and we do have a lot of coverage, about twice what we could get through another company for only a little less than what we’re paying with ours, in fact.

I guess I just hate to see $500 disappear like that.  On the upside, I won’t have to pay car insurance again until like May.  Of course, May is the end of the semester and that’s when we start to have trouble again.  It’s not easy being a college student, I swear!!

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…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Matt’s sick, I’m tired… I think we need a vacation!  Sadly, schools starting next week, so we don’t have the time nor the money to do so.  Boo!!  Hmm, I might be complaining again, already, and school hasn’t even started back yet.  During the semester, it’s like open season on complaints.  Anyway, in lieu of taking that vacation, I’m just going to set aside some time to dream about it.  I’d like to go to Disney world for my daydream escape!!  In my pretend vacation, there’re absolutely no kids.  Not only that but we also don’t have to pay for an Orlando hotel (because we’re not really there!).  I’m starting to think pretend vacations are actually better than the real thing.  Of course, I haven’t actually had a real vacation in a long time, so I could just be deluding myself.   Next pretend vacation destination, London!!

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…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

I must start by saying, I am always amazed by the continued growth of quality educational opportunities available online.  You can stay home, or work full time, and still finish your education now a days, which I think speaks volumes about our society as a place that cares about the extenuating circumstances of it’s people.  Not everyone is in a position to go to, or go back to, school in the traditional way.  I’m lucky, I got to get up every day (or every other day) and attend college on a university campus.  Not everyone is so lucky, nor does everyone have the drive or desire to do that.  Being able to get a BA (or BS) or MA (or MS) online should be one of the educational wonders of the world.

Lewis University, for example, is a completely online university with a good selection of online degree programs.  They serve both graduate and undergraduate students, and offer programs that’re practical, like nursing or their Masters in organizational leadership.  They’re an accredited university, offer financial aid to those who qualify, and in some cases, even require their students to have x-amount of work experience, or be a certain age.  I have a very unpopular opinion that college students should have to have life experience before going to college.  I feel like no one should be allowed to go to college until they’re 25 years old.  It’s good to have an education, but without the life experience to back it up, it’s more difficult to connect to the material, especially in the humanities.

Lewis is, by far, not the only online University that offers programs like this but they are a good example of a good school with practical programs for students.  So what do you think about online educational programs?  Do you think they’re taken seriously? Will they be taken more seriously as they become more mainstream?  I’m always interested in this topic, but then I have college on the brain almost all the time.  Maybe  I need to get a hobby?!

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…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

While scouring through things today, I realized something really depressing.  Apparently, I have failed to save most of the notebooks I’ve used throughout college.  I have a few of them, thankfully so, but I should have more.  I wish I knew where they went.  I mean, I didn’t throw them away, they’re just missing, like socks come up missing, except much more irreplaceable.  I wouldn’t have been looking for them at all except I remembered that Melanie had said that she plans to retype hers to prep for the comps and I thought it was a great idea.  I was going to type all of my English notes and email her what I had, but it’s not looking like I’m going to be able to add as much as I hoped to the project.

I did, however, find something awesome!  A few semesters ago I decided to take tech writing, for the hell of it.  I didn’t need it, per se.  It wasn’t exactly a requirement, but it is an advanced elective, which I needed more of, so I took it.  I’ve taken every English class Tarleton has to offer, with a very few exceptions — like Shakespeare & Children’s Lit.  Anyway, I found tech writing to be pretty tedious, pretty fast.  I also turned out to be pretty good at it!  Too bad I didn’t enjoy it, tech writers make a mint.  The assignment I did for that class was a 20 page report over why Tarleton’s library should use RFID technology (we had to chose a recent technology, and rather than utilizing something I don’t understand like virtualization services, I chose the RFID angle).  While I was rifling through things, I found my paper, in the filing cabinet.  It was required that the paper be bound, so mine is beautifully bound, and with a really good grade!  I’ve run across a lot of papers I’ve written, but I find that this report is one I’m most proud of (along with my Sweeney Todd paper).

Funny how something that start out as such a chore can end up being such a point of pride.  Heck, the Sweeney Todd paper started out as a huge stressful assignment and has since become my all time favorite paper, both to have written, and to re-read.  Maybe I’ll share it with y’all sometime, though most of the lingo (film lingo) in the paper isn’t something most people can understand (including me most of the time) without an encyclopedia.  Alas, it’s still my favorite.

Anyway, I’m pretty disgruntled about having lost so many notebooks, but I’m pretty pleased to have run across some old papers that I can be so proud of.  Look at me, turning a bad thing good!  I might just have this optimism thing down yet… ha!  Yeah, not likely.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn