6 posts tagged “school”

Well, tonight I went looking to check for my grades from the Spring semister, which finished up a month or so back.  When I logged into the school website to check, I found that I got a B in both classes!  I knew that I had Biology sewn up with a solid B, but I wasn't sure about my Music class... I knew it was either B or C, but it was too close for me to call.

Yay!

Next up: Biology lab (one credit, three week summer term)

Coming this Fall:  "Fundamentals of Communication" and "Intro to Cultural Anthropology", each three credits, normal Fall/Winter term.  Rumor has it that the Anthropology teacher is a real "piece of work" so it'll be an interesting exercise.

At least I don't have to worry about work getting in the way of school this Fall!

Alright!  Finals are over for this term, and I'll have my grades back in the next week or two.  That means that I've got one term down, and several more to go.  My records indicate that I've acquired about 18 credit hours.  That puts me pretty close to "sophomore" ranking, I think. 

I've determined that I can squeeze in two classes per term at this point.  Chem and Calculus might make things a little tighter, when the time comes, but I'll worry about that when it happens, which won't be terribly soon.  Next up: Biology lab, in the summer interim session, followed by Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and English 103 in the Fall.

Ok, so I took the "Information Systems & Computer Applications" CLEP test last week, and apparently I did rather well at it.  The lady who is the testing center administrator was rather shocked when my score printed out.  The maximum score is 80 (scaled between 20 and 80, whatever that means) and my score came out as a 73. 

So, I'm another 3 credits closer to my goal. :D

As of today, it's 7 days to my "priority registration" date (10 May), which is determined by the number of credits that I have acquired.  At this point, I'm in the "day 3" category, with 17 credits.  Only 7 credits to go to get to the next "level" at 24+ but less than 48 credits. 

The purpose of this method of registration is to allow the people who have the most credits to have first crack at the open classes, so that they can get the ones that they "need" first.  I guess it makes sense, but it bites, especially for someone like me, a "non-traditional student" who has to weave school around career and family.  Sigh.

Anyway, I've got a bunch of selections picked out, covering almost a dozen different courses.  I hope that I can get classes that are in sequential time-slots, so that I can spend the least amount of time on campus as necessary.  I work nights, so my "day-light time" is at a premium.  I definitely want to sleep every day, and I would like to see my family, too.  (I know, crazy. Whatever)

If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to grab 4:30 - 8:40 in the afternoon/evening on Monday and Wednesday.  Then again, there's a Composition class that "will focus on literature of the paranormal and the supernatural" which sounds like it'd be a lot of fun.  Either that or the section that "will use argumentation as the basis for writing assignments" which Kristen thinks I should take. :)  I could take either of those and fill out the semester with any (or all) of 5 additional CLEP tests...  

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

So many times, PowerPoint presentations are done extremely poorly.  Too much "flash and bang" with different effects for page-change, audio, riot of colors, text effects;  All of these make for a poor presentation.  Ugh.

Unfortunately for me, one of the assignments for my biology class this term was to create and deliver a PowerPoint presentation in class.  We've been subjected presented with several of these already in class, so I got to see some of what the other students were doing, and how they did it.  Suffice to say that most of them were... Let's just call them  "interesting", in order to be polite.

I opted to present mine this past Thursday, which was the first week after spring break.  I figured that I'd be able to spend some time during break to get it put together, since I already had a good idea of what I would do: Pandemic Flu
(the other end of that link has a PDF of the presentation, originally created on a Mac and exported to PDF... Cool!)

 So, I got up and gave my presentation. The teacher (Ph.D in biology) asked several tough and pointed questions about my presentation, which he hadn't done for the others that I've seen so far.  Yes, I had the answers, and for one I indicated that I'd go over that point later in the presentation.  One of my classmates (another one headed for medical school) commented that she though it was cool that I didn't just read off my slides, but rather talked about them and referred to the points on them.

The presentation is worth 50 points on the grade.  As instructor and I exchanged places, I saw that he'd noted "50" on the top of the first page of the printed copy that was required.  Not bad, if I say so myself.

Got my results back from CLEP on Saturday, about the English Comp test that I took a couple of weeks back.  Passed the test with a score of 65 (recommended passing score is 50), so I don't have to take English 101.

Now, I just need to try my hand at Sociology and Psychology, to see if I can pass those, too.  That would put me a good deal closer to my goal than I am at the moment.