Tuesday, April 6, 2010

School has Started

For me anyways. Mikeal is out of school this week for Spring Break....

My first class is Strategies for Success. It seems to be a simple enough class, although I am having difficulty restraining my criticism of my classmates' assignments...the (lack of) punctuation is horrendous as well as is the absurd lack of at least capitalization. I'm not talking about perfect sentence structure, semi-colons and the like, afterall, if you've read any of my blog posts you know I'm hardly one to judge someone else for things like run-on sentences. LOL. I'm merely referring to something as simple as a PERIOD at the end of a sentence...or paragraph even? Or maybe a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, the paragraph, or even the word "I"! I wouldn't expect that this would be a difficult thing to figure out, and for them to be wanting to further their education and make good grades while doing so, you'd think that on an assignment that 25% of the grade is going to be grammar, spelling, and punctuation, they'd pay just a little bit of attention to what they were actually posting for their grade.

In class we're supposed to offer feedback on our classmates' assignments that are up for discussion and I hesitate on "helping" them with their spelling and punctuation. I don't know quite if that's part of what we're supposed to be offering feedback on or not, so would hate to make myself out to be the grammar bitch on the first day of class. Nor do I desire to overstep my boundaries, as a student, by "acting" like the professor.

So we shall see how this goes. Today's assignment was an autobiography, highlighting our desired courses of study as well as previous experience. Wednesday's assignment is to outline our goals and how we plan on achieving those goals and how our "self-talk" will help us accomplish them. Both assignments I have completed, but am waiting to turn in the second one until closer to the due date, as the rules state to not jump ahead of the ball game. My professor in this course prefers that the papers not be posted until no earlier than the day before they are due, so I will wait until morning.

Friday's assignment will be quite a bit more in-depth. It is on critical thinking. What I think critical thinking means, how I plan to use critical thinking, and how I already use critical thinking in my daily life. The assignment itself is not difficult. The difficult part will be actually writing it all out in a manner that is understandable to someone besides just myself. LOL I can think it, I can say it, but when I write it and read it I start getting myself into a hole that doesn't seem to end. Good thing I still have a few days to get it written. :)

In other news Brian ended up not taking the new job. He turned in his two weeks notice with his current employer and they counter offered him a comparable pay raise, as well as offered him overtime. So he will be sticking with O'Reillys, thus keeping his tenure with them and accrued vacation, sick pay, and personal days. YAY!