The second time that I went back to school I had to take a speech class. I hadn't taken it the first time around because despite being told that speech was a requirement of all degree plans I found out that it wasn't a requirement of my first choice major. And I really didn't like talking in front of people, so I didn't take it.
Okay, so it's back to school to take a few things. And the class itself turned out to be a lot of fun. It was just those two speeches that we had to give that made me very nervous, and the grades that you got from those two speeches made up like half the grade for the whole class.
The first speech could about anything you wanted. My first speech was about dogs. And it was okay, and I got a good grade, and that made me less nervous about doing the second speech.
The second speech could also be on a variety of subjects, but the second speech had to be an argumentative speech.
Right now, I can't even remember what my second speech was about. I put so much work into it, and now I don't even remember it.
The other students argued for or against abortion, for or against legalizing marijuana, changing the drinking age, etc.... A few of the students had other ideas.
And then this guy stood up to argue against studying to be an architect. And it seemed like the silliest thing to have an argumentative speech about. Except that when he spoke his voice contained somewhat restrained...something. I don't know what to call it. Anger. Venom. Disgust.
I don't know. Something unpleasant anyway.
First he spoke about the initial bit of going to college (which I can't remember if he said he'd done four years or six years), of the time involved, and the money involved, etc... And then he spoke of how it was a very specific course of study good for becoming an architect and pretty much only for becoming an architect. If you study to become an architect and do not actually become an architect, you've wasted many years of your life, while if you pick a different major and end up not getting the job that was your first choice the degree might still be useful for something else.
And then he spoke about being an apprentice. He spoke about having to work for an architect for about minimum wage, and how you are supposed to work for this architect for a year and learn things from him so that you can move on to the next stage.
Only you aren't actually paid to learn stuff about architecture, you are paid to do whatever the architect tells you to do. And the particular architect he got stuck with didn't teach him anything and made him do dumb stuff like make coffee. You expect to do dumb stuff like make coffee, but you expect to do other stuff, and you expect to learn from what you are doing and not just be some guy's slave for minimum wage. So he didn't learn whatever he was supposed to learn from the guy, and he was unable to go on to the next step in becoming an architect.
I suppose there is some process to request a second year to apprentice with a different architect, but he didn't do that. For one thing, there was no guarantee that the second architect would be anymore helpful than the first one. But the main thing for the guy giving this speech was that he had not only run out of money, but he had maxed out all of his credit cards and also needed a new car. He wasn't able to pay his bills that first year with a minimum wage job, and there was no way he could work for minimum wage a second year.
So there he was, like me, back in college taking speech class, cause he hadn't needed speech class to be an architect, but he would probably need it for whatever his major was in his second degree.
At the time I was just really shocked, but I have since heard similar things about other career paths.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Going to college
I'm not sure if I've posted this before.
I took a few college courses before I was eighteen. First, I wanted to take creative writing. That class didn't go the way I had imagined. I met some nice people, but the teacher wasn't there a third of the time, we were learning next to nothing from him and mostly getting bad grades for our efforts. Out of a class of twenty-five students, only eleven stayed till the middle of the semester we we got back the grades from our first major assignment, and only three people stayed til the end of the semester to get credit for the class. I was one of the eleven, but not one of the three.
Freshman English was better, but still not quite what I needed. And since my mother was under the impression that we would be charged for a minimum of three classes, freshman history was also forced on me. I got an A in English but only a C in history. It was a lot of work for that C in history, so for the second semester I took the TV version. I still only got a C, but it was a lot less work and I only had to go to campus four times a semester to take tests.
I dropped out of two other classes, not because they were hard, but because we were moving and it was not convenient to drive that far to school three times a week.
Okay, so that wasn't all that exciting, and I took a year off from college. And unfortunately I mostly stayed at home that year, so that wasn't very exciting either.
Anyway, I was ordered to go to college full time, and after a year of sitting at home I was pretty much ready to try that. I took really basic stuff. The other half of freshman English, government, algebra, a couple of art classes, and astronomy. I found out that astronomy only counted as an elective instead of a science, so the next year I took geology, more art classes, trigonometry, sophomore English, and world religion. I won some art supply money and tuition for some more art classes.
There did not seem to be any connection between degree plans and getting a good job. Well, sometimes there is. Sometimes there is something really straight forward, like if you want to be a doctor you take pre-med stuff to get into medical school where they teach you to become a doctor. But liberal art degrees are not really like that. You read a lot of books in school and get an English degree, and then probably no one hires you to read books after school. Or you learn photography in college and get a degree in art before you join the military because you get paid more for going to college first, and in the military you end up doing who knows what, but it doesn't have anything to do with photography or art. So there doesn't seem to be many jobs that requires you to have a specific liberal arts degree, except for teaching one of the liberal arts. So be sure to get that teaching certificate just in case you decide to do that.
So I didn't want to become a doctor or join the military, but I was ordered to go to college and get a degree, just some degree, who cares which one. And my dad kept saying how people who go to college usually make more money, even if they don't end up doing whatever it was that they learned at school. So I was leaning towards getting an art degree. Most of my credits were in art, and I won some tuition money for art, etc....
So, when I transferred to a university, I signed up for more art classes and a foreign language. One of the art classes I signed up for was graphics 101. It was all about letters. I really didn't care much about it, but graphics was the only real job that seemed to come from getting an art degree. So I figured that I should take that stuff, just in case the freelance painting didn't make enough money.
Graphics 101 was rather like the creative writing class, except that the teacher was actually there for all of her classes. Still, she didn't seem to be teaching us anything, and then half of the semester went by before we did anything to get graded on. And then she just started handing back bad grades, with no real explanation as to how we might improve. At some point she said that a bunch of us should drop the class before we got an F on our transcripts. When I asked for help she just said that maybe I should have taken some other classes first.
I had taken the other classes first.
Well, I hadn't taken them from her.
I just couldn't do that. I can't just start over and take all the prerequisites again every time I get a new teacher. They are all supposed to be teaching the same thing. And the classes that she mentioned didn't have anything to do with what I was getting bad grades for. Design 101 was about the color wheel and such. We didn't even have any color in graphics 101.
So, I dropped that class. My parents didn't like that, but what else are you supposed to do when your teacher orders you to get out? My parents expected me to take it again the next semester, which I did not, because it the only person teaching it was that same professor. I would have to wait until someone else offered it. I didn't realize at the time how unlikely that was.
The next semester I dropped two other classes. One was an English class that was in the evening, and I just couldn't seem to focus, and they didn't have enough books for us so we were always behind schedule, and I just didn't think I'd ever catch up. The other was an art history class, and that I was supposed to write a paper for, but I just couldn't seem to come up with anything that made the teacher happy.
And then my parents asked me what job I was planning to get with my art degree.
I don't know. I was ordered to go to college, so I'm going to college.
At that point I was told to either switch to a different degree (they didn't know which one, probably English), pay for the rest of the art degree myself, or not go back to college in the fall and get a full time job.
I did not have the option of switching to an English degree in the fall, because I only had one sophomore English class. English majors had to have at least two, and maybe they even told you which two you had to have. But my parents did not want to hear that.
I couldn't pay for the rest of my education, but it took me a few years to figure that out. I kept thinking that I was going to go back after I saved some money.
I got some really dumb jobs. I worked at some fast food places. But those weren't full time, so I ended up working for a year at an amusement park.
Once I figured out that I wasn't going to get that art degree anytime soon, I went back to junior college to get that "transfer degree" which I hadn't bothered with before because it required speech and a couple of other things that I knew that I didn't need for the art degree. I was short a few more classes than I thought, so I ended up going back part-time for three semesters.
So then I had my "transfer degree". I started applying for jobs that wanted people with "some college". No one was impressed that I had this degree. I finally had to go back to work and took a job at a movie theater.
Now, at that point I probably would have just stayed there and then gone on to be the assistant manager of a movie theater, and even though I didn't especially want to be a theater manager I probably would have eventually done that. Except that I got married, and my weird hours didn't mesh well with my husband's weird hours, so I quit before I got that assistant manager job that I wanted.
And then my husband thought that maybe I should just not have a job for a while....
Several years later, I finally did go back to work, but not at anything that paid well enough to take seriously, and not at anything that I particularly liked. But then I got a job at a school, which was part-time and didn't pay much more than minimum wage, but I was really happy there anyway. And while it wasn't really college, I did audit a couple of classes, which made me want to go back to college for real, and with the job I had at the time going to afternoon college classes would have been easy.
Except that my husband got a job that he really liked, and they pretty much demanded that I work with him if he didn't want to be let go. I didn't like the new job, and they didn't like me, but they just wanted me to work for them so that they could save on motel rooms and travel expenses.
So between the travel I did for that job and some other traveling that we did, I didn't go back to school like I wanted for another three years.
By that time I had the idea that I wanted to be a teacher. Bad idea. But at the time I wasn't going to be talked out of going back to school, and I didn't know what else I might want to go back to school for.
I picked just the worst time to go to school to become a teacher. They were changing all the degree plans, and I just couldn't get a straight answer on anything. My degree plan changed three times.
I had a summer job taking care of ten kids. I decided that not only did I not like kids as much as I thought, dealing with parents is sometimes a pain too. I still wasn't quite ready to give up on the idea, since I had waited all this time to go back to school, and I knew that if I didn't get my degree then I probably never would.
My last teaching degree plan was for high school English, and then since I had most of the classes I needed for an English degree, I just switched to that. So then all I had to do was take a few more English classes, British history, and a certain art class to get a minor in art.
So I had this English degree, and as I suspected, no one wanted to hire me to read books. So far having a degree has not lead to a better job. In fact, so far having the degree hasn't lead to any job. Nobody cares that I have this degree. In fact, when I was seriously looking for work, the fact that I took off for several years to go to school seemed to count against me just getting the same boring jobs that I used to get.
So I pretty much gave up on trying to get a job. I still look once in a while, but my last interview was more than two years ago. That one really made me feel bad. Not only did he not care that I had gone back to school to get an English degree, but he seemed to be bothered that my last job was a temp job at a Halloween store. I needed some money and I took a temp job. What's wrong with that?
I took a few college courses before I was eighteen. First, I wanted to take creative writing. That class didn't go the way I had imagined. I met some nice people, but the teacher wasn't there a third of the time, we were learning next to nothing from him and mostly getting bad grades for our efforts. Out of a class of twenty-five students, only eleven stayed till the middle of the semester we we got back the grades from our first major assignment, and only three people stayed til the end of the semester to get credit for the class. I was one of the eleven, but not one of the three.
Freshman English was better, but still not quite what I needed. And since my mother was under the impression that we would be charged for a minimum of three classes, freshman history was also forced on me. I got an A in English but only a C in history. It was a lot of work for that C in history, so for the second semester I took the TV version. I still only got a C, but it was a lot less work and I only had to go to campus four times a semester to take tests.
I dropped out of two other classes, not because they were hard, but because we were moving and it was not convenient to drive that far to school three times a week.
Okay, so that wasn't all that exciting, and I took a year off from college. And unfortunately I mostly stayed at home that year, so that wasn't very exciting either.
Anyway, I was ordered to go to college full time, and after a year of sitting at home I was pretty much ready to try that. I took really basic stuff. The other half of freshman English, government, algebra, a couple of art classes, and astronomy. I found out that astronomy only counted as an elective instead of a science, so the next year I took geology, more art classes, trigonometry, sophomore English, and world religion. I won some art supply money and tuition for some more art classes.
There did not seem to be any connection between degree plans and getting a good job. Well, sometimes there is. Sometimes there is something really straight forward, like if you want to be a doctor you take pre-med stuff to get into medical school where they teach you to become a doctor. But liberal art degrees are not really like that. You read a lot of books in school and get an English degree, and then probably no one hires you to read books after school. Or you learn photography in college and get a degree in art before you join the military because you get paid more for going to college first, and in the military you end up doing who knows what, but it doesn't have anything to do with photography or art. So there doesn't seem to be many jobs that requires you to have a specific liberal arts degree, except for teaching one of the liberal arts. So be sure to get that teaching certificate just in case you decide to do that.
So I didn't want to become a doctor or join the military, but I was ordered to go to college and get a degree, just some degree, who cares which one. And my dad kept saying how people who go to college usually make more money, even if they don't end up doing whatever it was that they learned at school. So I was leaning towards getting an art degree. Most of my credits were in art, and I won some tuition money for art, etc....
So, when I transferred to a university, I signed up for more art classes and a foreign language. One of the art classes I signed up for was graphics 101. It was all about letters. I really didn't care much about it, but graphics was the only real job that seemed to come from getting an art degree. So I figured that I should take that stuff, just in case the freelance painting didn't make enough money.
Graphics 101 was rather like the creative writing class, except that the teacher was actually there for all of her classes. Still, she didn't seem to be teaching us anything, and then half of the semester went by before we did anything to get graded on. And then she just started handing back bad grades, with no real explanation as to how we might improve. At some point she said that a bunch of us should drop the class before we got an F on our transcripts. When I asked for help she just said that maybe I should have taken some other classes first.
I had taken the other classes first.
Well, I hadn't taken them from her.
I just couldn't do that. I can't just start over and take all the prerequisites again every time I get a new teacher. They are all supposed to be teaching the same thing. And the classes that she mentioned didn't have anything to do with what I was getting bad grades for. Design 101 was about the color wheel and such. We didn't even have any color in graphics 101.
So, I dropped that class. My parents didn't like that, but what else are you supposed to do when your teacher orders you to get out? My parents expected me to take it again the next semester, which I did not, because it the only person teaching it was that same professor. I would have to wait until someone else offered it. I didn't realize at the time how unlikely that was.
The next semester I dropped two other classes. One was an English class that was in the evening, and I just couldn't seem to focus, and they didn't have enough books for us so we were always behind schedule, and I just didn't think I'd ever catch up. The other was an art history class, and that I was supposed to write a paper for, but I just couldn't seem to come up with anything that made the teacher happy.
And then my parents asked me what job I was planning to get with my art degree.
I don't know. I was ordered to go to college, so I'm going to college.
At that point I was told to either switch to a different degree (they didn't know which one, probably English), pay for the rest of the art degree myself, or not go back to college in the fall and get a full time job.
I did not have the option of switching to an English degree in the fall, because I only had one sophomore English class. English majors had to have at least two, and maybe they even told you which two you had to have. But my parents did not want to hear that.
I couldn't pay for the rest of my education, but it took me a few years to figure that out. I kept thinking that I was going to go back after I saved some money.
I got some really dumb jobs. I worked at some fast food places. But those weren't full time, so I ended up working for a year at an amusement park.
Once I figured out that I wasn't going to get that art degree anytime soon, I went back to junior college to get that "transfer degree" which I hadn't bothered with before because it required speech and a couple of other things that I knew that I didn't need for the art degree. I was short a few more classes than I thought, so I ended up going back part-time for three semesters.
So then I had my "transfer degree". I started applying for jobs that wanted people with "some college". No one was impressed that I had this degree. I finally had to go back to work and took a job at a movie theater.
Now, at that point I probably would have just stayed there and then gone on to be the assistant manager of a movie theater, and even though I didn't especially want to be a theater manager I probably would have eventually done that. Except that I got married, and my weird hours didn't mesh well with my husband's weird hours, so I quit before I got that assistant manager job that I wanted.
And then my husband thought that maybe I should just not have a job for a while....
Several years later, I finally did go back to work, but not at anything that paid well enough to take seriously, and not at anything that I particularly liked. But then I got a job at a school, which was part-time and didn't pay much more than minimum wage, but I was really happy there anyway. And while it wasn't really college, I did audit a couple of classes, which made me want to go back to college for real, and with the job I had at the time going to afternoon college classes would have been easy.
Except that my husband got a job that he really liked, and they pretty much demanded that I work with him if he didn't want to be let go. I didn't like the new job, and they didn't like me, but they just wanted me to work for them so that they could save on motel rooms and travel expenses.
So between the travel I did for that job and some other traveling that we did, I didn't go back to school like I wanted for another three years.
By that time I had the idea that I wanted to be a teacher. Bad idea. But at the time I wasn't going to be talked out of going back to school, and I didn't know what else I might want to go back to school for.
I picked just the worst time to go to school to become a teacher. They were changing all the degree plans, and I just couldn't get a straight answer on anything. My degree plan changed three times.
I had a summer job taking care of ten kids. I decided that not only did I not like kids as much as I thought, dealing with parents is sometimes a pain too. I still wasn't quite ready to give up on the idea, since I had waited all this time to go back to school, and I knew that if I didn't get my degree then I probably never would.
My last teaching degree plan was for high school English, and then since I had most of the classes I needed for an English degree, I just switched to that. So then all I had to do was take a few more English classes, British history, and a certain art class to get a minor in art.
So I had this English degree, and as I suspected, no one wanted to hire me to read books. So far having a degree has not lead to a better job. In fact, so far having the degree hasn't lead to any job. Nobody cares that I have this degree. In fact, when I was seriously looking for work, the fact that I took off for several years to go to school seemed to count against me just getting the same boring jobs that I used to get.
So I pretty much gave up on trying to get a job. I still look once in a while, but my last interview was more than two years ago. That one really made me feel bad. Not only did he not care that I had gone back to school to get an English degree, but he seemed to be bothered that my last job was a temp job at a Halloween store. I needed some money and I took a temp job. What's wrong with that?
Friday, November 21, 2008
I think that I have had it with school for a while
I went to school twice this week. I went once on Tuesday, and after a break of more than a week my brain was fried, and I couldn't seem to get anything done. So I left early to run some errands, which turned out to be a really lucky thing since I needed to run those errands and I got a bit sick and didn't feel like doing them later.
So I went to school again on Friday, and except for having a bit of trouble actually getting into the building, that went a lot better. That is, everything went better with the clay. I'm almost done with the green work on the second leaf vase, and I'm thinking that I should go in on Monday and finish up. The main purpose of this project is just to see how long that it takes, so that I'll know how much I should charge for the other one. So far I've spent about nine hours on it.
The bowls and such that I threw still need some touch up work. But, some of them are too dry, and they will just have to do as they are. I'll try to finish the rest Monday or Tuesday.
I really should have done all of this before Tulsa. I don't even really remember what I was doing before Tulsa. I didn't have a cold yet, so that wasn't it. And it obviously did not have anything to do with making the house spotless. Anyway, if I had put in another nine hours or so two weeks ago, then I would have been done with it all by now, and the teacher would have enough stuff to high fire and everybody would be happier now.
I'm not happy. I was thinking at school how this stuff isn't making me happy anymore. I have felt like that before, when a project wasn't going well, but this one is just fine and it still isn't making me happy. I had thought that I would like taking a non-credit class better, that it would be less stressful without having to think about grades and such. And I has been less stressful for the most part. But I do sort of have to think about deadlines if I don't want this semester's work to have been a total waste of time. Right now this just feels like another chore that I have to get through.
So I went to school again on Friday, and except for having a bit of trouble actually getting into the building, that went a lot better. That is, everything went better with the clay. I'm almost done with the green work on the second leaf vase, and I'm thinking that I should go in on Monday and finish up. The main purpose of this project is just to see how long that it takes, so that I'll know how much I should charge for the other one. So far I've spent about nine hours on it.
The bowls and such that I threw still need some touch up work. But, some of them are too dry, and they will just have to do as they are. I'll try to finish the rest Monday or Tuesday.
I really should have done all of this before Tulsa. I don't even really remember what I was doing before Tulsa. I didn't have a cold yet, so that wasn't it. And it obviously did not have anything to do with making the house spotless. Anyway, if I had put in another nine hours or so two weeks ago, then I would have been done with it all by now, and the teacher would have enough stuff to high fire and everybody would be happier now.
I'm not happy. I was thinking at school how this stuff isn't making me happy anymore. I have felt like that before, when a project wasn't going well, but this one is just fine and it still isn't making me happy. I had thought that I would like taking a non-credit class better, that it would be less stressful without having to think about grades and such. And I has been less stressful for the most part. But I do sort of have to think about deadlines if I don't want this semester's work to have been a total waste of time. Right now this just feels like another chore that I have to get through.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Would you like to read my book?
Real writers are not supposed to say that. You are not supposed to say, "This is my book." You are supposed to say, "This is a book that I have written." "This is my book" says that you've only written the one book. "This is a book that I have written" implies that you've written a few books and this is just one of them. Or at least it implies that you intend to write something else later.
So there was this book that I wrote many years ago. I'm not even sure where it is now. It may not survive. I have moved twice since I wrote it. Also there has been rodent damage, and a lot of flood damage. So I don't know where it is, and it is probably lost.
In any case, "This is my book" was still the more accurate thing to say. It was not the only thing that I ever wrote (you knew that, you're reading my blog), or the only thing of fiction that I wrote, or even the only thing of book length that I wrote. But it was the only thing of fiction and of book length that I wrote and finished and was totally mine. There was also a lot of fan fiction, and a few short stories, and tons and tons of stuff that never got finished. Once I thought I was really on to something and was really writing a lot, or a lot for me, and when I got about to page forty or fifty my computer was stolen. I had copies of most of it, wrote another ten pages or so, but having my house broken into and computer stolen upset me a great deal and I just never got back into it.
Except for "my book" the only original fiction that I finished was stuff that I wrote as a teenager, and it probably wasn't that good, and while at the time I thought I'd written just pages and pages, none of it was really book length. Anyway, that was even before I wrote "my book" and I lived with my parents, so that was three moves ago. I really have no idea where that stuff is, except for two works of fan fiction I retrieved from my mother's house last year.
My last attempt at serious writing came from a couple of couple of classes on children's literature and creative writing that I took during the 2003/2004 year. Before that it hadn't really occurred to me that I might write for the Young Adult market, but with some encouragement from my teacher I decided to attempt a few stories and later a book. Two chapters of the book were written for class credit, and I did intend to keep writing it, except that right about then my husband all but insisted that we move from our apartment. So I got no writing done that summer, and that fall I had to concentrate on classes and graduating. After that I would have liked a job, and I needed to sort through stuff and get the house organized after being rushed into moving when I didn't want to. So I told myself that I would not work on the writing until after I had gotten the house organized.
We all know how that went.
And then all that other stuff happened a couple of years ago, and I just never got back into it. I do occasionally get out the two chapters, just to make sure that I haven't lost them too, but other than that, nothing.
So when people ask to read something of mine, it isn't that I don't like you and don't want you to read my stuff. Some of us just don't like to have people read stuff until it's "ready", whatever that might mean. I only like to have completed drafts read, and if I hadn't been in a writing class no one would have read the two chapters of the young adult novel. I don't have a lot of short stories. If I find one, I'll let someone read it, but right now I really don't know where they are. I tend to start longer things, but I don't tend to finish many of them.
I have a sequel to The Dark Crystal that I wrote when I was fourteen or fifteen. Also from that time I have a Star Wars novel. I don't really like either of them right now, but back then I was really proud of them. Anyway, they are fan fiction, so the odds were against anything happening with them anyway.
I'm afraid that "my book" was the only thing that I was really very happy with, and I'm afraid that it is lost, so I can't share it now.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Some Random Thoughts
Before I write anything else, let me remind everyone that tonight is the last Jericho. Not the end of the season, but the end of the show. That's it. No more Jericho. The end.
I have spent a week out of town with my husband, and now I'm going to spend a few days at home by myself. And I have decided that I'm going to enjoy this time by myself. I usually don't deal with it very well. I don't like sleeping alone and such. Mainly, this is because I don't get enough sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night, realize that I am alone, hear some stupid little noise and panic over nothing.
I am determined that will not be the case this time. There are good things about having the house to myself. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can watch TV or listen to the radio or get up and eat ice cream. I can do anything I want. There's no one else here to disturb. I don't have to be quiet.
And with that knowledge, and one little sleeping pill, I got a full night's sleep. I don't remember the last time that happened. I fell asleep a bit after ten and slept til nearly six. And then I actually got out of bed and had a bath and turned on the lights and everything. And I watched the episode of Medium that I taped last night. I never get to do that. I wake up early and wait til five or six and then I come in here and blog until he wakes up which usually isn't til seven or eight. Cause blogging is the only thing that I can do without waking him up. Sometimes I think that I would have mostly given up blogging a year ago except for the fact that I needed something to do in the mornings that didn't make noise.
A full night's sleep. Unbelievable. And that was after an almost three hour afternoon nap too.
I was thinking about when I was a kid and we had these big Easter egg hunts. Someone took thousands of eggs and hid them in the park while we were in church. That must have taken an hour or two. And then we would spend time in the park finding the eggs, and then we would go to lunch. Some of the eggs were those candy eggs that were partially made of wax. Some of the eggs were actual hard-boiled eggs. Hardly any of the eggs were anything cool like chocolate or a plastic egg with something inside it. Just almost rock hard candy eggs and real hard-boiled eggs. So the eggs must have been out of the fridge for like three hours or so before we got them home. And then we usually didn't have the sense to put them in the fridge then either. And we usually ate a couple of these eggs. And then usually by the end of the day one of our parents would take the eggs away from us and say that if we wanted to eat anymore eggs we should eat the ones that we'd made ourselves that were in the refrigerator.
I just can't think that anyone would do that now. Obviously, eggs that aren't refrigerated go bad and shouldn't be eaten. But it seems like we ate some that had been out for several hours, and I don't remember anyone ever dying from it.
I read a few blogs, not because I care about the writers, but just because I've been drawn into the whole soap opera. My favorite one has ended. After two or three years of writing about her life and wondering why she can't seem to find that one special guy while she's having threesomes and such, she decided that writing the blog wasn't the thing for her anymore. Now, a lot of us say that, and then we change our minds after a few weeks. So I suggested that she leave the blog alone for a bit, and not delete it, and maybe after she'd had a rest she might change her mind. And, if she was mostly worried about the blog being so public, she could make the blog private and keep writing. So, after about a month, that is what she decided to do, make the blog private. And, not being one of the few people given the password, I was not able to read the blog for a month or two, but once or twice a week I would type in the address to see if the blog was public again. This morning I typed in the address, and the blog has been deleted. Oh, well. I hope that she made a hard-copy for herself first.
I had some computer access during the week I was away, but I spent most of my computer time writing my own blogs posts and checking my email for news of my dying friend. Now that I'm home I'll try to catch up on reading other people's blogs.
I used to read more blogs regularly than I do now. Something in my life changed, or something in the other blogger's life changed. There's one that I hardly read at all now, but to be fair, with the different things going on in her life, she rarely posts anything now. But she does stop by once in a while, and about a week ago on her own blog she posted some pictures of her recent weight-loss. And it looks great. And she got a haircut, and that looks great too. Unfortunately, my own weight-loss of fifteen pounds from two years ago is no more. I'm back at my pre-tragedy weight. It stayed off for like a year and a half, despite everyone telling me that the weight would come right back on. But it is finally back. I need to go eat some broccoli. And I think this week I'll get my hair trimmed. But I won't look as good as my fellow blogger, even though she probably still weighs a little bit more than I do.
I brought home a bunch of clay to recycle about a week and a half ago, so I would have some clay ready to use when I got back from spring break. But, of course, I didn't do anything about that when I should have. I didn't even look at the stuff until the day before yesterday. So yesterday I decided to push most of it through a kitchen strainer, and now I have these little cuts on the tips of two fingers. And I cannot find the antibiotic ointment, so I shall have to go and buy more. That's just one of those things that I can never find when I need it. Someday, if I ever move away from this house, I am going to find several dozen tubes mostly full tubes of antibiotic ointment. And then I'll find all those other little things that hide from me like safety pins and emery boards and socks.
Today in school, at least three of us were rather aimlessly wandering around the lab, trying to remember what it was that we were supposed to do. Having a lot of time off just messes things up for me. I vaguely remember what I was doing before I left, but I can't seem to just pick up where I left off. I'm supposed to glaze the tall vase, but I'm still waiting for a test piece to be fired first. I'm supposed to glaze the other vase, but that one requires using a spray gun, and I knew that I'd feel bad afterwards and decided to put that off til later. I should work on either the Martian cricket or the Triffid, but right now I just can't seem to think how to get back to doing whatever it was that I'd been about to do before I left. I don't want to do anything with the Alien face hugger until Friday, because I think it's best to work on it for several hours in one day, and Friday is the only day that the lab is available for that length of time. That pretty much left the Sleestaks, which are technically not school assignments and I'm only supposed to work on them after I'm finished with school work. And then I remembered that I'd left the plaster molds to dry, and that they should be ready to start making bowls and plates for my series of Halloween dishes. So I poured slip into those and worked on a Sleestak while I was waiting for the slip to set up in the molds. So I've mostly finished one Sleestak now. In a day or two it will be ready to be set out to dry, and I'll at least be able to get something off of my shelf. The plates and bowls are going to take longer than I expected. The plate mold works very well, except that the clay is too soft right out of the plaster and the plate didn't hold it's shape. I put the clay back into the mold and will let it set overnight. The bowl will just have to wait.
I have spent a week out of town with my husband, and now I'm going to spend a few days at home by myself. And I have decided that I'm going to enjoy this time by myself. I usually don't deal with it very well. I don't like sleeping alone and such. Mainly, this is because I don't get enough sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night, realize that I am alone, hear some stupid little noise and panic over nothing.
I am determined that will not be the case this time. There are good things about having the house to myself. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can watch TV or listen to the radio or get up and eat ice cream. I can do anything I want. There's no one else here to disturb. I don't have to be quiet.
And with that knowledge, and one little sleeping pill, I got a full night's sleep. I don't remember the last time that happened. I fell asleep a bit after ten and slept til nearly six. And then I actually got out of bed and had a bath and turned on the lights and everything. And I watched the episode of Medium that I taped last night. I never get to do that. I wake up early and wait til five or six and then I come in here and blog until he wakes up which usually isn't til seven or eight. Cause blogging is the only thing that I can do without waking him up. Sometimes I think that I would have mostly given up blogging a year ago except for the fact that I needed something to do in the mornings that didn't make noise.
A full night's sleep. Unbelievable. And that was after an almost three hour afternoon nap too.
I was thinking about when I was a kid and we had these big Easter egg hunts. Someone took thousands of eggs and hid them in the park while we were in church. That must have taken an hour or two. And then we would spend time in the park finding the eggs, and then we would go to lunch. Some of the eggs were those candy eggs that were partially made of wax. Some of the eggs were actual hard-boiled eggs. Hardly any of the eggs were anything cool like chocolate or a plastic egg with something inside it. Just almost rock hard candy eggs and real hard-boiled eggs. So the eggs must have been out of the fridge for like three hours or so before we got them home. And then we usually didn't have the sense to put them in the fridge then either. And we usually ate a couple of these eggs. And then usually by the end of the day one of our parents would take the eggs away from us and say that if we wanted to eat anymore eggs we should eat the ones that we'd made ourselves that were in the refrigerator.
I just can't think that anyone would do that now. Obviously, eggs that aren't refrigerated go bad and shouldn't be eaten. But it seems like we ate some that had been out for several hours, and I don't remember anyone ever dying from it.
I read a few blogs, not because I care about the writers, but just because I've been drawn into the whole soap opera. My favorite one has ended. After two or three years of writing about her life and wondering why she can't seem to find that one special guy while she's having threesomes and such, she decided that writing the blog wasn't the thing for her anymore. Now, a lot of us say that, and then we change our minds after a few weeks. So I suggested that she leave the blog alone for a bit, and not delete it, and maybe after she'd had a rest she might change her mind. And, if she was mostly worried about the blog being so public, she could make the blog private and keep writing. So, after about a month, that is what she decided to do, make the blog private. And, not being one of the few people given the password, I was not able to read the blog for a month or two, but once or twice a week I would type in the address to see if the blog was public again. This morning I typed in the address, and the blog has been deleted. Oh, well. I hope that she made a hard-copy for herself first.
I had some computer access during the week I was away, but I spent most of my computer time writing my own blogs posts and checking my email for news of my dying friend. Now that I'm home I'll try to catch up on reading other people's blogs.
I used to read more blogs regularly than I do now. Something in my life changed, or something in the other blogger's life changed. There's one that I hardly read at all now, but to be fair, with the different things going on in her life, she rarely posts anything now. But she does stop by once in a while, and about a week ago on her own blog she posted some pictures of her recent weight-loss. And it looks great. And she got a haircut, and that looks great too. Unfortunately, my own weight-loss of fifteen pounds from two years ago is no more. I'm back at my pre-tragedy weight. It stayed off for like a year and a half, despite everyone telling me that the weight would come right back on. But it is finally back. I need to go eat some broccoli. And I think this week I'll get my hair trimmed. But I won't look as good as my fellow blogger, even though she probably still weighs a little bit more than I do.
I brought home a bunch of clay to recycle about a week and a half ago, so I would have some clay ready to use when I got back from spring break. But, of course, I didn't do anything about that when I should have. I didn't even look at the stuff until the day before yesterday. So yesterday I decided to push most of it through a kitchen strainer, and now I have these little cuts on the tips of two fingers. And I cannot find the antibiotic ointment, so I shall have to go and buy more. That's just one of those things that I can never find when I need it. Someday, if I ever move away from this house, I am going to find several dozen tubes mostly full tubes of antibiotic ointment. And then I'll find all those other little things that hide from me like safety pins and emery boards and socks.
Today in school, at least three of us were rather aimlessly wandering around the lab, trying to remember what it was that we were supposed to do. Having a lot of time off just messes things up for me. I vaguely remember what I was doing before I left, but I can't seem to just pick up where I left off. I'm supposed to glaze the tall vase, but I'm still waiting for a test piece to be fired first. I'm supposed to glaze the other vase, but that one requires using a spray gun, and I knew that I'd feel bad afterwards and decided to put that off til later. I should work on either the Martian cricket or the Triffid, but right now I just can't seem to think how to get back to doing whatever it was that I'd been about to do before I left. I don't want to do anything with the Alien face hugger until Friday, because I think it's best to work on it for several hours in one day, and Friday is the only day that the lab is available for that length of time. That pretty much left the Sleestaks, which are technically not school assignments and I'm only supposed to work on them after I'm finished with school work. And then I remembered that I'd left the plaster molds to dry, and that they should be ready to start making bowls and plates for my series of Halloween dishes. So I poured slip into those and worked on a Sleestak while I was waiting for the slip to set up in the molds. So I've mostly finished one Sleestak now. In a day or two it will be ready to be set out to dry, and I'll at least be able to get something off of my shelf. The plates and bowls are going to take longer than I expected. The plate mold works very well, except that the clay is too soft right out of the plaster and the plate didn't hold it's shape. I put the clay back into the mold and will let it set overnight. The bowl will just have to wait.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Thinking about Spring Break
No, I'm not thinking of getting mostly naked and heading to a beach to get drunk. (Though I got a weird look from my husband when I brought up the subject, like I had suggested exactly that.) I am just thinking that I have next week off, and wondering what to do about it.
Let's see, what are my options?
I could just stay home and clean house. Well, we've seen how well that's gone recently. I don't really think that my chances of actually getting much work done are going to improve much just because it is spring break. It will be the same as any other week, minus the time I am in my actual scheduled ceramics class, minus Friday when I try to spend most of the day at school and minus the occasional Monday or Wednesday when I spend a couple of hours in the lab because there is something I have to do that just cannot wait for one of the other days that I'm already there. Mostly, it will just be the idea of spring break, and knowing that I absolutely cannot go to school no matter what I imagine I might get accomplished.
If I stay home the usual stuff will happen, and except for class there will be the usual excuses for not getting anything done. In the morning it is too early, and I will read or blog a bit until I decide that it is not too early anymore. Then if there's anything interesting going on in the blog world, I will waste time on other people's blogs writing comments and such. I might waste a whole day having a discussion about some post that I didn't even write.
Then, on a day when there doesn't seem to be anything going on, when there don't seem to be any distractions, my mother will call. On a good day she will invite me to lunch and ask if I want to go with her to run some errands. On a bad day it will just be the phone call, which starts out pleasant enough, but then gets rather long and usually ends up on a couple of subjects that I've already made it clear I don't want to talk about since talking just upsets me and doesn't change the situation. So if I spend a nice day with her I usually get back home and decide that I don't have enough time left to do anything useful and spend the rest of the day reading or on the computer or watching TV. If I have one of those long phone calls I'm usually too upset afterwards to do much of anything.
So on my most productive day of trying to clean the house I will first decide that it is too early, then decide that it is not too early, then try to get something done and possibly do both laundry and dishes but probably not much else, then have to take a couple of breaks to eat and possibly to cook and clean up the mess caused by the cooking, maybe realize that I've run out of something or for some other reason have to leave the house on some errand, do maybe a little bit more before I decide that it is now too late to do much of anything and then either read some more or watch TV. That is what most Wednesdays are like, unless I have to go to school for something, or unless maybe my mother calls. So if I stay home with the plan of cleaning house, it will probably be a whole week of what seems like Wednesdays, and probably having a whole week of Wednesdays will still not result in a nice clean and orderly house.
Okay, so the idea of staying home with the plan of cleaning the house is not so great.
There are other things I could plan to do while I am home. If it doesn't rain or freeze again for a bit, the backyard could use a lot of work. I usually want to have a garden, and you'd think that by this time I would have done something about it. This year I haven't really even given it much thought. I go out once in a while to see if any of the perennials are going to come back. I expect that many will not since I was so inattentive last year. I didn't even do half of the things I had planned to do in the last two years. So the place is quite a mess, and I'm really not looking forward to any major projects this year. But shouldn't I do something? Shouldn't I at least turn over last year's beds and get plants for the containers that I already have and stuff like that? Maybe. The thing is that after I've planted something I worry about going out of town. The plants will probably die while I'm out of town. If I have plans of going out of town after April or so I should just not plant anything new so I don't have anything to worry about.
In theory, I could take home a couple of ceramic projects and work on them. Except for the relief sculpture, which I have not yet selected a design for, this usually causes some problems. Like where to put the thing while I'm working on it. If I totally clean the kitchen and dinning room area first, and then have no plans to cook anything for about a week, I can work there.
Then there's the problem of worrying that my husband doesn't quite understand that he must not disturb the area at all for any reason whatsoever. Stay out, period. I don't care that you just wanted a piece of toast. Next time tell me and I'll get it for you. If you decide you need toast when I'm not around, then you'll just have to do without.
And then there's a bit of a mess to clean up, and while I do make an effort to clean up most of the mess I make at school, at school there is someone who is paid to deal with the rest of it. At home, the only person dealing with the mess will be me, and possibly the husband who might not understand that he still must not disturb the area until after I tell him that it is safe to do so.
Then there is the problem of getting said ceramic project back to school once I have done whatever I brought it home to do. The project can only travel in the leather-hard stage (except maybe for the relief sculpture), and it must be carefully wrapped and packed away in a sturdy plastic container. I cannot move the piece if it is too wet, because I would be unable to wrap it and move it without damaging it. If it is too dry, it will crack, and it will be difficult (if not impossible) to repair at that stage.
So taking home a ceramic project is something to think about, since the husband will probably be out of town that week.
Which brings me to what I will probably end up doing with the week off. I will probably go out of town with my husband. We like to get out of town once in a while, and fortunately he has a whole week out of town at the same time as I have a whole week off from school.
Unfortunately, it isn't anyplace far away or particularly exciting. It's a place that we used to like, but since it is so close we have been there a lot over the years, and by now we are rather tired of the place. It still has a few things that we like to do, but going there just isn't a big deal anymore.
So what I will probably do is pack up the knitting machine and see if I can knit a scarf and maybe a couple of baby blankets. Those are things that should be done before May, but if I don't manage to do them while I'm at a motel, they probably won't get done in time. Around here, knitting projects would have to compete with school and housework for my time. At the motel there will be knitting and cable TV and not much else. No responsibilities. Knitting, cable TV, lunch with my husband, more knitting, more cable TV, possibly a swim, maybe a nap, dinner by myself, followed by more knitting and more cable TV, and a day ending with one of those "how was your day dear" talks and then possibly more cable TV. Sometime during the week maybe a trip to the zoo, maybe a walk through the park, but not much else. Just a relaxing week doing mostly nothing and a bit of knitting.
Let's see, what are my options?
I could just stay home and clean house. Well, we've seen how well that's gone recently. I don't really think that my chances of actually getting much work done are going to improve much just because it is spring break. It will be the same as any other week, minus the time I am in my actual scheduled ceramics class, minus Friday when I try to spend most of the day at school and minus the occasional Monday or Wednesday when I spend a couple of hours in the lab because there is something I have to do that just cannot wait for one of the other days that I'm already there. Mostly, it will just be the idea of spring break, and knowing that I absolutely cannot go to school no matter what I imagine I might get accomplished.
If I stay home the usual stuff will happen, and except for class there will be the usual excuses for not getting anything done. In the morning it is too early, and I will read or blog a bit until I decide that it is not too early anymore. Then if there's anything interesting going on in the blog world, I will waste time on other people's blogs writing comments and such. I might waste a whole day having a discussion about some post that I didn't even write.
Then, on a day when there doesn't seem to be anything going on, when there don't seem to be any distractions, my mother will call. On a good day she will invite me to lunch and ask if I want to go with her to run some errands. On a bad day it will just be the phone call, which starts out pleasant enough, but then gets rather long and usually ends up on a couple of subjects that I've already made it clear I don't want to talk about since talking just upsets me and doesn't change the situation. So if I spend a nice day with her I usually get back home and decide that I don't have enough time left to do anything useful and spend the rest of the day reading or on the computer or watching TV. If I have one of those long phone calls I'm usually too upset afterwards to do much of anything.
So on my most productive day of trying to clean the house I will first decide that it is too early, then decide that it is not too early, then try to get something done and possibly do both laundry and dishes but probably not much else, then have to take a couple of breaks to eat and possibly to cook and clean up the mess caused by the cooking, maybe realize that I've run out of something or for some other reason have to leave the house on some errand, do maybe a little bit more before I decide that it is now too late to do much of anything and then either read some more or watch TV. That is what most Wednesdays are like, unless I have to go to school for something, or unless maybe my mother calls. So if I stay home with the plan of cleaning house, it will probably be a whole week of what seems like Wednesdays, and probably having a whole week of Wednesdays will still not result in a nice clean and orderly house.
Okay, so the idea of staying home with the plan of cleaning the house is not so great.
There are other things I could plan to do while I am home. If it doesn't rain or freeze again for a bit, the backyard could use a lot of work. I usually want to have a garden, and you'd think that by this time I would have done something about it. This year I haven't really even given it much thought. I go out once in a while to see if any of the perennials are going to come back. I expect that many will not since I was so inattentive last year. I didn't even do half of the things I had planned to do in the last two years. So the place is quite a mess, and I'm really not looking forward to any major projects this year. But shouldn't I do something? Shouldn't I at least turn over last year's beds and get plants for the containers that I already have and stuff like that? Maybe. The thing is that after I've planted something I worry about going out of town. The plants will probably die while I'm out of town. If I have plans of going out of town after April or so I should just not plant anything new so I don't have anything to worry about.
In theory, I could take home a couple of ceramic projects and work on them. Except for the relief sculpture, which I have not yet selected a design for, this usually causes some problems. Like where to put the thing while I'm working on it. If I totally clean the kitchen and dinning room area first, and then have no plans to cook anything for about a week, I can work there.
Then there's the problem of worrying that my husband doesn't quite understand that he must not disturb the area at all for any reason whatsoever. Stay out, period. I don't care that you just wanted a piece of toast. Next time tell me and I'll get it for you. If you decide you need toast when I'm not around, then you'll just have to do without.
And then there's a bit of a mess to clean up, and while I do make an effort to clean up most of the mess I make at school, at school there is someone who is paid to deal with the rest of it. At home, the only person dealing with the mess will be me, and possibly the husband who might not understand that he still must not disturb the area until after I tell him that it is safe to do so.
Then there is the problem of getting said ceramic project back to school once I have done whatever I brought it home to do. The project can only travel in the leather-hard stage (except maybe for the relief sculpture), and it must be carefully wrapped and packed away in a sturdy plastic container. I cannot move the piece if it is too wet, because I would be unable to wrap it and move it without damaging it. If it is too dry, it will crack, and it will be difficult (if not impossible) to repair at that stage.
So taking home a ceramic project is something to think about, since the husband will probably be out of town that week.
Which brings me to what I will probably end up doing with the week off. I will probably go out of town with my husband. We like to get out of town once in a while, and fortunately he has a whole week out of town at the same time as I have a whole week off from school.
Unfortunately, it isn't anyplace far away or particularly exciting. It's a place that we used to like, but since it is so close we have been there a lot over the years, and by now we are rather tired of the place. It still has a few things that we like to do, but going there just isn't a big deal anymore.
So what I will probably do is pack up the knitting machine and see if I can knit a scarf and maybe a couple of baby blankets. Those are things that should be done before May, but if I don't manage to do them while I'm at a motel, they probably won't get done in time. Around here, knitting projects would have to compete with school and housework for my time. At the motel there will be knitting and cable TV and not much else. No responsibilities. Knitting, cable TV, lunch with my husband, more knitting, more cable TV, possibly a swim, maybe a nap, dinner by myself, followed by more knitting and more cable TV, and a day ending with one of those "how was your day dear" talks and then possibly more cable TV. Sometime during the week maybe a trip to the zoo, maybe a walk through the park, but not much else. Just a relaxing week doing mostly nothing and a bit of knitting.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Writing a program for Intro to Computers
Many years ago, not quite back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, "people" did not have computers. Not that there weren't people with computers, just not a lot of people. "People" were not expected to have a computer at home, many "people" worked in offices that did not have computers, and most "people" did not even know how to type.
Aside from the "people" who did not have computers and did not care about computers and never suspected that they would ever get a computer, there were the select few that did care about computers and had even been allowed to use a computer and even planned to someday buy a computer. Some of these select people had computers forced on them by their employers, but then later they decided that computers were good things. But most of these select people were people who just always liked computers. They were Trekkies and/or guys in the chess club. The wore glasses and/or pocket protectors. They had heard rumors of people called "girls", but most of them didn't have enough time to go find out if the rumors were true.
These people were nerds. More specifically, they were computer nerds. They would soon become a well-liked group of people. Soon they would be seen as gifted people with skills that many would need but few would possess, but not yet. At the time the only people who liked these nerds were their moms, other Trekkies and /or guys in the chess club.
My brother and I got to go to a computer store with my dad. The store was not full of regular sales people, but with these nerds. These nerds didn't try to sell you anything; they just liked to show off their expensive toys, mostly to fellow Trekkies and /or people who played chess. They were so totally unconcerned with the actual business of selling the computers that they would often let you stay in the store with them after hours and play chess and video games.
Unfortunately, my dad did not buy any of the expensive toys at this computer store. He played chess, watched Star Trek, wore a pocket protector, carried a calculator, and could even boast of having won awards in something called slide-rule competition. These were his people, and this was just the kind of thing that he could get into. But the particular computers in this store were out of his budget. What he was looking for was a bit more basic. Soon after this he ordered something called a VIC-20, and if I remember correctly it cost him about three hundred dollars.
So while I was not one of these computer nerds, I certainly knew people who were. I was around computers before most "people." I even learned how to type.
Almost ten years later, he bought something called a PC. Some sort of IBM clone. It had a word processor called WordPerfect. I was going to be a writer. And I was very happy.
Soon after I had learned to use as much of WordPerfect as I cared about learning, I found out that my plan to graduate from community college with an associate degree (the "transfer degree") was not going happen on schedule, because I was short two classes that were not required at the university I planned to transfer to. One of those classes was Speech 101, and the other was Intro to Computers. So I signed up for both of them, and still tried to keep my part time job and everything else in life pretty much the same as it was. I didn't think that two classes would take up that much time.
And mostly, that was correct. The reading assignments and tests and such for both classes were reasonable. Unfortunately, the speech class required me to talk in front of other people. About half of my grade was based on speeches a few other exercises that required me to stand in front of the whole class. I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all.
So school was going fine, and I was getting an A in both classes, but that was all about to change. I had the first of two major speeches coming up. The speeches were each worth twenty percent of my grade. And I figured that if I did not do well on the first one that the second one would be even worse. So I had to really do well on that first one, or I would screw up about forty percent of my grade.
In the computer class we were told that we would be writing this little program, but not to worry about it too much. It would be something really small and if we were paying attention in class we should not have a problem with it. Later, a bit before we were to do this assignment, the teacher told us about the program and what it was supposed to do. I tried to write down what he said. The program would be about football. It would figure out a players total yards and average yards and what was the most yards the player had in a game and how many touchdowns a player had, etc....
This is already a bad sign. I know nothing about football. I care nothing about football. I don't think that there is time to pretend that I care about football and learn anything useful about it. I'm worried that my lack of knowledge about the game will keep me from being able to write this program. The teacher tries to tell me that this is not the case, and that starting next week most of the class time for the next two weeks will be about how to write this little program, and then the assignment would be due the following Tuesday. But it should all make sense long before then.
After I went home and looked at my notes, I realized that the computer program was due on the same day as I was scheduled to give my first speech. I would have to do the computer assignment, and then five minutes later be prepared to give a speech. I did not want to do that. In fact, I had been planning to leave computer class early so that I might brush my hair and put on lipstick and all of that so I would look nice for my speech. In fact, I'd really thought that the best idea would be to skip computer class that day so that I would feel calm and relaxed before the speech class.
After looking over the notes and the syllabuses for both classes, I figured out that the little computer program was only worth four or five percent of my total grade in computer class. There was no way that skipping the entire section could cost me more than ten percent. Even a perfect grade worth four to ten percent of the total grade of computer class was not worth the risk of ruining the speech and the twenty to forty percent of the total grade in speech class. And I did not expect to get a perfect grade anyway.
I decided to skip the computer program assignment. And since that was all that he was going to talk about for the next two weeks, there was no point in my attending computer class during that time. I would still keep up with the reading assignments, but I would not write the little football program, and I would have extra time to devote to geting ready for my first speech.
I was able to do my work on the speech and get lots of practice in. And at some point the teacher of the speech class asked if anyone who was scheduled to speak on that Tuesday would like to go early and speak the Thursday before. And I was ready, and I got my speech over with Thursday, and then went to work as usual after school on Thursday and on Friday.
After work on Friday, I realized that I had a whole three days to figure out how to write a little computer program about football.
My dad knew a thing or two about computers and understood the general idea of how to write programs in Basic. My new husband also understood the general idea. And both men knew about football.
As for the programing in Basic, there were a lot of commands, some of which were math related. And "go to" was written a lot. And from the notes I had I knew that all the lines of code were to be numbered, but rather than number the lines 1,2,3,4, etc...they should be numbered 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.... That way, if you forgot a line that should have been written between the first and second lines, you could now just add line 15 instead of writing in a second line 2 and then renumbering all the lines after that.
I got about five lines done before I was seriously frustrated with the thing. Then either my husband or my dad came and made suggestions. I'm sure one of them did the major work when I encountered my first problem. I was able to do more of the work myself after that, but there were still problems.
After a while I started to get the hang of it. There was a lot of stuff to "go to" something that I had already written, or places to copy something I had already written and then make minor changes. Three days later, I had a program that did about eighty percent of what I thought it was supposed to do. I never did get the touchdown thing worked out. Touchdowns do not seem related to yards. My dad and my husband didn't have any helpful advice on that one. It seemed like that would have to be a totally different program, and I was out of time.
But I went into class happy. I think my program was two or three pages long, and I had it both on two disks and two hard copies. If you gave me the names of football players and their yards for a number of games, I could print out the all the players' names and statical information such as a player's total yards and the player's average yards and the number of games a player played in and the number of yards on the player's best game and everything that you could possibly want to know about how well the players did in the games, except for the number of touchdowns.
And then we went into the computer lab, and I thought that the teacher would hand out copies of the sports page or something like that with the relevant information. But instead there was something that was either already on the computer or on a disk. And we were told to print out a piece of paper with the information he asked for and we were given a time limit. And everyone printed out a page with the information on it, no problem. Everyone except me.
They didn't write a real program at all. They wrote a merge file. He'd already done the program. They wrote like ten lines or something, and I'd written a whole program. And my program didn't work with his program. The first thing that my program did was count the number of games. There was no place where the games could be counted, so my program printed out total nonsense based on the information from the other program.
I could not think of what to do, and I quickly gave up and left. I calmed down enough to go to speech class and hear the other students give their speeches. Not that I was in a calm enough state to really listen, but it would have been rude not to go to class after the rest of them had to sit through my speech, and maybe there were points off if you missed class when someone else was scheduled to speak.
Later, I realized the solution was to go back to his program and add a bunch of zeros to his information. That gave my program something to count, and it mostly printed out what it was supposed to after that. It was too late to get any credit for all of my work, but I turned it in anyway, just to show that I could do it.
I ended up getting an A in speech class and a B in computer class, because I got good scores on both of my speeches but a zero on that computer assignment that was worth five percent.
The students who took classes from this teacher after Intro to Computers all bought T-shirts saying which classes they survived. I have no such T-shirt. And I have no desire to ever get one.
Aside from the "people" who did not have computers and did not care about computers and never suspected that they would ever get a computer, there were the select few that did care about computers and had even been allowed to use a computer and even planned to someday buy a computer. Some of these select people had computers forced on them by their employers, but then later they decided that computers were good things. But most of these select people were people who just always liked computers. They were Trekkies and/or guys in the chess club. The wore glasses and/or pocket protectors. They had heard rumors of people called "girls", but most of them didn't have enough time to go find out if the rumors were true.
These people were nerds. More specifically, they were computer nerds. They would soon become a well-liked group of people. Soon they would be seen as gifted people with skills that many would need but few would possess, but not yet. At the time the only people who liked these nerds were their moms, other Trekkies and /or guys in the chess club.
My brother and I got to go to a computer store with my dad. The store was not full of regular sales people, but with these nerds. These nerds didn't try to sell you anything; they just liked to show off their expensive toys, mostly to fellow Trekkies and /or people who played chess. They were so totally unconcerned with the actual business of selling the computers that they would often let you stay in the store with them after hours and play chess and video games.
Unfortunately, my dad did not buy any of the expensive toys at this computer store. He played chess, watched Star Trek, wore a pocket protector, carried a calculator, and could even boast of having won awards in something called slide-rule competition. These were his people, and this was just the kind of thing that he could get into. But the particular computers in this store were out of his budget. What he was looking for was a bit more basic. Soon after this he ordered something called a VIC-20, and if I remember correctly it cost him about three hundred dollars.
So while I was not one of these computer nerds, I certainly knew people who were. I was around computers before most "people." I even learned how to type.
Almost ten years later, he bought something called a PC. Some sort of IBM clone. It had a word processor called WordPerfect. I was going to be a writer. And I was very happy.
Soon after I had learned to use as much of WordPerfect as I cared about learning, I found out that my plan to graduate from community college with an associate degree (the "transfer degree") was not going happen on schedule, because I was short two classes that were not required at the university I planned to transfer to. One of those classes was Speech 101, and the other was Intro to Computers. So I signed up for both of them, and still tried to keep my part time job and everything else in life pretty much the same as it was. I didn't think that two classes would take up that much time.
And mostly, that was correct. The reading assignments and tests and such for both classes were reasonable. Unfortunately, the speech class required me to talk in front of other people. About half of my grade was based on speeches a few other exercises that required me to stand in front of the whole class. I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all.
So school was going fine, and I was getting an A in both classes, but that was all about to change. I had the first of two major speeches coming up. The speeches were each worth twenty percent of my grade. And I figured that if I did not do well on the first one that the second one would be even worse. So I had to really do well on that first one, or I would screw up about forty percent of my grade.
In the computer class we were told that we would be writing this little program, but not to worry about it too much. It would be something really small and if we were paying attention in class we should not have a problem with it. Later, a bit before we were to do this assignment, the teacher told us about the program and what it was supposed to do. I tried to write down what he said. The program would be about football. It would figure out a players total yards and average yards and what was the most yards the player had in a game and how many touchdowns a player had, etc....
This is already a bad sign. I know nothing about football. I care nothing about football. I don't think that there is time to pretend that I care about football and learn anything useful about it. I'm worried that my lack of knowledge about the game will keep me from being able to write this program. The teacher tries to tell me that this is not the case, and that starting next week most of the class time for the next two weeks will be about how to write this little program, and then the assignment would be due the following Tuesday. But it should all make sense long before then.
After I went home and looked at my notes, I realized that the computer program was due on the same day as I was scheduled to give my first speech. I would have to do the computer assignment, and then five minutes later be prepared to give a speech. I did not want to do that. In fact, I had been planning to leave computer class early so that I might brush my hair and put on lipstick and all of that so I would look nice for my speech. In fact, I'd really thought that the best idea would be to skip computer class that day so that I would feel calm and relaxed before the speech class.
After looking over the notes and the syllabuses for both classes, I figured out that the little computer program was only worth four or five percent of my total grade in computer class. There was no way that skipping the entire section could cost me more than ten percent. Even a perfect grade worth four to ten percent of the total grade of computer class was not worth the risk of ruining the speech and the twenty to forty percent of the total grade in speech class. And I did not expect to get a perfect grade anyway.
I decided to skip the computer program assignment. And since that was all that he was going to talk about for the next two weeks, there was no point in my attending computer class during that time. I would still keep up with the reading assignments, but I would not write the little football program, and I would have extra time to devote to geting ready for my first speech.
I was able to do my work on the speech and get lots of practice in. And at some point the teacher of the speech class asked if anyone who was scheduled to speak on that Tuesday would like to go early and speak the Thursday before. And I was ready, and I got my speech over with Thursday, and then went to work as usual after school on Thursday and on Friday.
After work on Friday, I realized that I had a whole three days to figure out how to write a little computer program about football.
My dad knew a thing or two about computers and understood the general idea of how to write programs in Basic. My new husband also understood the general idea. And both men knew about football.
As for the programing in Basic, there were a lot of commands, some of which were math related. And "go to" was written a lot. And from the notes I had I knew that all the lines of code were to be numbered, but rather than number the lines 1,2,3,4, etc...they should be numbered 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.... That way, if you forgot a line that should have been written between the first and second lines, you could now just add line 15 instead of writing in a second line 2 and then renumbering all the lines after that.
I got about five lines done before I was seriously frustrated with the thing. Then either my husband or my dad came and made suggestions. I'm sure one of them did the major work when I encountered my first problem. I was able to do more of the work myself after that, but there were still problems.
After a while I started to get the hang of it. There was a lot of stuff to "go to" something that I had already written, or places to copy something I had already written and then make minor changes. Three days later, I had a program that did about eighty percent of what I thought it was supposed to do. I never did get the touchdown thing worked out. Touchdowns do not seem related to yards. My dad and my husband didn't have any helpful advice on that one. It seemed like that would have to be a totally different program, and I was out of time.
But I went into class happy. I think my program was two or three pages long, and I had it both on two disks and two hard copies. If you gave me the names of football players and their yards for a number of games, I could print out the all the players' names and statical information such as a player's total yards and the player's average yards and the number of games a player played in and the number of yards on the player's best game and everything that you could possibly want to know about how well the players did in the games, except for the number of touchdowns.
And then we went into the computer lab, and I thought that the teacher would hand out copies of the sports page or something like that with the relevant information. But instead there was something that was either already on the computer or on a disk. And we were told to print out a piece of paper with the information he asked for and we were given a time limit. And everyone printed out a page with the information on it, no problem. Everyone except me.
They didn't write a real program at all. They wrote a merge file. He'd already done the program. They wrote like ten lines or something, and I'd written a whole program. And my program didn't work with his program. The first thing that my program did was count the number of games. There was no place where the games could be counted, so my program printed out total nonsense based on the information from the other program.
I could not think of what to do, and I quickly gave up and left. I calmed down enough to go to speech class and hear the other students give their speeches. Not that I was in a calm enough state to really listen, but it would have been rude not to go to class after the rest of them had to sit through my speech, and maybe there were points off if you missed class when someone else was scheduled to speak.
Later, I realized the solution was to go back to his program and add a bunch of zeros to his information. That gave my program something to count, and it mostly printed out what it was supposed to after that. It was too late to get any credit for all of my work, but I turned it in anyway, just to show that I could do it.
I ended up getting an A in speech class and a B in computer class, because I got good scores on both of my speeches but a zero on that computer assignment that was worth five percent.
The students who took classes from this teacher after Intro to Computers all bought T-shirts saying which classes they survived. I have no such T-shirt. And I have no desire to ever get one.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Sorry I haven't been around much lately
Let's see. I was busy with school stuff until about Thursday afternoon. Then, after a bit of a rest, I was busy with club stuff until Monday. Friday we went to see I Am Legend, and Monday we went to see The Golden Compass. I haven't been able to blog about either, because my husband has two weeks off and spends all of his time on the computer. I have started several posts about other things, but I never get to finish them.
The club charity thing went okay. I'll have to post about that later too.
Despite making a serious effort to clean and straighten things up around here, a day and a half later, the Halloween stuff is still out in the hallway.
However, the mini outlet center of Bath & Body Works is a bit more organized. Or, at least, there are no more bags of the stuff in the bedroom. Three items went into the official club gift exchange, two items so far went into the unofficial gift exchange, and several more items have been wrapped or bagged to be given out later. That leaves one item that still needs to be wrapped, about ten items that need to be moved to a better looking bag, and a number of leftover items that have been moved to the back room. We might have a clearance sale on eBay after Christmas.
Do to a lot of misunderstandings and supply problems at school, the teacher decided to just drop everyone's lowest grade. Therefore, I ended up getting an A instead of the earlier agreed on B, despite the fact that I missed an entire project while I went out of town for two weeks. Also, my second glass project has probably been fired by now, though I don't expect to see it until sometime in January. I've decided to not even ask about it. I have other things that I should be doing.
The family dinner thing was supposed to be earlier this month, but I told my mom that the best day for me was the 8th. By the time everyone else checked to see if the 8th was good for them, my husband had to go out of town that week and would have been driving back home late on the 8th. So the 8th was dropped. Most of the other weekend dates meant that I would have to drop some club thing. The 9th might have worked, but I guess that didn't work for someone else. So the next date was the 16th, which meant I'd have to cancel something important, but not as important as the 15th or the 31st, so okay. After thinking about it some, mom decided that it did not absolutely have to be on a weekend, as long as my husband and my brother-in-law were not going out of town then, and they weren't, so the 17th was scheduled. My sister got sick on the 17th. Mom suggested maybe waiting til after Christmas, and I suggested the 27th. The dinner has been rescheduled again and is now partially replacing the Christmas Eve plans. That works for me, as long as my sister hasn't already ordered the other food for that evening.
So far as I know, the 23rd is still planned with the only one of my in-laws that my husband still speaks to, and there are no real plans for the 25th itself.
I should blog about all that other stuff later. But that mostly gets me caught up. This last week before Christmas, when I don't have any shopping to do and I should be just wrapping gifts and enjoying the lights and such, I am instead planning to clean house. But I have planned to clean house before, and it rarely gets done.
The club charity thing went okay. I'll have to post about that later too.
Despite making a serious effort to clean and straighten things up around here, a day and a half later, the Halloween stuff is still out in the hallway.
However, the mini outlet center of Bath & Body Works is a bit more organized. Or, at least, there are no more bags of the stuff in the bedroom. Three items went into the official club gift exchange, two items so far went into the unofficial gift exchange, and several more items have been wrapped or bagged to be given out later. That leaves one item that still needs to be wrapped, about ten items that need to be moved to a better looking bag, and a number of leftover items that have been moved to the back room. We might have a clearance sale on eBay after Christmas.
Do to a lot of misunderstandings and supply problems at school, the teacher decided to just drop everyone's lowest grade. Therefore, I ended up getting an A instead of the earlier agreed on B, despite the fact that I missed an entire project while I went out of town for two weeks. Also, my second glass project has probably been fired by now, though I don't expect to see it until sometime in January. I've decided to not even ask about it. I have other things that I should be doing.
The family dinner thing was supposed to be earlier this month, but I told my mom that the best day for me was the 8th. By the time everyone else checked to see if the 8th was good for them, my husband had to go out of town that week and would have been driving back home late on the 8th. So the 8th was dropped. Most of the other weekend dates meant that I would have to drop some club thing. The 9th might have worked, but I guess that didn't work for someone else. So the next date was the 16th, which meant I'd have to cancel something important, but not as important as the 15th or the 31st, so okay. After thinking about it some, mom decided that it did not absolutely have to be on a weekend, as long as my husband and my brother-in-law were not going out of town then, and they weren't, so the 17th was scheduled. My sister got sick on the 17th. Mom suggested maybe waiting til after Christmas, and I suggested the 27th. The dinner has been rescheduled again and is now partially replacing the Christmas Eve plans. That works for me, as long as my sister hasn't already ordered the other food for that evening.
So far as I know, the 23rd is still planned with the only one of my in-laws that my husband still speaks to, and there are no real plans for the 25th itself.
I should blog about all that other stuff later. But that mostly gets me caught up. This last week before Christmas, when I don't have any shopping to do and I should be just wrapping gifts and enjoying the lights and such, I am instead planning to clean house. But I have planned to clean house before, and it rarely gets done.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Last official week of art class
Nothing seems to be done. Well, that's not exactly true. The paper things are done, they just need to be framed later for display. The relief of Anubis is done. And the wire dragon is done. But I didn't really care too much for them.
Technically, the first glass sculpture is done, but it's full of holes. I have made a mold for the second one, but I have to wait for everyone else to finish their glass projects to see if there will be enough glass left for me to try again.
There is more drama with the rubber molds. I mentioned something to the professor about using paint-on thick rubber instead of pouring rubber. I was just talking about later, next semester maybe. But he thought it was such a good idea that he ordered some additive and told me to use that on my second mold. And he's making everyone else that hasn't already poured rubber to use this method too. I wanted to try it, just not now, and not on this particular piece. I'm not sure it's going to work with this piece. It's very high relief in places, and it is taking many many coats of "paint." I didn't think it was ever going to get done.
Tomorrow I'll finish that mold and hopefully I can test it Thursday. The first mold isn't working so good. I did the first piece, and the first piece is really just supposed to be a test, and it also helps clean out the mold and such. I'm afraid that the first piece may end up being the best one. I wasn't planning on doing anything with it, but now I'm painting it white to cover up all the smudges of leftover clay. Little pieces of the mold come off every time I use it. And every time I cast plaster in it there are bubbles and/or little pieces of plaster that get stuck in the mold and break off. After my third attempt I decided to give it a rest.
We were also supposed to used this same mold with cement and maybe a resin. But I guess that isn't going to happen either.
My pumpkin is now in the kiln. With luck I can take it home on Thursday and get it painted over the weekend. And with a little more luck I'll get the three extra tiles out and glazed in time to get fired again.
Really, to earn the B I have already agreed to, there isn't much that I have to do. I have to paint that pumpkin, which shouldn't be a problem. I have to finish painting that dragon test piece, which is mostly done except that I would like to find a way to repair a couple of the little pieces that broke off. And I have to finish that artichoke plant, which I am working on at home and should finish today.
But I had thought that I'd get more done. The teacher is offering other students extra credit for making more pieces with their rubber molds and paper molds. Why can't I get extra credit for something? I'd gladly do some extra work. I have been doing extra work all along. Just now the dragon mold is being difficult.
I had meant to use the dragon molds to make a couple of Christmas presents. I may end up just taking a picture of a dragon and wrapping it with a note saying, "I'll make you one of these later."
For some reason I was thinking that next week was the last week of regular classes. Finals week doesn't really count. Your not still supposed to be working on stuff during finals week. But I guess that I will be.
Technically, the first glass sculpture is done, but it's full of holes. I have made a mold for the second one, but I have to wait for everyone else to finish their glass projects to see if there will be enough glass left for me to try again.
There is more drama with the rubber molds. I mentioned something to the professor about using paint-on thick rubber instead of pouring rubber. I was just talking about later, next semester maybe. But he thought it was such a good idea that he ordered some additive and told me to use that on my second mold. And he's making everyone else that hasn't already poured rubber to use this method too. I wanted to try it, just not now, and not on this particular piece. I'm not sure it's going to work with this piece. It's very high relief in places, and it is taking many many coats of "paint." I didn't think it was ever going to get done.
Tomorrow I'll finish that mold and hopefully I can test it Thursday. The first mold isn't working so good. I did the first piece, and the first piece is really just supposed to be a test, and it also helps clean out the mold and such. I'm afraid that the first piece may end up being the best one. I wasn't planning on doing anything with it, but now I'm painting it white to cover up all the smudges of leftover clay. Little pieces of the mold come off every time I use it. And every time I cast plaster in it there are bubbles and/or little pieces of plaster that get stuck in the mold and break off. After my third attempt I decided to give it a rest.
We were also supposed to used this same mold with cement and maybe a resin. But I guess that isn't going to happen either.
My pumpkin is now in the kiln. With luck I can take it home on Thursday and get it painted over the weekend. And with a little more luck I'll get the three extra tiles out and glazed in time to get fired again.
Really, to earn the B I have already agreed to, there isn't much that I have to do. I have to paint that pumpkin, which shouldn't be a problem. I have to finish painting that dragon test piece, which is mostly done except that I would like to find a way to repair a couple of the little pieces that broke off. And I have to finish that artichoke plant, which I am working on at home and should finish today.
But I had thought that I'd get more done. The teacher is offering other students extra credit for making more pieces with their rubber molds and paper molds. Why can't I get extra credit for something? I'd gladly do some extra work. I have been doing extra work all along. Just now the dragon mold is being difficult.
I had meant to use the dragon molds to make a couple of Christmas presents. I may end up just taking a picture of a dragon and wrapping it with a note saying, "I'll make you one of these later."
For some reason I was thinking that next week was the last week of regular classes. Finals week doesn't really count. Your not still supposed to be working on stuff during finals week. But I guess that I will be.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday Morons--Class Registeration
I took a ceramic class during the last spring semester, and it kept me from going completely bonkers. So I plan to take another art class in the fall. I'll probably take sculpture instead. My ceramic teacher keeps trying to teach a sculpture class, but it keeps getting cancelled due to lack of interest. I think that they have to have ten students signed up or the class gets dropped. So the teacher kept trying to get us all interested in taking sculpture in the fall.
Okay. So I go online and sign up for a sculpture class. And I'm not sure that I've even signed up for the right thing, because the teacher's name isn't there. It just says faculty. Maybe he's teaching half of the class and someone else is teaching half the class. Anyway, I didn't see anything else like that listed, so I signed up and hoped I had the right class.
I believe I signed up on July 20th.
When I got home from Shreveport, I found something in the mail that said I had been dropped from the class. And at first I thought that the class itself had been canceled again, which wasn't totally unexpected. But I just thought it was way too early for something like that to happen.
After reading the rest of the letter, it turns out that I had been dropped due to lack of payment.
So that was odd. It had only been a week.
Anyway, different schools have different payment deadlines, and I so had UTA's stuck in my head I wasn't really paying too much attention. But I'd never heard of anyone giving you less time than a week during regular registration. During late registration you have to pay that same day, because you have to be paid up in full before class starts. But the during regular registration you usually have a long time to pay. At UTA I would sign up for something in April that they didn't expect payment for until August, but paid half as soon as I could just to be on the safe side. At UTA they couldn't drop you until the first day of class if you'd paid at least half.
So I go back online and sign up for the class again. And then I look at the payment instructions and find out that registration has been divided up into these two week blocks, and that if you sign up during a certain two week period you have to pay by the end of the two week period. Not the next two week period, but the same two week period. So if you sign up on the first Monday of the two week period you have almost two weeks to pay, and if you sign up during the first Friday of the two week period you still have a week to pay, but if you sign up during the second Friday of the two week period you have to pay that day.
So I had signed up on the 20th and was dropped for non-payment on the 23rd.
Okay. So to make sure that this didn't happen again we headed over to the school, and the doors were looked.
I knew that they didn't have classes on Fridays, cause most colleges I am familiar with do not have summer classes on Fridays. But I thought that most of the business offices had the same M-F 9-5 or so schedule that they always had. There was one school I went to that didn't have Friday classes during the fall or spring semesters either, but they were still open on Friday and were happy to take your money then.
Okay, so you are allowed to register for a class on a Friday even though you have to pay for the class that same day, but you can't go to the campus that day to pay because there's no one in the office.
Whatever.
I'm going to have another go at it either this morning or tomorrow. And my instructor hasn't answered my email yet, so I still don't even know if I signed up for the right class.
Okay. So I go online and sign up for a sculpture class. And I'm not sure that I've even signed up for the right thing, because the teacher's name isn't there. It just says faculty. Maybe he's teaching half of the class and someone else is teaching half the class. Anyway, I didn't see anything else like that listed, so I signed up and hoped I had the right class.
I believe I signed up on July 20th.
When I got home from Shreveport, I found something in the mail that said I had been dropped from the class. And at first I thought that the class itself had been canceled again, which wasn't totally unexpected. But I just thought it was way too early for something like that to happen.
After reading the rest of the letter, it turns out that I had been dropped due to lack of payment.
So that was odd. It had only been a week.
Anyway, different schools have different payment deadlines, and I so had UTA's stuck in my head I wasn't really paying too much attention. But I'd never heard of anyone giving you less time than a week during regular registration. During late registration you have to pay that same day, because you have to be paid up in full before class starts. But the during regular registration you usually have a long time to pay. At UTA I would sign up for something in April that they didn't expect payment for until August, but paid half as soon as I could just to be on the safe side. At UTA they couldn't drop you until the first day of class if you'd paid at least half.
So I go back online and sign up for the class again. And then I look at the payment instructions and find out that registration has been divided up into these two week blocks, and that if you sign up during a certain two week period you have to pay by the end of the two week period. Not the next two week period, but the same two week period. So if you sign up on the first Monday of the two week period you have almost two weeks to pay, and if you sign up during the first Friday of the two week period you still have a week to pay, but if you sign up during the second Friday of the two week period you have to pay that day.
So I had signed up on the 20th and was dropped for non-payment on the 23rd.
Okay. So to make sure that this didn't happen again we headed over to the school, and the doors were looked.
I knew that they didn't have classes on Fridays, cause most colleges I am familiar with do not have summer classes on Fridays. But I thought that most of the business offices had the same M-F 9-5 or so schedule that they always had. There was one school I went to that didn't have Friday classes during the fall or spring semesters either, but they were still open on Friday and were happy to take your money then.
Okay, so you are allowed to register for a class on a Friday even though you have to pay for the class that same day, but you can't go to the campus that day to pay because there's no one in the office.
Whatever.
I'm going to have another go at it either this morning or tomorrow. And my instructor hasn't answered my email yet, so I still don't even know if I signed up for the right class.
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