Current Ramblings
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
School Stuff
I suppose, three and a half weeks in, I should probably make a post about my third quarter of school...
So far I'm feeling ambivalent about English 102. As I mentioned earlier, the teacher is not nearly engaging enough for an 8AM class. Tuesday was spent talking about MLA documentation. The whole hour, MLA documentation. But anybody who's read this knows I'm certainly capable enough with words, and I was reassured to find that the class expects you to know how to write a proper sentence already, so I don't have flashbacks to CIT 101 and the instructor feeling a need to review how to make a folder. So far the workload has been really light, which I both like and find unnerving. I mean, it's great not having much to do, and being able to do it pretty fast, but it seems like I should be working harder. I'm still thinking in terms of the 4-hours-of-homework-a-week algebra classes I had the last two quarters. Our project this quarter is to write two argumentative research papers, the second of which can build off the other. The first is arguing a point, and the second is arguing policy relating, if you wish, to that same point. So you can just take the 5 pages of your first paper, rewrite it a bit to be about policy, pad it enough for an extra page, and bam, second paper. You could write the second paper about something else, but that would be dumb. The rough draft of the first one is due next Tuesday, so today I went to the school library and found some sources. I have chosen video games for my subject, specifically arguing that there is a massive adult market for them that our culture largely tends to ignore and therefore there's nothing unacceptable about companies making mature games, and parents and legislators both need to stop thinking of video games as being unilaterally geared toward children. It took me all of about an hour to find enough sources, including not just the one required "scholarly journal" source but a second as well. Then I sat around Cup O' Joe for about 20 minutes with a tasty iced coffee thing and highlighted parts that I thought would make good quotes, and I was done with what I hoped to accomplish today. Tomorrow I write the actual paper, and, as verbose as I tend to be, filling up 5 double-spaced pages should take me maybe two hours tops. At which point maybe I'll play Riviera (Rated T for Teens!) some more.
CIT 121 - PC Operating Systems - has been pretty fun so far, though I feel like I should really get a copy of Windows 98 to play with as we go. It's much, MUCH easier to learn computer things when I can actually mess with them firsthand. The first half of the quarter involves a lot of DOS, which I always enjoy fiddling with. It makes me feel 1337. The lab projects there haven't been a real strain either, though I know I'm going to have to study my ass off for the midterm week after next. And I actually used my textbook to help with my own computer problems last week! The partitioning software that came with my new hard drive didn't like the LILO boot program Linux had put on there, and that installation of Linux never worked right anyway, so I looked up how to go into the Recovery Console in XP and use the fixmbr command. Whee! The instructor - my first female instructor in a CIT class, and I like her a lot - is somewhat certain there'll be a new edition of the textbook next year, and I think this is one time where I won't mind too much if they won't buy it back. It covers the software side of A+ certification, so I'll probably want it for that anyway. Yay certification!
I checked with the degree audit program on Columbus State's web site last night and it looks like, at my current rate of taking classes, I have 12 more quarters - three more years - ahead of me. Not too bad, I'll get through this with some certifications under my belt in just slightly less time than it would take for a CS degree at a four-year school with a full courseload, and this'll be specialized for a particular career path. Two and a half quarters in, and I'm still feeling upbeat about all this. :)
posted@3:25 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments