08 June 2009

Getting my ass kicked

I have to tell you that i am officially getting my ass kicked. As many know i have been taking online classes in pursuit of my degree. I am in my third semester. I was taking ten hours per semester for the first two and managed to maintain a 4.0. This semester i dropped to one class because it is math.

High school in Southwest Louisiana teaches math1,2 and 3. I never took algebra or any advanced math classes. I am paying for that now. They are talking about shit i have never heard of and to top it off, i have no idea how it would apply to the real world.

So as i have been struggling with this class it got me to thinking about online college versus regular classes. True that online you may be able to cheat and no one would know, but it is a lot harder online than i would have ever thought.

Instead of asking the professor to explain it, i have to look it up and teach myself. For someone with basic math skills to learn this stuff in one semester is quite difficult. I am spending a lot of time doing recreational mathematics to stay ahead of the curve. It sucks.

I did call my instructor to help me out when i got really bogged down but that didn't do too much for me. Maybe if i had left my smart ass mouth out of the conversation, it would have gone better.

Professor got frustrated with me when i couldn't grasp the distributive properties of math. He then let me know that i had about a 4th grade math level and would struggle in this class. It was at this point i should have shut up, but i couldn't.

I simply replied " No shit Sherlock, not only do you have a better understanding of this crap than me but you also have a uncanny way of stating the obvious. So Mr. Obvious, what are we gonna do to get me through this mess?

Come to find out this is my problem and not his. Well Duh!!

We, as the professor said, reached a point of diminishing returns. Funny how when your temper is flared, you tend to cease learning. So we tried again another day.

In the end the professor has gotten me through it. We have actually kind of become friends and he helps me out a lot. He realized that my math skills are basic and so he slows it down for me to catch up. He likes the fact that i am self aware and call it like i see it. I like the fact that he is will ing to answer the phone whenever i call.

At one time i would have dismissed an online degree and ranked it with the GED. Now after having to learn this basically on my own, i realize that an online degree can in some situations be harder to obtain than an actual brick and mortar style education.

Peace out and have a good day.

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