Two Out of Four is a Start

So, yeah, online learning has come a long way since the last time I did this whole thing. Which was years ago. Not a whole buncha years ago but more than two. LOL

Everything is online. Financial aid balances, you use your student ID as a swipey card that can buy stuff from the bookstore (including folders and wickedly overpriced spiral-bound wide-ruled notebooks) and come to find out the bookstore is actually a Barnes & Noble. It’s one of the reasons I cannot figure out why B&N is in trouble financially. They’re in so many big colleges and universities that they have to be making a killing on all that horribly overpriced stuff that is, for the most part, being bought by kids with an ID card and no sense of financial responsibility.

But that’s neither here nor there. I’m just thrilled that it was so easy to get my books and have them swipe my card and then when I had to exchange the book for the right book it was just as easy. Totally painless.

Plus I can see my financial aid balance online through the school as well. It’s not “real time” updated, but whatever, gift-horse, mouth, etc.

But, this being the first week of school it seems my classes just aren’t popping up on the blackboard backend as quickly as I thought they would. I didn’t even realize my non-online courses would use blackboard, but the communications class professor walked us through her syllabus online and then told us it was available on blackboard. Since I’d spent a large part of the day ON blackboard getting the hang of the system and checking out my theology class, I was worried it wouldn’t show up for me.

So I whipped out my iPhone and checked. I tried to check on the laptop but couldn’t connect to the internet through my laptop. You read the part where my iPhone connected to the internet through the school, right? So it seems if I want to use my laptop in a class (which I probably won’t, because, well, no one else used them and who wants to be THAT girl in class) I have to figure out why it won’t connect to the internet. Or, to be more specific, why it will connect with limited access and no internet access.

Basically why did I have to read my syllabus on a friggin’ iPhone. It was clearer than the projector but a damn sight less fun than if I’d had it on my laptop, which I’d charged just to make sure it was available for use. Whatever.

So now two of my classes are online and I can access a whole BUNCH of information about them online.

The other two? Still floating in the ether somewhere. They may or may not show up, but I think they will.

In the meantime, I’m just doing my best to get through what I’m getting through and taking notes along the way.

These are NOT the blow-off classes I thought they’d be. Not by a long shot.

Which is nice, because I like thinking and doing things and writing and all the assignments and quizzes and tests will be interesting. A huge change from my last school that didn’t “do” tests and quizzes. Just 3 page paper after 3 page paper. It was absolutely painful. I missed school as school. I think I actually missed the structure.

Hell, I think I missed any kind of structure. I have the most unstructured life you could imagine. I cannot wait for school to start Thursday. I’ll start living my life around school bus times, and that’s just fine with me.