Yesterday, I went to call the one online school that was offering a class that I need. Yeah, right. Somehow, this school has been in business for quite some time, yet have the most user-unfriendly way of doing things I have ever seen. It took me clicking around their website for 10 minutes just to find a phone number to call. There was no online application process. I finally call the only number I found, and ran around in circles on the automated menu for 20 minutes, without ever getting to a real person, or any department that had anything to do with anything I needed to do. I couldn't even find out how much it was going to cost, because apparently the classes cost different amounts for everybody (WTF), and when I clicked to get a cost estimate, the link was broken. Needless to say, I will not be taking ANY classes from that school.
Instead, I emailed admissions at Georgia Southern, explained the situation, and asked them what my best course of action would be. I'm hoping to hear back today. If I don't, I'll email someone else within admissions the same thing, and just keep doing that until someone answers.
Basically, here's what I'm afraid of. My credits will be several years old by the time I am able to get back on campus, and although they are from a school with a reciprocity agreement with Georgia Southern, especially with respect to the engineering programs, I'm afraid that they won't accept them if they're over a certain number of years old. That would be bad. I spent a lot of time and effort in earning those credits, and I don't want them to go to waste. The thought of taking all those classes over again kind of freaked me out a little bit. I did find out that they do an entrance exam for people who have been out of school a super long time (not sure if my situation falls under that or not) to see where they are skills-wise, so basically, worst case scenario, I'll have to take that exam, and get placed. Lucky for me, I'm a huge textbook hoarder, and I have enough time to independently study the things I will need to really ace on the exam, mostly Calculus, Chemistry, and Physics. Luckily, that's stuff I enjoy, and am pretty good at, so with luck, if I do have to take the entrance exam, any courses I have to retake, will just be engineering classes, which won't be too deathly boring to retake.
It also sort of freaked me out that I'll be 31 years old when I go back, 32 when I finish. Have you ever taken night classes at a community college before? I think most of us have done that at one point or another. If you have, then you have seen the people who are in their 30's and 40's, basically on an academic treadmill, because they're pretty sure that if they go to college, and get their degree, they'll have a better job, but they've been kicking around the community college for years, not getting anywhere. That is the thought that popped into my mind when it occurred to me how old I'd be when I actually get done. Holy crap. I do not want to be those people.
Of course, later, I thought of this one Desert Storm vet I knew who was going through school at the same time as I was, and she wasn't like those people at all. Sure, she was older than the rest of us (come to think of it, she had to be in her early 30's at the time), but we all still thought she was cool. She also took a normal amount of time to finish classes, graduated, and moved on with her life. It didn't seem pathetic, or even abnormal. As long as I resemble that more than the 40-year-olds sitting outside and talking about how this is definitely their year to finally pass College Algebra, then I can be ok with that.
As I was going to sleep last night, sort of freaking out about all of this still, I was reminded of something that made me smile. My favorite professor's favorite quote, which he put on everything of his, was, "Not all those who wander are lost." (That's a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien.) It occurred to me that maybe I'm really not lost, as it may seem.
Today, I do calculus.
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