Rest of the week

Eh. I'm bored. Let's get through the rest of the week, shall we?

Friday: Work until noon. No school! Time for a haircut. I got all of them cut this time.

... That about sums up Friday. I suppose I could mention that various cousins were in town, which is rare to happen at once. My mother has 3 brothers and 2 sisters, and at one point all of them lived in Tallahassee with their sons and daughters. Quite a large brood related to me in Tallahassee at that time, and even now. Grandfather isn't doing so well; at this point any day could be his last day, so there's lots of visiting going on.

The Family gathered at someone's house, and various good visiting occurred. We thoroughly enjoy the idea that if we wanted to started our own organized crime syndicate, it wouldn't be that hard as we've infiltrated so many venues of the world already. It would probably be a good idea to start getting on our good side and donating money as a down-payment for your protection. I'll put in a good word for you to Da Boss.

Saturday was busy. Nice. An ISSA BBQ at MP (Myer's Park. I wanted to thrown in another acronym). Lots of people showed up, including some instructors and various peoples' children. Luckily, no one saw me push any of them over. Suckers. A family-modified kickball game took place. Unfortunate Highlight: My water rockets were placed on dirt, so when they launched mud splashed up on shoes of Laura and I. The "highlight" part was that the water bounced of the ground and onto an instructor. His entire front was covered in remarkably nicely dispersed mud globules.

Movie that night: "Hitch."

Sunday: Visits with Laura's dad, helping my Mom move (in jeans and while raining...ugh), the homework. Yay stuff?

Next posting: Random school things, and maybe an original idea or two.

Thurday, Aug 27th, etc., etc.

Thursday: I will, over time, but cutting down severely on the blow-by-blow accounts of my courses, limiting my digital written reserves to somewhat interesting, humorous, or just plain different for whatever reason.

So..Thursday class. Megan's the assistant to the professor, so she went over the syllabus with the class. All 5 of us. I think there's 7 total. I am still not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Another big project in this course, and there was in the 3 classes I had Mon-Wed of this week. Luckily Megan missed lunch, so everything ran quick, which, of course, lead to Momo's after class. Most of life would be better if you could say it ended with, "So, of course, we then went to Momo's." Great. Now I'm hungry again. I hope you're happy, as I've sacrificed my non-hungry state for a hungry state so I could bring to you the fore-mentioned sentences.

Thursdays at 7 are now officially ISSA Bowling Nights at Crenshaw Lanes. I know that some of you (or maybe just "you" if you're the only reader, a distinct possibility) are not what we would called a "fan" of bowling. Indeed, you may have just skipped this paragraph after reading the first sentence, and are now trying to convince yourself that maybe I'm not as interesting or whatever as you previously thought. Trust me: I'm WAY MORE AWESOME THAN YOU REALIZE. This is evidenced by the fact that I wrote the previous state with the purpose of complimenting myself, in all caps, and using the phrase "way more awesome."

Where was I again? Yes, bowling. Thank you for the reminder, though you wanted to forget. We (the great leaders of the ISSA) realized that a weekly meeting of some sort would be an excellent way for IS students to have a standing-date so that whenever they got around to wanting to check things out, we would be ready. The games are cheap there (incredibly cheap compared to the others in town), but more importantly there's the opportunity to purchase adult beverages, play inexpensive games of billiards, and have tables ready for various board games for those that take enjoyment with such (as I do). Come on down. The invitation is open. I (probably) will prattle on less in person.

That's all for now... (I guess I could have left this paragraph out, but I felt it all needed some closing statements.)

Wed, Aug 26

Wednesday: Work is starting to fall into place. We'll see how my random skills and knack for shaking things up fits into this quiet and proper workplace. I'm thinking of instituting my own personal Hawaiian Shirt Friday, Hot Pants Wednesday, and Masquerade Mondays.

You know what's amazing? I was completely kidding about the dress days, but.... Masquerade Mondays? AWESOME IDEA.

School continues. Another class, many familiar faces, another nationally-known instructor who will probably be in history books. Awesome university to go to for this program, and it's one of the top 3 or so in the country. It's interesting learning about a theory that's integral to the field as a whole, and then your next class is with the guy who invented that theory. It's like having a psychology professor say, "Well, before he died Freud and I worked at FSU together. He was a crazy guy; he liked his tea without sugar."

ISSA meeting today. My program (in case you're slow, forgetful, or just a random visiting stranger) is Instructional Systems. I am also a newly appointed treasurer for the Instructional Systems Student Association. I figured that if I'm going to do this school thing full-time, being part of clubs and stuff is a great way to meet people and network.

Although I'm pretty great with numbers (yep, pretty great, indeed), I have yet to see any financial information or files. No complaints from me. I just enjoy being on the board, since I can use my overpowering intellect and undying enthusiasm to bring about vast changes to the political and educational environment that makes up the instructional systems department. (Please be aware of some slight exaggeration in the previous statement). Either way, we're planning an ISSA BBQ for this Saturday at Myer's Park. Previous ISSA incarnations were not terribly active, but one resolution I've made for myself is, if I'm going to be involved in something, it's not going to suck. We'll see how that little venture turns out.

Tuesday, Aug 2

Tuesday: Work? Same, thanks goodness. However, upon returning from class I was told that one of the other graduate students that is also working with my project wouldn't be back for a bit, which was inconvenient because she was the one that was supposed to be showing me various things around the office. The reason for her delayed arrival was that her parents were in a pretty bad car accident in Washington state. She had to fly up there immediately the previous weekend.

Even though she has 5 siblings, they can only take a small amount of time to visit before having to return to their regular lives. My coworker, therefore, is going solo in the responsibility of being the family representative. She's been given power of attorney, sits with her parents during the day, and even takes part in feeding them. A pretty rough requirement for anyone. Here's hoping things improve soon.

While waiting for my 2nd bus (stadium to classroom route), a different route bus arrived. After a quick glance I noticed this bus, too, passed by my building so I hopped aboard. Despair set in when the bus continued its travels further and further away from my building. It was then I realized the route direction for this bus was counter-clockwise around campus, while I had thought it as clock-wise. The result of this was that instead of my stop being the, say, 4th stop, it was the 4th stop from the very end of the loop.

A lovely addition was traffic, since the bus passed in front of Ruby Diamond Auditorium, and the 4-way stops around there are ideal breeding grounds for traffic snarls, yielding a beastly delay and animal-like driving behavior (too many animal-term usage in that last sentence, if you ask me). Luckily, I have swift feet and long legs, and managed to get to class less than 10 minutes late. A good way for the first day of that class to begin. I appeased the professor by challenging the largest male in the class to a death match, and besting him in the blood-thirsty Paperclip Impalement Ritual. Good times.

Classmates and subject matter are getting a little muddled at this point. So much of my course material overlaps into other courses, and anywhere from 50-75% of the students in one class are also in other classes. Once everything settles down I can take full advantage of both of these situations.

Tuesdays are, apparently, trivia night at Bird's Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack. Megan from school invited us, so we went. I've only been to Bird's once before, for a Sarah Mac Band show, but in my opinion this was more entertaining. Every seat is usually taken, and participation in the trivia is free, and lively. The questions are certainly challenging, which reminds me that whenever I want my ego dropped a couple of notches down, I should attend a trivia night somewhere. Nothing like trivia night to remind me of my lacking knowledge in sports, pop knowledge, television, and geographic comparative facts between US states.

Not a bad Tuesday, I suppose. The week seems increasingly long already, and I am referring to events that happened on Monday as if I've been performing them for weeks, as it feels like I have. All part of the changing lifestyle, I suppose. Let's keep it going for now, shall we?

Day 1b: Monday, Aug. 24th

Class starts at 12:35. Buses are between me and class. Time to get hiking at 11:30 to make sure I get this bus thing down. It arrives soon, and takes me to the stadium, as planned. Good. The campus loop bus took me near my intended building, then a little further away before I realized it was not going to pull a u-turn for my benefit, so I hopped off and took a little walk. Class was as expected, with a teacher, some new classmates, and some familiar ones. Class time itself, as I've found out since then, it usually the least stressful part of my courses.

I dropped by my department's offices for a second, left, and got on the same campus loop bus. Now, here's where my logical took an obvious fault: If there's, say, 30 stops on a loop, and my building is around the 5th stop, logic dictates that the same bus on the same route will have about 25 stops to go before arriving at its termination point. So, I had a nice 20 minute ride, wondering about which bus I should take next time.

Riding the bus gives me a good chance to observe the natives of the university. A good example (though is was not a bus phenomenon) I thoroughly enjoyed hearing a one-way conversation from a guy talking on his cell phone. While he was shopping for an overly-expensive FSU hoodie, he was chatting about how his mom won't buy him a new controller. That in itself is humorous to me. Of course, this are many other instances I personally don't know about, but I'll go ahead and presume this guy also was not living at home, complains about not having money, but in the next breath complains that he won't be able to go out drinking a particular night. I do presume, but these thoughts are a compilation of various conversations I've heard.

Another favorite is the girl on the the phone trying to get her e-mail changed in some account she has. Changing it from "Chik234@hotmail.com" to "Pink2343@hotmail.com" is something I find very interesting and love to hear about. Apparently the customer service representative was unfamiliar with the word "pink" and had to have it explained to her. This got annoying, but then recalled that everyone around me paid a lot of money for the opportunity to better themselves and their minds, which will hopefully lead to a decrease of e-mail addresses that include the word "pink," and will hopefully also lead to a decreased in the amount of people who are unfamiliar with such a bizarre concept such as "pink." ("A color!" the girl of the phone exclaimed.)

An easy bus back to the Learning Systems Institute (LSI from now on, mostly), and after goofing off a bit (by which I mean "working" if someone asks) it's a drive home. No worries so far. Tomorrow should be the same schedule, but of course things never turn out that way.

Day 1a: Monday, Aug. 24th

So...first day of school. (Get used to dealing with the "Dear Diary" crap at the beginning of these. It's how I sum up and get warmed up, writing-wise.) I'm getting ahead a bit, though. Back to the information gleamed from orientation: Originally I was signed up for 4 classes, 12 credit hours. I'm told by some that this is a heavy load, and the reactions from some students and instructors leads me to believe that this is so. Two of the courses are known to have a lot of deliverables (read as: assignments and projects) which in itself could lead to problems. I chose this particular path of self-torture so that I could be considered a full-time student, leading to more financial aid money and to have the option of earning an assistanceship (mini job with some pay). It was at orientation that I heard you may only have to have 9 credit hours, 3 classes. This potentially true fact lends itself to more investigation.

After asking around (a lot), I found that, yes, indeed, it is true that if you have an assistanceship THEN you can have only 9 hours and be considered full-time. Luckily (another flashback) I arranged for an assistanceship with a teacher. She had a position that paid a few bucks and hour, and it was to last half the semester, and requiring 20 hours of work a week. Not a bad deal considering some students never find a paid position of this sort, and considering that I wanted to sign on due to the experience I would get. Plus, I get paid some.

Now, apparently I've done something right in the universe because I ALSO got an opportunity to have a similar "job" at the Learning Systems Institute, where I would not only get paid more per hour, but I would also get a tuition waver for 9 of my credit hours, which equals out to roughly $3000 a semester. Nice. I bowed out of my first assistanceship, interviewed for the second, and I started today, Monday, at the LSI, the same week I begin my further school full-time.

So, it's Monday, the first day of school. I arrived at "work" and begin shuffling papers and organizing pens. This is partly because no one else had arrived, and partly because I'm neurotic about such things. A complete surprise, right? Please stand up and leave the room if you didn't see that coming. Seriously. Have you not been paying attention anytime you've spoken or been around me? Probably not. The rest of us don't really like you, to tell the truth. Please leave.

Well, now that the readers who don't pay attention are gone, I finished organizing my desk a few hours later (...yes, I exaggerate a bit). I work in a large office, where maybe 1/10th of the people are somehow related to what I do. The rest are also part of the LSI, but are involved with different projects that simultaneously invoke curiosity and a sense of being very unimportant (one of the titles includes the term "national security.") My specific co-workers are older, teacher-type of women who all work on the same project, the very project I have been summoned here to assist with.

Project Description Begin:

Florida has standards for K-12th grade education, called Standards. These are modified some for students with cognitive disabilities (like ESE students, for example). However, some students have severe cognitive disability, so they require even more modification to the required standards so that they can handle it. These are Access Points created by my office's project. They create and compile the new Access Points (which are specific modifications to the traditional Standards) and create training modules for teachers around the state so they (the teachers) know what Access Points are and how to use them.

Project Description End.

It's an okay gig. Pretty slow, but the moment I get caught up is the moment I get bored, especially since I work and think are a pretty good pace. My coworkers are of course intelligent, but simply work at a more meticulous pace. It is not stressful, with the hardest thing being that I have to be here 20 hours for all the rules and regulations to work out, and I'd rather be doing homework. I would actually rather be doing other things (insert imagination here), but if I had to choose, I'd rather accomplish school work so I don't feel so far behind.

A little before noon, and it's time for class.

Day 0: Orientation

So, I'm starting this blog. A few days late, yes, but you never reminded to get started. So it is all your fault, slacker. I'm not even sure if I want a slacker reading my blog. You should probably think about your life and your priorities before judging me...

Where was I? Ah, yes... blaming you. But even before that, my Starting School Full Time Blog.

I quit work 3 weeks ago from my decent paying job that had decent perks and benefits. However, it was a dead-end position and I was literally be going nowhere until one of the owners died or they sold the business to a third party. My last official day was this past Friday, August 21^st. Let the poverty and worries begin!

Orientation was the day before, for which I took a day off of work (why not? It’s not like I had anything better to do there…) There were the usual hodge-podge of other programs, instructors, and speakers. A veteran student did a Q&A after the staff left, which was actually pretty good. Onto the small group session, where I was marked as a Veteran Student there to just listen in. Good thing, because it 1) made the ego boost a bit and 2) gave me more standing. The orientation was over after that. A quick 3 hours or so.

One of the big reasons (as I may have mentioned in a previous post) for starting school full-time is to get integrated into the school and courses better. I want to actually get networked and socialized, meeting fellow students and getting to know instructors. This in itself is useful, as it is quite difficult to meet friends (although I do have friends and they are awesome, though I’m sure they owe me money). However, I need to break out of the shell.

An additional reasoning is so that I can become The Guy in the program. You know The Guy: He’s the one the teachers know, the one everyone (except maybe new students) knows and will asks questions to. Not necessarily the Big Man on Campus, but someone that is known for knowing stuff and who can be relied on, etc. Thisisn’t (completely) for my ego, but mostly so that when it comes time for a job, my name will be on the lips of instructors when good jobs offers come through.

I have never really been “networked,” so it’s a difficult thing. I get along with people well enough, but not so much that I maintain ties with them. Lots of acquaintances that are left by the wayside, so the speak, and I wanted to get networked for both personal and professional reasons. Getting networked will help the career too, of course, and I’m relying on my super awesomeness to have such an effect on the instructors that they can’t wait to find me the Best Job in the World (which includes all-you-can-eat Whoopers and various dancing girls)(edit: I meant Whoppers, but I'd take a bunch of Whoopers, too, probably).

I did pick up more information during Orientation, in conversations there, and the day or so after that. I will summarize those in the next posting. These blog postings, as I have said, will remain informal, so suck it if you have any issue with my syntaxes or sentence structures. Also, if you are reading this than you have a reason to, even if it’s just because you’re bored out of your skull. With that said, if something written here causes you to think or question, feel free to let me know. I do take requests, and pander to them.

A final note: I rarely proofread my postings. This isn't work, after all, and it's often humorous to leave mistakes as-is. Problem with that? I doubt it; if you read this far them you probably don't care. ;) Until next time, my loyal reader(s)

-cpk

Starting school full-time...

Well, I have finally come upon the best way to complete the following list:

1) Become more poor
2) Increase my stress level
3) Open myself to increased ridicule in a face-to-face format, instead of bearing it in my standard digital format.

My genius plan to finish my list is to resign from work and being school on campus at FSU in the fall.

Being my extremely loyal readers and fans, I'm sure you are aware that I (along with being very humble) began officially at FSU in the spring, taking courses part time in the Instructional Systems Master's program, and also working towards the Human Performance Technology certification.

It is my intention to blog about my efforts, and the subsequent successes. If you find this completely uninteresting, feel free to stop following this blog's feed or drop me as a friend on your list. I won't be insulted at all.
Don't worry, though, as I'm sure there will be plenty more failures which I'm sure will be more entertaining. Perhaps I will also post pictures of myself, distraught and defeated, head lowered, ashamed at my failure. If you look forward to that, you are a twisted individual, but also have an odd sense of humor that may appreciate my future writing.
If you have any requests or want additional specifics for this little journal, feel free to let me know. That just means less unique thoughts I have to conjure up on my own out of this dark, bubbling cauldron that is my mind.
Enjoy the future! I hope to have a pre-semester blog before orientation on the 20th, but the first may be about orientation.