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.