Since I like to pile it on all at once I’m tackling just that!
First, the classes. I love many things about them and also don’t like some things about them. But all are necessary and I will be challenged and will grow stronger and hopefully wiser with all the information I’m learning!
- Characteristics of Special Education, Moderate to Intensive. So far I love this class! But I don’t like that it’s at night. At least it’s only once a week. My husband Roger has been wonderful to pick up Ryan from latchkey these nights. I did miss last Wednesday due to Concord, Ohio, having its own personal blizzard which caused a pile-up I mentioned in the last blog post. I was just not up to going down to school after that. The class is very interesting with reviewing all the ways special education works and is comprised of, and the course has just begun so all kinds of projects are still in store. I think we have 5 or 6 projects due in the semester. This course is a requirement for special ed.
- Basic Math Concepts II. So far this class has been more challenging than Math Concepts I which I took last semester. Of course that shouldn’t be a surprise. I have to start the lessons earlier. I am planning to actually start tonight, giving me 6 days to work on it before it is due. Last week started the study of probabilities, which I was completely unfamiliar with, and I didn’t have enough time once I finally really started it to complete it well and understand it. I only got 80% on the homework before I ran out of time. I don’t want to repeat that. This course is a requirement for special ed.
Now, I could have stopped there. I am not able to get into advanced study for special education yet because I did not yet complete Math Concepts II. So, since I am on my last semester of Pell grant (I timed out as I had too many semesters) I did not want to only have 7 credit hours in my last semester on the Pell grant, not using the whole thing when it was available. So I searched for a few classes to get up to full time, ones that would be applicable to my educational goals. I have wanted to also get a master’s degree in speech pathology, but had put that on hold until I finished the special education degree. Therefore with this gap I added two courses towards that:
- Quantitative Methods in Psychology – in other words, Statistics. I didn’t really realize when I signed up for it that it was Statistics. I didn’t realize until I looked at the book sample on Amazon and saw – math? Ugh. So far, however, it hasn’t been too bad. The teacher, however, just did send our first homework to us online and it is due in about 10 days, the day before our first exam. I have not looked at it yet. I hope I haven’t shot myself in the foot taking two math courses at once – although they say, admittedly, that statistics is not really math – hmmm, don’t know about that! This course is a requirement for the speech pathology degree I still hope to get later.
- Language Disorders in Children. So far this course is amazing, and exactly the information I am wanting to learn in addition to the special education above. [You can tell I really could do without the math information – ha ha!] However, the teacher kind of scared me when she told us that her tests were really really hard and were practically the entire grade for the class – that there is really nothing else graded. The chapters are also longer than average and I am not getting enough of the reading done. But it sure helps that I’m fascinated with the topic – I should be able to catch up on the reading and do fine. This course is a requirement for the speech pathology degree I still hope to get later.
So, all and all, an interesting semester!
Then (and I will probably post more on this next week) I decided to start posting on my phone and computer to My Fitness Pal. A friend of mine’s son lost 25 pounds on it and I decided to check it out. It has been four days, and so far everything is going well! I did set the calories rather high at 1700, just to give myself some leeway as last time I believe I had set Sparkpeople (similar app I did last summer) at 1400 and kept going over. I love seeing exactly where I am with my nutrients and levels. More next week along with hopefully my first loss post… but it’s a very slow rate – set at 1/2 pound a week to keep it off….
(can I get HERE?)
