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kitsap_charlesI'm going to school tomorrow.
I'm going back to school tomorrow.
For the first time in over twenty years, I'm going to college. Never mind the decades-old B.A. and M.B.A. degrees, I'm studying Network Administration so I have a better chance of being employed, once I finish the curriculum. It'll take at least a year, possibly two-- depending on how many low-level classes I can get waived, if they'll accept my oh-so-dated transcripts for the non-technical courses, whether the built-in redundancy can be bypassed (there's a four-quarter sequence on Local Area Networks and a three-class series on Cisco Networking, with considerable overlap in content), and whether I can get an off-shift "survival" job when unemployment runs out.
And of course, whether I can actually do the work, keep up the pace of three technical courses every quarter, year-round.
And for this quarter at least, whether I can get up at six in the morning and be functional in any real sense.
I'm not a morning person. Never have been, probably never will be-- even when I had to get up at 4:30 so I could drive 75 miles and get to work by 6:00 when there were still enough spare computer cycles to actually accomplish something, before the other couple thousand people at that software lab logged in and sucked away the silicon goodness. I hated it then, I hate getting up early now. As far as I'm concerned, the only use for five in the morning is to enjoy the afterglow.
Last week now, that was a bit of strangeness. I spent the first half of the week resolved to go to bed early, to acclimate myself to the necessary early rising that will soon be the bane of three of my days per week. And indeed I arose early, but all too often I was still up well past midnight, when I should have been long in dreamland.
I also managed to finish the process of interviewing companies that tend to hire Network Admins. In order to even apply for the retraining grant money, one must demonstrate that the new skills will be more likely to lead to a Real Job (tm). (After all, regardless of how personally rewarding and fulfilling I might find Underwater Basket Weaving to be, jobs in that particular field are even sparser than my late career in mainframe systems analysis.) I have to make an appointment with my case manager, write up the interview results, and turn in my proposal. With any luck at all, they'll decide to subsidize my retraining.
Saturday was New Student Orientation, after which I tweaked my course schedule and bought textbooks. Oh. My. God. Four books, $180. And not all of them were new. Let there be reimbursement, please please please let there be reimbursement.
Anyway, I'll be in class from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until early December. Wish me well.
I'm going back to school tomorrow.
For the first time in over twenty years, I'm going to college. Never mind the decades-old B.A. and M.B.A. degrees, I'm studying Network Administration so I have a better chance of being employed, once I finish the curriculum. It'll take at least a year, possibly two-- depending on how many low-level classes I can get waived, if they'll accept my oh-so-dated transcripts for the non-technical courses, whether the built-in redundancy can be bypassed (there's a four-quarter sequence on Local Area Networks and a three-class series on Cisco Networking, with considerable overlap in content), and whether I can get an off-shift "survival" job when unemployment runs out.
And of course, whether I can actually do the work, keep up the pace of three technical courses every quarter, year-round.
And for this quarter at least, whether I can get up at six in the morning and be functional in any real sense.
I'm not a morning person. Never have been, probably never will be-- even when I had to get up at 4:30 so I could drive 75 miles and get to work by 6:00 when there were still enough spare computer cycles to actually accomplish something, before the other couple thousand people at that software lab logged in and sucked away the silicon goodness. I hated it then, I hate getting up early now. As far as I'm concerned, the only use for five in the morning is to enjoy the afterglow.
Last week now, that was a bit of strangeness. I spent the first half of the week resolved to go to bed early, to acclimate myself to the necessary early rising that will soon be the bane of three of my days per week. And indeed I arose early, but all too often I was still up well past midnight, when I should have been long in dreamland.
I also managed to finish the process of interviewing companies that tend to hire Network Admins. In order to even apply for the retraining grant money, one must demonstrate that the new skills will be more likely to lead to a Real Job (tm). (After all, regardless of how personally rewarding and fulfilling I might find Underwater Basket Weaving to be, jobs in that particular field are even sparser than my late career in mainframe systems analysis.) I have to make an appointment with my case manager, write up the interview results, and turn in my proposal. With any luck at all, they'll decide to subsidize my retraining.
Saturday was New Student Orientation, after which I tweaked my course schedule and bought textbooks. Oh. My. God. Four books, $180. And not all of them were new. Let there be reimbursement, please please please let there be reimbursement.
Anyway, I'll be in class from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until early December. Wish me well.
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Good for you!!
Date: 2002-09-23 02:30 am (UTC)I went back to school in January. I was carrying a 10-credit courseload and working full-time. I have managed to maintain a 3.93 GPA.
You *can* do this. It's worth it, no matter how early you have to get up in the morning.
Good luck.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-23 08:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-24 12:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-24 12:16 pm (UTC)Shoot, I'm not REALLY anonymous!
at home. Two things--would you email me at kiwicarl@yahoo.com?
Also, I think I'd like to have one of these accounts to use as a poem journal. Can you help me get one?
Kiwi