Tally Ho!

Spring Semester for the Last Chance Cowboy College started on Wednesday and I've now seen (or been e-mailed by) each of my instructors once. My two math instructors (algebra and statistics) are intellectually vibrant folks. I will enjoy their classes. My geology course is online and I hate online courses. My instructor seems really engaged and has put time into her course shell so hopefully it won't suck too bad. My big beef with internet courses is that (at least at the Cowboy College) it's basically paying the school for the privilege of being my own teacher. My chemistry teacher is professional but seems nervous.

One of the folks I'm sitting next to in my chemistry lecture introduced himself as a genius. There are some phrases that are probably false simply because they were uttered. "I'm in charge" is one of them. If you have to say that you're in charge, the truth is you're probably not. "I'm a genius" would be another one. Genius boy is retaking the class because he failed it last semester. According to genius boy, this instructor got blasted in last semester's critiques. That would explain some of the nervousness.

Anyhow, it's obvious I will have my work cut out for me this semester. This is not going to be one of those semesters where I can do significant chunks of coursework at the last moment. This semester will take some planning and more than a little work.

Last semester wasn't too tough and gave me the opportunity to knock off a decade's worth of intellectual rust. This semester won't be as mistake tolerant as last semester was.

Today I was that guy

Somehow, I managed to enter both of my math classes into my organizer one hour early. So this morning I woke up too early, ate too fast and then sat in the wrong class for 10 minutes until it dawned on me that I was in wrong place. In my defense, it was before the instructor passed out the usual first day pile of paperwork.

For all of the classes that I've taken over the years, this is the first time that I've been the schmuck that asked "Is this... ?" and gathered his stuff and shuffled out of the classroom. Until today I've always been the one staring at the schmuck's back thinking "How could he not know where his classes are?"

Back when I was studying for my paramedic ticket we used to get real estate students in our lectures all the time. Our classes were taught in lecture halls used by a nursing school during the day. At night they would teach extension courses to include paramedics, real estate and a bunch of other stuff. Every semester we'd get at least one aspiring real estate agent in the big lecture hall. They were easy to pick out... no coffee cup... didn't smell faintly of hand sanitizer and smoke... and they were wearing more than $40 worth of clothes.

Hello!

I retired last year after 26 years in the military and it's time to grow up and start my second career. I'm hoping to be a high school teacher when this is all done. By "this" I mean all of the schooling, refocusing and growing up that I have left until the last minute.