While I hated high school, I loved college. I enjoyed learning, but without all of the social drama of high school. Sure, in life, there is always some sort of drama, but in college, there was no teenage angst. At least, it was not there for me.
I never got to finish my degree. In 1989, I was able to work for my dream company and I spent many years trying to prove I was worthy. In the end, I had to leave and join a consultant company, then got a job offer where I am now. My last course at UNT was computer graphics. It was not an easy course and the time it demanded, I just did not have. I ended up dropping it.
In 2006, I got it in my head to transfer my UNT credits to UTD. Perhaps, I could finish my degree there. Location was convenient to where I was living. Also, the university was a huge engineering institution. So, I enrolled that fall in a UNIX course. My reasoning behind that was I already knew a lot about UNIX, but I really needed a proper education. Also, for the amount of money I was going to spend that semester, I wanted to make sure I gauged how well I would do with something I already knew.
Generally speaking, I got a high B. I should have gotten an A, but work got crazy towards the end. The next semester, I got ambitious and enrolled in Operating Systems. How I should have known better - I ended up with a D+ that semester. I simply was not able to put in enough time to do the projects - 50% of my grade. I did learn a lot in that class that made sense of what I was already doing at work.
I took a year and half off and went back to take Linear Algebra in fall of 2008. It was another rough semester with work and my mom being ill. I got through it - I made a B in the course, which I am extremely proud. However, the price of that course was about $2100.
The cost of education is so expensive. I know when I started at UNT in 1986, my father paid $550 for a full load for me to attend. Books were another $300. The $2100 was all tuition - no books.
Basing how work can sometimes be crazy, I had to find another route for learning new things. Let's face it, I had reached a point in my career where my company did not send me to class. The tuition reimbursement had been lowered to a crazy amount - and I was not one of those who just had to attend the SMU courses. The whole tuition reimbursement process changed constantly, so I was pretty frustrated with that. So, I started looking into on-line courses.
I started taking on-line courses from Collin County Community College. For $109 to $129 per course, it was a fairly decent deal. However, these courses were continuing education courses. You either passed or not. No real grades. I learned some good things, but I found I was really good at taking open book exams at the end, so I could get by a computer course without having done any of the projects, have the notes, and still pass the exam with 90% or better. Nutshell, I was not really getting much out of that.
My company started offering tuition reimbursements for taking courses at Udacity. On-line courses that cost quite a penny - lasting months and you had to pay $200 per month. I walked away from that.
There are the courses on iTunesU, but again, self-paced and no real grading.
Then, I came across edx.org. I actually came across that when looking into Linux Certification programs. The Linux Foundations sponsors a course you can take on-line. You can audit the course and still take the exams and such, but you get no certification. The cost for certification is between $99 to $199 based upon when you take the course or if you have a special code from the foundation.
There are thousands and thousands of courses available from so many well known universities. The one thing I wanted to do was look into taking a geometry course. I found one on this site and started taking it. It is self-paced, but a whole lot different from when I had geometry in high school. It is pretty easy from the stand point of defining a line, a segment, angles, and so forth. I have yet to come across an area where the student is required to prove anything based upon laws, rules, and postulates. That was the really burning point for me as a sophomore.
The science and computer courses are always interesting. Currently, retaking the Python course that MIT created. I dropped in June because work was a bit nutty and I had to deal with some personal issues as well. Now, I hope that all of that is behind me or will be manageable. I would like to get through this course and use it at work.
I am also checking out iTunesU geometry course. There, I won't be graded, but I am interested in seeing about having to do proofs.
However, no matter how many courses I take on-line, it won't get my degree completed. I hope that in the next decade, I can accomplish this task. Some say "Why do it?" Well, I may not get any return on investment in their eyes, but my return on investment is completing something I started many years ago. I want some feeling of accomplishment in that area of my life. I had wanted to get my Master's degree. Who knows? Maybe, I might be able to do that, too. You are never too old to go back to school.
No comments:
Post a Comment