Superstorm School!

It's been a hectic week. School started on Monday and I have classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I have discovered a perk of NOT attending a private school: flat rate tuition. I am taking 18 units (well, 15 until my independent studies section is approved) for the price of 6.1-12 units.

Say what?

At AAU, the same number of units would run about $14k.

I have also crashed my first class, ever. In all my years of college, I've never had such restrictive enrollment. Typically I just enroll like the first day enrollment opens (community college and AAU worked this way). This time around it was tiered enrollment. I could enroll in up to 7 units at orientation, then I had to wait a month to enroll in up to 15. Then a week after that I could enroll in up to 19.

Unfortunately, every single class I wanted was full by the time my enrollment time for the second round came up. I had just checked class enrollment levels half an hour prior to my enrollment time. I logged in at 1 minute to 5 and by the time I entered the class numbers, all of my classes were full.

Eventually I got enrolled in some classes. Some that I really didn't want but I had the units. One of the classes had an instructor that was half an hour late, swayed back and forth and had voice modulation issues. I had a severe case of motion sickness by the end of class. Here's a sample of what I sat through.

The next night I saw that there were 5 seats open in the Gerontology class I really wanted. I made the bold choice to try to crash that class even though I had another class at the same time. Well, apparently everyone else had the same idea. There were 65 seats in the class. The instructor had already given 8 add codes out and was capping enrollment at 75 students. A total of 90 people showed up. I was totally making myself sick with trying to decide to sit it out and see what happened (hoping a bunch of people really didn't want to study death and end of life issues) or run over to the gym to the class I was actually enrolled in.

I stayed. And so did 15 other people. It came down to putting names in a box and randomly selecting 3 people. Thank Jebus I was the first name drawn! I was so worried I skipped the first class of leisure and recreation for nothing.

As far as my independent studies class goes, it is going to basically be artistic reproduction using new and emerging technologies. I will do 4 projects (from creating the artwork in physical or digital representation reproducing those works using various methods incorporating technology) and write a final paper. I'm super excited about this. This means I get school credit for stuff I would normally be doing 4 days a week anyway (with my school schedule, there's no real way I can go to the Gnomery on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday).

I am also fairly stoked on my textiles class. Textiles? Yeah. After discussing with the department chair my ultimate goals, we came to the conclusion that textiles would be a great place to focus my energies. People are intimidated by fine art. If you aren't an artist, you aren't really going to feel comfortable painting a picture or drawing or sculpting. But people are far less intimidated by crafts. I'm learning hand sewing, crocheting, embroidery and the like. These are skills that are far less intimidating to most people.

Not quite underwater basket weaving. Maybe that's a more advanced class.