This week thus far has been a ride. I’m closing on my old house, moving out, keeping up with my homework in Managerial Economics, skimming the reading assignments to the best of my ability and of course attempting to not get fired from my job while all of this goes down. So how do I do it? Honestly I’ve had to cut some corners on my study time. Normally when my grades slip I will knuckle down hard and spend a couple of nights studying into the wee hours of the morning until I either get it or pass out trying. This week I’m moving couches instead of reading, lifting end tables instead of crunching numbers and shuffling boxes instead of facts. It’s been very hard to say the least.
Next week is week #4 and it will be time to get serious and put everything else on the back burner for a while. Luckily my final project is worth 30% of my grade and I think I have enough time to really hit a home run with it if I really work hard. I know, some of my regular readers are saying “hey Cajun, just a couple of months ago you were complaining about the weight of the final project and now you’re happy about it? Talk about a waffle!”
That’s right; I’m waffling quicker than John Kerry on the War in Iraq. I’m waffling harder Hilary Clinton on the War on Terror and faster than John McCain…on pretty much anything. You get the point. I’ve started to see the light and the genius of placing so much weight on a final project in an accelerated class. My take on the reasoning is that the class is so fast paced, almost inconceivably so for those to whom the material is new, that by the time you start to grasp the concepts and weave them into coherent thoughts of your own to draw conclusions from them, the class is all but over. But ah, then you have this final that is anywhere from 25-35% of your final grade, a time for redemption and a time to where you can prove to the instructor that you finally get it.
It is amazing that Ashford University has figured out a way where they do not compromise on rigor (believe me, not even a little) nor do they compromise on the concepts, but instead have devised a system to where you learn it quick and in the last week you are given a chance to substantially impact your grade to that effect. I am changing my tune on this weighted final week thing, it’s genius and I was an idiot.