“Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.” – Robert Anton Wilson
The Doctor of Health Education at A.T. Still University consists of alternating semesters. First you take two normal three semester-hour courses, and then you take a three semester-hour course and a seven semester-hour “Dissertation” course. I just finished one of the former, but as of Monday I started one of the latter.
This is actually a pretty heavy load. Many schools consider nine semester-hours per term to be full time for graduate programs, so I expect that a semester working full time and taking ten semester-hours will be pretty intense. It occurred to me to ask whether I could take the Dissertation course by itself and end up with two extra semesters of normal courses, but not until after I already had this schedule set and I guess now it seems to be a little late to change things. As I've mentioned, I had a problem with burnout at one point during my Master's program, and I don't feel that, at least not yet, so from that perspective I think I'll be all right.
It doesn't help that I really don't know exactly what to expect from my Dissertation course. I know I'll be done with chapters one and two of my dissertation by the end of it, but I gather that the course is differently structured from the normal coursework. I guess I'm about to find out!
As for the other course, that's called “Proposal Presentation”. It covers such things as grant writing, as I expected, and that makes a lot of sense as this is a very useful skill for a university administrator. Interestingly, however, the course also seems to cover business plan presentation. I like that, since entrepreneurship is an area of special interest for me, but I have to admit it's a surprise (albeit a welcome one!) to see it in this program.
So that's what's on tap for the next tem weeks. And as if this isn't enough, there's not much of a break for me after this, because A.T. Still University fiendishly offers four semesters per calendar year. Because of this, it's possible, although challenging, to do two academic years per calendar year. And that's what I'm doing. And why am I doing things this way? Some might say that it's so I can finish everything by the end of next year. But the real reason is much more simple – I'm doing it because I'm crazy!
Next up, I get some bad news in that there's a tuition increase headed my way, but conclude that it could be a lot worse.