My St. Petersburg College Experience

Procrastination!

steve — Sun, 11 May 2008 03:37:00 GMT

Both of my teenage girls have left traditional brick and mortar high school in favor of earning their high school diplomas online through the Penn Foster High School. On the one hand, that situation has certainly lent us a lot of flexibility as a family, and mornings are MUCH easier these days since we don't have to struggle to beat the clock in order to get them off to school on time. Neither of them, especially my oldest daughter, are really what you'd consider "morning people," so prior to enrolling them in Penn Foster it was tough at times to get them started in the early morning hours. To be perfectly honest, I still find it a bit ridiculous that school starts so early that students have to wake up at 5:30 AM in order to get ready and make to school before the bell.

If you have teenagers, you probably already know that keeping them focused on anything serious can be difficult. Right now, that's our biggest challenge with them: keeping them focused on their school work. When it comes to school work, they both run sort of hot or cold. Either they're really into it and plow through their assignments one right after the other, or they tend to leave their work lay around a while so they quickly find themselves falling behind.

I've tried to explain to them that doing a little bit at a time is a lot easier than getting behind and finding themselves facing a big pile of work. That big pile can be daunting on the surface, which makes it even more difficult for them to motivate themselves to kick it into gear. I mean, that sort of reaction to a large amount of work is really just human nature, isn't it?

Now that's great advice I'm giving to my teenagers of course, but to be honest I'm as big a procrastinator as they are. So while I'm handing them that advice, I also have to remind myself of the same thing. I hope that I learn that lesson for myself, but I really hope they learn that lesson so that they don't fall into that trap later in life.

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Thank goodness April is GONE

steve — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:41:00 GMT

April was one seriously awful month for me and my family. Sickness went around and around and around the four of us like you wouldn't believe. I mean, the illness bounced around from person to person like some kind of stomach virus rubber ball. When it was all said and done, I ended up using every bit of the sick time I had available to me and spent a good portion of the month at home, on my back.

We should have set up some kind of pool and each put in some money and the person in the house who ended up logging the most days sick could have taken the whole pot.

On top of that, at work there was a death that affected a lot of us. The father of a beloved employee passed away. It didn't come as a total shock because he had fallen ill some time ago, so she had warned us that his passing may come at any time. Still, no matter how prepared you think you are for something like that, it does hit you hard anyway. Needless to say, she was out for some time after her loss, and even though people had to work a little harder to cover, our thoughts were with her and the rest of the family who lost a very dear loved one.

I'm not sad to see April come and go, believe me.

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I'm leaning, I'm leaning...

steve — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:34:00 GMT

I've only got one class to go before I've earned my AA degree from St. Petersburg College. Since I've officially run out of time to finish my statistics class at the University of Florida, there will be no credits earned at all. That means I've got to make a plan as to what I'm going to do next. One option would be to go ahead and re-enroll in the same statistics class and start over again. There are some benefits to be taken into consideration there, for instance my familiarity with the material and the fact that I've already completed some of the assignments. One other benefit is that I already have the textbook, so I wouldn't have to purchase another text.

Another route to go would be to find another math class that would fulfill the requirements for my degree. I'm not big on math, never really have been very big on math, so taking a different class at this point would certainly fall outside of my comfort zone. There's certainly a benefit to being challenged with a completely new course, but at this point I'm not sure I'm exactly up for a new "challenge". I mean, I'm only one class away from the degree.

So, I'm currently leaning toward re-enrolling in the statistics class. I haven't completely made up my mind as yet, but I'm getting close. Yeah, I know I'll be going through some of the exact same material a second time, but at least that would give me a chance to get even a little sharper on the material before test time.

We'll see. I'll let you know what I decide.

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Let's get fit

steve — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:17:00 GMT

Fitness is important. Here at eLearners we often talk about distance education, online degrees, and educational opportunities available to all via the internet. Obviously, in a round about way, we're all talking about a form of fitness. In this case, we're talking about mental fitness or educational fitness. Degrees are important. They're certainly important in the corporate culture where I work. They're not the end all and be all, but people care about degrees. But more important than the piece of paper is what you get out of the process of earning that degree.

Educational fitness.

But now I'm going to talk about physical fitness. As of today, I stepped on the scale and have found that, through diet and a little bit of exercise, I have managed to lose 23 pounds over the past months.

Physical fitness.

Hey, I've got a long way to go. When I started this diet thing, I weighed in at 302 pounds. That's nowhere near the most I've ever weighed, because at one point in my life years back, I was a very hefty 360 pounds. Then, I worked hard and lost 125 pounds and got down to a much sleeker 235. I'm a big guy with very broad shoulders, so at 235 I looked pretty darn good (if I do say so myself). So when I got back over 300 pounds again, that was a wake up call for me. I looked down at that scale and saw "302" and decided right then and there that enough was enough.

No more 300. Never again.

Physical fitness is important for educational fitness as well. You need good nutrition, good energy, good health in order to study effectively. You need good physical health in order to put forth the amount of effort it takes to maintain a "regular" life and then to maintain the "other" life that is your educational pursuits.

Don't sell your educational fitness short by ignoring or neglecting your physical fitness.

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Score another one!

steve — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:58:00 GMT

Last time I told you that my youngest daughter, Christen, has decided to leave traditional brick-and-mortar high school and enroll at Penn Foster in order to earn her diploma. She joins my oldest daughter, Nicole, who had already made the same move, leaving her local high school and now taking her classes online, with the goal of earning her diploma electronically.

Well, as I was surprised to find out today, one of my co-workers has enrolled his stepson in Penn Foster High School as well! It turns out that he's heard such good things about the program from me that he decided to offer it as an option to his stepson. Apparently, he and his wife have had a little trouble with the young man not fitting in well at school. He's not a joiner, doesn't participate in any of the after school programs or sports, and doesn't belong to any clubs or really hang out too much with anyone except his very small circle of friends. On top of that, he's a little bit older than the rest of his classmates, due to the fact that we struggled earlier in his school life. Overall, he's a shy, introverted type of person who doesn't really get passionate about much, except computers and the internet. Sending him to school online seemed like a perfect match!

I'm really excited to see my own family and others taking advantage of technology in such a positive way. They're leveraging a tremendous medium to serve them in one of the most noble of ways: expanding their minds through education.

As time marches on and we move further along in the electronic educational medium, I'm excited to see what the future holds for online students and instructors alike. No doubt there is a lot more excitement to come on the horizon, and I'm thrilled to be immersed in it.

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