My St. Petersburg College Experience : St. Petersburg College

Well, I'm off to Scotland

steve — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:34:00 GMT

The family and I are just about to load up the car for the trip to the airport. We're heading off for a week's vacation in Scotland. We're flying into Glasgow and taking the train to Edinburgh where we've rented an apartment for the stay. It's only about a third of a mile from Edinburgh Castle!

In Scotland there are plenty of student discounts, and you can bet I'm going to take advantage of them.

On the topic of distance learning, I'll be bringing my ethics textbook with me to study my assignments when we have some down time, between sightseeing and eating and drinking and more eating and walking around and even more eating. Score another big, big point for distance learning: I'll even be able to submit my St. Petersburg College homework assignments via the web from my rented apartment overseas.

Oh, and Edinburgh is home to Heriot-Watt University, an internationally well-respected university that offers distance learning degree programs. If you're interested in reading about the programs they offer, here's a link to their site:

http://www.hw.ac.uk/

Well, it's time to get going! The next blog entry you read from me will be posted from Scotland!

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Ooooh! I'm so HAPPY...

steve — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 03:26:00 GMT

Last time I told you that I had missed the deadline to submit my first two assignments in my ethics class at St. Petersburg College due to nothing other than my own stupidity. That was the plain, honest, and unvarnished truth. The fact of the matter is, if I had been stuck with a couple of zeroes to kick off this particular class in this particular semester it was something I quite honestly deserved. I was angry last time, very angry, and angry only at myself.

My anger has transformed into relief. I received an e-mail from my ethics instructor that was addressed to the entire class, and in that message he told us that due to some very unusual circumstances this time around, among them the fact that many of us were told by the school and the school's online system that no textbook was required for the course, he plans to reopen the first two assignments two all students later in the semester.

This decision goes against his policy of not accepting late work under any circumstances. I felt it was a pretty generous thing for him to do, and I really do appreciate the opportunity to submit the assignments at a later date. Certainly I had only myself to fault for the stupid mistake, and going forward you can be sure that I won't forget that the deadline in this particular course is 6:00 PM.

On another note, as I said before, my family and I will be taking a trip to Scotland in a few days. We'll be spending a week in Edinburgh, and the apartment we have rented has high speed internet and is equipped with a PC, so I'll be taking my school work with me and I'll continue to blog while I'm overseas. Hey, that will REALLY make this a distance learning exercise...a very long distance.

Ain't the internet great?

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Ooooh! I'm so angry...

steve — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 02:46:00 GMT

Oh man, am I angry. I mean I am spitting fire angry. I probably need to take a double dose of my blood pressure medicine just about now...

I blew it. I logged on to the St. Petersburg College student Web site to submit my assignments for my ethics class, because I knew that the teacher had indicated that the first two assignments were due today. Well, when I sat down and logged in at 7:20 PM, I was unable to access the first two assignments. I wondered what the problem might have been, and then all of the sudden I got an awful sinking feeling. I went to the course syllabus and read it through and, just as I had suspected (ok, just as I had feared) the deadline for assignments in this course is 6:00 PM on the due date.

6:00 PM.

All of my previous classes had a 12:00 midnight due time on the assigned date, but that is absolutely no excuse for my boneheaded mistake. The instructor had spelled it out in no uncertain terms that the deadline was 6:00 and yet for some stupid reason that never clicked in my mind. Also in the syllabus the instructor made it clear that he will not accept late work under any circumstances.

Now I have to proceed in this class with the prospect of having a couple of big, fat zeroes on my record and the unfortunate outlook of having to offset those pathetic grades with a lot of very high marks to balance them out.

Wonderful...

And of course I have only myself to blame. No excuses, nothing to fall back on. I blew it, plain and simple, and I blew it because of my own stupidity. So I'm mad alright, mad at myself.

That's all, I don't feel like writing any more...

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Discounts, baby, discounts!

steve — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:52:00 GMT

My family and I will be taking a week long trip to Scotland. None of us have ever taken a pleasure trip out of the country, unless you count the Bahamas. This coming month, we'll be taking advantage of some very cheap fares that will allow each of us to fly from central Florida to Glasgow for about $500 round trip, per person. From Glasgow, we'll take the train to Edinburgh, where I have rented an apartment for the week.

I say all of that to say this: in Scotland, I have found that there are quite a LOT of student discounts. Just about every place that charges admission, and just about every tour and attraction, provide some sort of student discount. Hey, even at 44 years old I'm not going to hesitate to whip out my St. Petersburg College student ID card in order to take advantage of those savings.

I also learned that the prices for "children" are also considerably better in Scotland (usually half the cost of adult prices) and so far, just about every place I've checked consider ages 15 and under "children". Here in the US I think we're lucky if a 12-year-old is still considered a child. Based on that both of my two teenagers will be able to take advantage of child pricing during our trip.

Now, overall, prices in Edinburgh seem to be a fair amount higher than prices in the United States for things like food and so forth, and some of that has to do with exchange rates. For example, a sub sandwich for lunch here may cost you five dollars, and in Edinburgh it will cost you five pounds. But thanks to the nearly $1.90 to each pound exchange rate as I type this, that $5 sub will cost me nearly $10.

So I really appreciate the student and child discounts.

I also found, through my school's web site, that my local cable provider offers a very significant discounts to SPC students on high speed internet. I'm already paying for that service, so I signed up for the discount online (it took about 30 seconds) and now I'm getting $10 a month off my $40 internet service.

If you're taking classes online, check and see if you qualify for any student discounts. It may be an easy way to save a buck or two...

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I've learned some magic words...

steve — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 02:00:00 GMT

I've learned some magic words, and they can be found right inside the course catalog for my college. As you may know, I ended up dropping out of my Human Anatomy and Physiology class because it was simply too difficult and time consuming and the material itself held no interest for me. On top of that, I'm only taking science classes to satisfy the general education requirements of my AA degree. I'm not a science major, I'm going to go on and work toward a Bachelor's in business.

So now that my really tough science class is off my schedule, I'm working diligently on my other science class, Earth Sciences. The contrast between the two courses is strikingly dramatic. While at first look it appeared the anatomy class was one of the most difficult I'd ever encountered, the Earth Sciences class seems very, very easy.

What is the difference?

It all has to do with the intent and focus of the course. In reading the course catalog more closely, I encounted the sentence that I now refer to as "the magic words". That sentence appears near the beginning of certain course descriptions, and is basically something like this:

"This is an introductory course designed for students who choose a major other than science".

Now I'm a guy who is usually up for a challenge, and while I feel a little guilty about bailing out of the anatomy class, I now realize that there is no sense killing myself to trudge through a course and potentially hurt my GPA to take on the challenge of a class that really isn't even part of my area of focus or my degree plan.

From now on, I'll choose my classes more wisely and make sure that I'm selecting classes that are more compatible with my goals.

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