There are two questions that most prospective distance
learning students ask when considering a program: “How much does it cost?” and “How much time
and effort will it take?”
I’ve already discussed the cost of the Penn
Foster College
degree program quite a bit, but I’m only alluded to the time and effort it
takes. Ideally, I would have earned by
associate degree by now. Two things
prevented me from even getting past the first semester yet. First, I was working seven days a week when I
first started this program. I thought I
could do that and study at the same time, but the truth is it really is
difficult to do that. There is a time
commitment involved in your studies, and at Penn
Foster College
about two hours of studying each days has helped me move along in my studies
much faster. Also, I had a number of
family issues when caused me to take extended breaks from studying.
How much effort does it take? Some students may tell you that the courses
at Penn Foster
College are easy, and after all,
the exams are open-book. Some of the
courses WERE easy, but I found others to be quite difficult, namely Math for
Business and Finance and Principles of Management.
The English Composition course I’ve been yammering about for
the past month or so really isn’t all that difficult, but it can be time
consuming. There is a certain amount of
time involved in crafting and writing the essay, and then of course there is
the obnoxiously long wait for the essay grades.
It took about a month for my last essay to be graded. In the end, I was happy with my grade. I received a score of 90 on my Narrative
Essay. What does it take to score a 90
on an essay assignment? I have posted my
essay online for all to take a look. It’s
not that I’m bragging about my grade, but I figured some might be curious about
what Penn Foster
College looks for in an essay.
So, to answer the question “how much time and effort does it
take?” to succeed at Penn Foster
College, I would say you get out of
your program what you put into it. If
you procrastinate, it will take you a very long time. If you put in the time and effort and
schedule time to work on it each day, you should progress through the program
in a reasonably short amount of time.