Posts Tagged ‘education’
6 of 15 – How Things Change…
In some ways, I have always been fickle. I changed my major multiple times until I finally settled on my degree path. Even know, I am still not fully sure what I want to be when I grow up.
Right now, I am a teacher. I hope to be teaching for a while, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll be teaching for the rest of my career.
I’m meeting with my advisor at some point this week, because… well, I’ve had some thoughts. I had initially said I was going to take a break from the Master’s I am currently pursuing and immediately jump into Folk Studies. In fact, I made that very announcement on this blog a week ago.
Guess what? I’ve changed my mind. A little. A Master’s in Folk Studies is still, hopefully, in my future. However, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I really should finish the degree I started. After all, I get free tuition, I don’t plan to leave WKU any time soon, and graduate courses expire. I could easily lose the nine hours I’ve taken toward this Master’s in Library Media Education.
There are two tracts I can take in this degree. One is Educational Technology. The other is Library Media Specialist, which is basically a school librarian.
The Library Media Education degree is one of the most popular Master’s Degrees at WKU. I feel that it could make me more valuable at WKU if I finish it. After all, speaking very selfishly, one of the big reasons I want to stay at WKU is the free tuition. If something should happen to my job, I’d like to have other options.
So, to sum up, Folk Studies is taking a bit of a backseat. I’m going to finish my LME degree now. I do, however, need to decide at some point whether I am going to take the Educational Technology route or the Library Media Specialist route. There are pros and cons to both.
To be perfectly honest, this degree doesn’t directly fit into my big decision. I started working on it before I made this decision.
But again, I want to stay at WKU, and this degree may help me do that, just by virtue of giving me a broader base to work from. One of the things that makes me a BIG anomaly in my field is that I do not hold certification. All of my colleagues do. Certification, if you work in teacher education (which I do), is a BIG deal. If I go the Educational Technology route, then I won’t have certification. If I go the Library Media Specialist route, even though it would be significantly more difficult, I would obtain that desirable certification. And frankly, I think I would enjoy the training to becoming a librarian. After all, I love books.
So, if I get to stay at WKU, at some point down the road, probably ten years into the future, I plan to start a degree that will very directly impact my big decision. It’s something that I wish I had done years ago, just because I really enjoy it.
I am eventually going to begin a science degree.
Specifically, I want to earn my Bachelor’s of Science in Astronomy and Physics.
Have I mentioned just how much I love science?
I still want to earn a terminal degree. If you had asked me ten months ago, I would have said that I want a doctorate in Literacy Education.
Today… well, I still might. I might want a terminal degree in Library Media Education.
Or I might decide to get a terminal degree in Astrophysics. Who knows?
By the way, this degree isn’t the decision. It’s just one potential step on the path to that decision.
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4 of 15 – Working in Academia
Before I get into this post, let me ask anyone willing to do so to please pray for our family. My mother-in-law had what we thought was a minor heart attack on Friday. Cut to the cardiac catheter run on Monday morning, and we’ve discovered that, while it was a minor heart attack, she’s got some major blockages that could have led to a much more serious heart attack. She’s having open heart surgery today. Everything should go fine, but we’d still appreciate any prayers anyone is willing to give.
***
I’ve shared on more than one occasion that I LOVE my job. I am a literacy instructor at Western Kentucky University. I have the most amazing boss ever, my colleagues are fantastic, and I enjoy what I do. I teach students how to improve their reading skills. This is a population of students who already know how to read – they just don’t know how to read at the college level. In one semester, we can usually give our students the skills they need to survive the next four years of college, and that’s a nice feeling.
But…
This isn’t what I planned to do with the rest of my life.
Now don’t get me wrong. I fully expect to be in academia for the next twenty plus years. I plan to retire from here. WKU has amazing benefits, the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System (which I am now six years vested in – woo hoo!) is even more amazing, and frankly… I like being in a place that enhances learning. I like academia. I like knowledge.
Even if the knowledge that I am now imparting is NOT what I initially came to college to do.
As I mentioned in post #1 of 15, I came to college to study science and enter medicine. Who knows? I may still find myself in a medical field in the future. That is not, however, in the cards right now.
But you know what is in the cards right now? More education.
One of the perks of being a full-time employee of WKU is that I get 18 hours of free tuition a year. I’m already taking advantage of it and working on my Masters of Science in Library Media Education. However, at the end of this semester, I am changing my degree for two reasons.
One has to do with the big potentially life-changing decision I’ve made.
The other is because the degree I am currently working on isn’t for me. It just doesn’t fit. I thought this degree would be technology from an educational perspective, and while it is, it’s geared more toward elementary school teachers than college instructors. I’m going to finish the class I’m currently in (because I’m certainly not going to stop taking the class and hurt my g.p.a.) and then, I’m moving into a different field.
The field I’ve chosen? The next degree I’m going to get?
I’m going to get my Master’s of Arts in Folk Studies.
And yes, this is going to help me accomplish the next big step in my life, even though this degree is just one little baby step toward it.
I loved folk studies for so many reasons. I had a minor in it during my first Bachelor’s degree, and I loved it! Folk studies is about the study of what people think, say, and do. Honestly, those handful of classes I took for my minor were among the most interesting and most useful classes I have EVER taken. They’ve been beneficial at every job I’ve ever had, because I’ve interacted with people in every job. Studying folklore makes you very culturally aware, and for what I have in mind, that’ll be a great skill set to have.
In addition, I’m taking the thesis option with this degree. In my last Master’s degree, while there was a writing project at the end, it wasn’t a thesis. I love to write and I need to do some research (more info on that in a later post), and this will be a great way to get my feet wet.
Oh, and did I mention that I can get this degree for free? I love my job!
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1 of 15 – My Educational Travels
First of all, welcome to November! Rabbit rabbit!
(Does anyone else do that?)
On Halloween, I teased about how I am going to describe a major, potentially life-changing direction my life is about to take. I’ll admit we’re talking BIG picture here, not small things, even though a lot of small things are involved. Since this is post 1 of 15, then you haven’t missed anything. Pull up a chair. Join us!
I’m going to start off by talking about what I pictured my future would be like when I was in high school.
From about the age of 7 on, I had made up my mind that I wanted to become a doctor. I LOVED biology. I loved gross anatomy. If it had to do with blood and guts, medicine and health… I was all about it. I took every AP science and mathematics course my high school offered (and did awesome at them, by the way).
I make it to college, and I do fair in Inorganic Chemistry. Molecular biology kind of kicked my butt, but… well, I had literally JUST discovered the internet, and even though everybody was on Geocities, a brand new world had suddenly opened up to me. I just didn’t study as much as I should have.
Starting in my sophomore year of college, back in the dark ages of the fall of 1997, I took Organic Chemistry I. I studied, but admittedly, not NEARLY as hard as I should have. Let’s be honest. I should have devoted at least twenty hours a week to this class. I probably spent… oh… maybe three. Per week. If I was having a test that week.
I may be a hard worker now, but I was LAZY then. Young and stupid, what can I say?
I got an F. First F of my life.
I retook it in the spring, but (I swear I’m not making this up), my grandmother died and that week, I got so behind, I ended up taking the class for an audit because I was staring down the barrel of a D. (But on the plus side, I did finally get the hang of Nuclear Magnetic Spectroscopy.)
I signed up ONE more time for Organic Chemistry in fall of my junior year of college. I knew this was make or break. If I didn’t do well, then I had to say good bye to medical school. I got a decent grade on my first test. Not great, but decent.
I will NEVER forget the day that I got my second test back. I still remember the grade. 55 out of 100. I didn’t see the possibility of doing better than a D in the class. Medical school, as far as I knew, was gone. I would not be becoming a doctor.
If I had a magic time machine and I could go back to that moment, I would do one of two things.
One, I would tell 20 year old me, “Dude, a lot of people get a C in Organic Chemistry and still make it into medical school. Don’t give up. And get off the dial-up internet and study harder, dumb ass.”
Or two, “Okay, so you think you can’t become a doctor. That doesn’t mean you have to give up on science or even medicine. Why don’t you consider becoming a nurse?”
I didn’t. I had taken Introduction to Psychology during the previous summer, and I changed my major. I enjoyed the coursework. I hate the field. HATE the field. It took me a while to figure that out.
Oh wait, no it didn’t. I figured that out about a year after graduation.
I briefly entertained the notion of becoming a School Psychologist. I even got into the graduate program, which was fairly competitive. I again learned that School Psychology was not for me, either. It wasn’t bad grades that chased me out. It was the fact that I just didn’t like it.
In the spring of 2003, I enrolled at WKU to become a teacher. You’d think, if I loved science, I would become a science teacher, wouldn’t you? But no. My self-esteem was so tore up by that C in Organic Chemistry that I had myself convinced that I wasn’t smart enough to get a science degree. Therefore, I fell back on my second love.
Writing and literature. I worked hard, and in just four semesters, I completed my second Bachelor’s of Arts, this time in English & Allied Language Arts.
I spent a year as a teacher and got a Master’s Degree of Secondary Education out of it. After I left teaching, I went through a string of humanities-related teaching jobs, literally covering the gamut from birth to death. My favorite was corrections, where I stood in an overcrowded classroom in a county jail and taught GED to orange-suited inmates. Seriously. I really liked that job.
I made some amazing contacts in the field of education and developed some great skills, and that brings me to my current job at WKU, teaching literacy to incoming freshmen. I’m working on completing my graduate literacy certificate, which will allow me to begin teaching upper level literacy courses. I can’t wait!
But… I still miss science. A lot.
Oh, I forgot one little detour. In the spring of 2008, I started nursing school.
No joke. In the fall of 2007, I took Anatomy and Physiology (you’ll never guess who my teacher was – not joking, it was the man who, as a child actor, played Danny Torrance in Kubrick’s The Shining¬¬ – I am not joking – you can’t make that up), because I wanted to get out of adult education and back into medicine. Fortunately, I met Tina, and I dropped out of nursing school. Right after I met her, I knew she was something special, and nursing school is demanding enough that I knew I couldn’t build a relationship and continue.
I don’t regret that decision for a moment. I regret nothing on the path of my life that has brought me to Tina, who is truly the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
Now I ended up getting the greatest job I have EVER had and I truly intend to retire from WKU. I love my colleagues, I love my bosses, I love my students, I love everything about my job. (I would like a window in my office. Just saying.) But the call of science has never left me. Suffice it to say, 16 year old me would be very surprised at what I’m doing for a living. Teaching was NOT in the game plan.
And no, I’m not planning to go to nursing or medical school. More details on my big decision coming soon.
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I’m a Rambling Man
I’ve been pretty incommunicado lately.
Let me go ahead and warn you that this is going to be a very ramble-y blog post. I’ve got a lot to say and no coherent way to tie it all up, so this may be a James Joyce-ian stream of consciousness blog post. It will be far shorter than Ulysses, however.
"James Joyce is much tougher than Seuss..."
Nothing bad has happened. I have been EXTREMELY busy for the past few weeks, but nothing bad is going on in my life at all.
Quite the contrary.
I still have an amazing job.
My job gives me six free hours of tuition every semester. I have decided to start my second Master’s degree, a Master’s of Science in Library Media and Educational Technology. I am currently taking a May-term class. If you don’t know what that means, imagine a regular semester-long graduate class crammed into three weeks.
Lots of homework. Lots of late night reading. Lots and lots and lots of writing and typing out various reports.
I love it. Every second of it. But I won’t deny that it’s taking up a lot of my time.
Oh, and I’m doing another three-week class in June as soon as this one ends.
In other job news, I thought things might slow down a bit when the regular Spring semester ended. After all, campus is almost completely dead now. There can’t be that much to do, right?
Wrong. Somehow, I’m finding myself even busier at work than when campus had 15,000 people on it.
I’m okay with that. I LOVE MY JOB! If I wanted another tattoo, I would get one that said something to that effect. (Given that I have wanted to remove the small tattoo I currently possess and have wanted it gone for about four years now, it really wouldn’t make that much sense to get another one when I can just show my job-love here on my blog.)
"I went to get I Heart WKU... Got talked into this instead... This... this wasn't a good idea."
Part of my job-love is because I came from utter HELL before I landed here.
"I wasn't really set on fire at my last job... but I did have to pull several dozen knives out of my back daily."
Part of my job-love is that I absolutely adore WKU. This is my alma mater. To paraphrase my boss in referring to her alma mater, I love every single brick of this place. Sometime this fall, when campus is beautiful and I can take an afternoon off, I’ll take my camera and do a virtual tour here.
I’ve also had some joyous celebration, because my wife has just graduated! She walked the line about a week ago and is the proud recipient of a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology.
I’m not sure if other campus do this or allow it, but at WKU, many graduates decorate their mortar board. Tina’s was one of the best. And I’m not just being biased because she’s my wife. When the graduation was aired on WKU’s news channel, the camera crew selected her mortar board as the one to talk about live and on the air.
That is our mascot, Big Red. She doesn't have Grimace on her hat.
Of course, she made it with glitter, and glitter is the herpes of the craft world. In other words, once you get glitter, even if you think you’re clear, you really aren’t. Even our cat had glitter on him at one point during this craft process.
So that took up a little time.
There have been a lot of celebrations.
There has been a lot of laziness.
I went to the gym on Monday morning before work.
Yeah, that was pretty much the last time I went.
My weight has crept up.
Sometimes when I gain weight, I truly have to shrug and say, “I have no idea what happened!”
I can’t do that this time. I know EXACTLY why my weight has crept up. I’ve been eating too much and not moving enough.
Tina and I are about to start a little detox. We’re going to cut WAY back on processed foods for the next few days, and then, starting on Tuesday, we’re going to go a week without processed foods. Not forever, just for a while. Just to jump start our motivation.
Babies are in our future. We want to start our family. I don’t want to be a fat dad. Tina doesn’t want to be one of those women who could be fat or could be pregnant. She wants to clearly be pregnant with no ambiguity. The good side of this is that Tina is very close to goal weight. She isn’t far off at all. In fact, I expect Tina to be at goal weight before we go run from Zombies on October 22nd. I won’t be, but I plan to be on my way.
So… that’s kinda why I haven’t had a weigh-in lately. I truly believe that if someone doesn’t weigh in at least two weeks in a row, it’s because they’ve gained weight.
Guilty.
Stay tuned. I want to turn this train around. I don’t want to merely say, “I’ve got this,” over and over and never do.
Actions speaker louder than words. Right?
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