Friends Graduate From WGU!

I apologize that I have been away from the blog for some time. I have been taking term breaks from my studies to care for a family member in need. The flexability of WGU is fantastic when emergencies happen and I have been able to attend school when I need to and care for my family when I need to. But I have great news for all of you. My friends wife graduated from the university with one of WGU's teaching degrees and I'm pleased to say that she has been hired and working with children which she is very excited about. And in other news my friend also recently graduated with a degree in IT and has also found employment. Congratulations and I wish them both the best with their new careers.

Getting Back On Track

Last term was tough, and sadly, I didn't pass a couple courses. Working on a new term to tackle the two I missed and am down a bit on motivation. I have had a couple mentor changes. My first mentor whom I really liked accepted a promotion within WGU, then I got a new mentor that I also liked that accepted a position in his hometown, and now I have another mentor that I also like very much. She answers e-mails and calls very promptly, is very understanding, and is doing a great job motivating me to accomplish my goals.

Doing online schooling is tough. Not just because of the academics but how easy it is to slack during the hot summer months. Procrastination will KILL you so it is extremely important to make a schedule and keep it. Do not let your friends, your significant other, TV shows, or anything else (with the exception of emergencies with children, etc.) keep you from studying.

I am still in good standing with the university of course, but I have fallen slightly. My friend, also enrolled in the university, has had his bad terms as well so I just get back on the horse and keep moving forward. I am determined to get back on track and will keep all of you posted on my progress.

A New Term

I apologize for being missing in action for a few months but things have been crazy. I passed LAT1 and LUT1 last term with my video presentation being accepted merely days before the term ended. I thank Taskstream for their prompt grading of my materials.

December marked the start of a new term and after spending some time with lower division courses I am happy to be back into some IT courses and the opportunity to go for a couple new certifications; CIW Javascript Specialist and Windows 7 which will give me my Microsoft MCTS.

I just tested for my CIW Javascript yesterday and failed by 3 questions. Yes, 3 questions. The CIW practice exams were considerably more difficult than the test and I spent alot of time on syntax when most of the questions were more general in nature. What upsets me is I think this was my "easy" test and the next one I take is going to be syntax heavy with much more difficult questions.

But what can I do? I was close, and that's a good thing. Next time...

Stay tuned.

LAT1 - The Long Road

It has been awhile since I've blogged on here, and that has been due to being tied up with LAT1, a 10-15 page research paper. I did pass SSC1, Social Sciences by the way, and spent around a month just getting started on LAT1. We choose our own topics for LAT1, and the greatest challenge is finding enough sources for that topic as you're going to need at least 10 of them.

Anyone remember "choose your own adventure" books where you turn the page only to find out you just got eaten by an alligator or fell into a ravine? Well, LAT1 can be like this:

- Choose your topic only to find out there are hardly any sources for it. The end.

- Choose your topic, it has plenty of sources, but the sources aren't reputable enough. The end.

- Choose your topic only to find out it isn't researchable. The end.

And then there are delays. You must select a paragraph and highlight it for a paraphrasing assignment but you need Adobe Acrobat or some other software you don't have to be able to highlight sections of a pdf file. Fortunately, the wise people on the message boards have all kinds of workarounds.

LAT1 is slow going if you haven't done a research paper before. Learning APA formatting, how to cite correctly, thesis statements, main points, and evidence, etc. But this course has given me a great chance to truly assess the value of WGU support and I must say everything has been impressive.

I am using the message boards all the time asking questions, e-mailing instructors, chatting with instructors, and I always get a response in at least a couple hours if there are no instructors available to chat.

To chat - you look at the mentor contact button and it will say "available" and you simply click and enter your info. You wait about 10 seconds and an instructor will say "Hi" and you can ask your questions live. Easy.

If no one is available in chat it will say "click to e-mail" and someone will respond after a short while. If it's the middle of the night you'll have to wait until the next day. Or you can ask a question in the message board and a student may answer.

Taskstream is where you submit your work and while there were some criticisms when I began my enrollment they have been great for me. Grading is fast and I even had something graded on Halloween which would never happen at a brick and mortar school.

I am not done with LAT1 and still need to finish LUT1 within a couple weeks before the term ends but am confident I can do it.

With that being said, The Annotated Bibliography be damned. What a pain.

SSC1 - Social Sciences

My last course INC1 was, as I have stated, a pain in the butt. I needed to read each chapter in full as shown in the course of study because I had no competency with the material. But what happens when you are reading through a chapter and feel you already know some of the material and feel you're losing some time to redundancy? This has started to happen with my social sciences course.

Now mind you, I don't know too much of the material already, but there is a chapter here and there that I feel I may be already competent. And since these chapters are fairly long I could save quite a bit of time if I could somehow "skip" these areas. So I am going to offer a tip on how to do this for those of you enrolled at the university.

Take the pre-assessment and view the coaching report. If you see an area where you scored 100% or even in the 90% range, skip that area and move on. There are also section/chapter quizzes you can use to gauge competency; if I score high on a chapter quiz, I move on to the next chapter. And If you scored really high on the pre-assessment itself, you can probably just schedule your exam and get the course completed quickly.

I take my exam next week.

INC1 - A Nightmare In Science

I took my exam for Integrated Natural Sciences (INC1) today and passed, although not by much. Do I care? No. Just glad to have it out of the way.

For those of you enrolled at WGU who haven't yet taken INC1 let me explain roughly what it is: Physics, Nuclear Physics, Chemistry, Genetics, Earth Sciences, Biology, Evolution, Ecosystems, and Astronomy all rolled into one gigantic science course. The information was well presented and I have no problems with the course itself; I learned a great deal and got a kick out of knowing that while kissing someone our atoms aren't actually touching.

The problem I had was the test was very specific for so much information. Usually a test for a course that covers alot of ground asks more general questions such as "what is an igneous rock?" instead of "(insert chemical equation here) what element is this?" There were also a great deal of multiple answer questions so you MUST know your stuff.

While difficult, you will learn much about the world around us and within us and I rather enjoyed some sections such as ecosystems. But chemistry and genetics be damned...

This exam sucked - I'm not going to lie. 76 questions of pure hell.

Term 3 Update

The first course of term 3 went well - Reasoning & Problem Solving. I scored high on the pre-assessment so I just went ahead and scheduled the exam. I passed with a high score. With the exception of the college hotties in the testing room distracting me (yes, even online students spend some time on campus), the test went smoothly.

So I have been working on my first science course, Integrated Natural science. I am not a left brained person and so math and science aren't my most anticipated courses to tackle. And the Integrated Natural Science course covers a lot of ground with everything from biology to physics to astronomy. It is a lot to take on.

The learning resources are great as usual, and there are short videos available with a professor that is quite entertaining. I don't think he dates much, but he is a great science professor. My only gripe is the Biology ebook - it looks great but since it is picture heavy it has a slight lag in scrolling pages. Giving it a few seconds to "catch up" usually does the trick. The other main ebook is fantastic; easy to navigate and read, good illustrations, but not overdone.

Needless to say I am behind schedule right now as I was ill for a couple weeks along with horrible allergies but am working hard to get back on track. I still have enough time in the term, but would like to be farther along than I am.