Going back to school

So I decided to finally start on my masters through an online program that Chrissy found. University of Nebraska Kearney offers an online BIOLOGY masters which means I can take classes that are actually interesting, instead of getting a masters in education.

Except, I forgot about it a little and signed up late. I had to sweet talk to get myself into the school and then a little more to get into a closed class. How can an online class be closed? There are at least sixty people enrolled in the class and then those people are broken into discussion groups. I think there are more than sixty though because my name is not even on the list and it seems like some other people signed up late as well.

The problem with signing up late is that I just got one of my books today (two weeks later), I dont have the DVDs with the lectures so I am sitting in the coffee shop listening to lecture one (in the third week when I should have at least four of them listened to), and your first assignment is due a lot sooner than you think.

Well... I found out about the first assignment on Thursday and it was due on the following Monday. This assignment included evaluating four book about evolution, creationism, or intelligent design by reading the reviews on Amazon and evaluating the reviews. I picked the wrong books obviously and had to read over four hundred reviews in a short amount of time without internet (I copied them page after page after page into Word). I was determined not to spend the WHOLE weekend working on it so I spent Sunday at the book fair, at Mr J's bagelry, and then hiking in Shenandoah. A day well spent, but an evening hunched in front of a computer trying to decide how to interpret my data and write the paper. Writing the paper was actually pretty easy, the hard part was reading all those damn reviews. I have discovered that I earned a 21/25 on this paper and I am waiting for snail mail to bring the comments on my paper back to me.

What did I learn from this assignment? There is a lot less trash talking in Amazon reviews than I expected. But there are a lot of people easily swayed by reading a book either to the evolution side or to the intelligent design side. That is scary. I also learned that there are literally zero negative comments about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - so we should all just switch to that. RAmen!

Week two's assignment was merely posting on a discussion board.. easy... but on two different days... hard... about a ridiculous article called Intelligent Falling those crazy religious fundamentalists' newest attack on science - specifically on gravity. Ridiculous.

So... not really behind, but sort or really behind. Turns out I had one of the books I needed for class on my bookshelf in the waiting to be read pile - so I started reading it and I think I am in the right place. The other book came in the mail today and now I just need to read it. It will be interesting, but am I organized enough to teach two classes and take a class?

Time will tell.