Asa Jay's weblog

I’m painfully reminded why I’ve never taken a social science class before, it’s very non-technical and involves too much “emotion.” That’s my knee-jerk impression after attending my first night of class for the sociology of death and dying. Why in the world would I take such a course? Mostly for very good reasons, I need to fulfill a social science requirement for graduation and this class appeared to be just as good as any other in the sessions I could choose from. I just don’t think it’s the right class for me.

To start with, the class has 20 people in it, that’s almost twice as many as my last class. The room feels crowded to me, and with so many people I don’t feel the urge to participate, though a portion of our grade is going to be on class participation. My last class I participated in real well, but this one is going to be more difficult.

The second problem, as it relates to class participation, is that I probably have much different beliefs about death and the grieving process. Most folks are big on funerals, viewing the deceased in a casket, making a big deal, crying, wailing, etc. I can understand a bit of emotion tied to the loss of a loved one, it’s happened to me; however, I sometimes wonder if I am more comfortable in my faith because I look at death (of others) as a release from the burdens of this life, a victory which none of us living can truly understand. For me, a funeral is a celebration of life, not death.

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I’ve had a blog on MSN Spaces for quite some time, though I really don’t use it. Today when I went there just to see if my blog was still there, I thought I had accidentally been re-directed to an Ubuntu website. What? Hmmm, yea, interesting.

If you look at the new logo for MSN Spaces, you’ll see it has a remarkable resemblance to the logo for Ubuntu. It’s so similar in fact, that I’m sure there is a case for copyright or trademark infringement here, the only questions being who was there first, or has it been trademarked?

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I don’t know that you could call me a voracious news reader; however, I do read a lot of news and today I stumbled on this gem from BBC News which talks about Saddam Hussein predicting terror attacks on America and Great Britian. The entire Iraq invasion has driven a wedge among the people of the United States. Nearly three years into the liberation/occupation, there are people either strongly for it, or strongly against it.

At one point in time I had played some devil’s advocate scenarios in my head. One of those ideas went something like this:
What if Saddam didn’t really know about the weapons programs allegedly taking place in Iraq? Maybe it was generals or others underneath him who were building these things up, keeping a buffer of safety between the programs and the dictator to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps he was totally unaware, perhaps he was telling the truth. Or at least maybe he was telling the truth about having dismantled everything, that there were no programs still in place, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

There are two things that come out of this article, the first that Hussein had clairvoyant knowledge of terror attacks that would happen in the US and Britain, and the second being that he knew about weapons programs and was actively hiding them. My postulations were rather incorrect, what was my first instinctual reactions were more true, that Hussein -was- up to something, and -was- a danger.

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In my quest for a four year degree, I am now one class down.  After looking at my information from the registrars office it would appear I’m in for about 20 more classes before I can graduate.  12 of those classes are in the cohort program specifically for the Organizational Management degree I am going for.  The other eight will fill in General Requirements for graduation from Whitworth College.  Actually, if I’ve read everything correctly, I will have one more class than I really need to graduate, but that’s okay since I need to maintain full-time student status in order to continue receiving my financial aid.  Barring any problems, I should have my degree by September of 2008.

Right now, September 2008 seems a long way off.  That’s almost three years, which seems odd considering I had a full 64 credits transfer to Whitworth; half of the required 126 for graduation.  You’d think that would put me at the half way point in a four year degree; needing only two years to complete.  Well, if I was simply attending classes during the day and didn’t have a job, I guess that would probably be true.  However, in the accelerated course format that I am enrolled in, two years is going to take a little bit longer.  I’ll be in school all of 2006, all of 2007 and a bit over half of 2008.  Overall I guess it’s not that bad.

Starting in February of 2007 I will be in the structured cohort portion.  This is the next logical “entry point” for me.  There are two entry points each year, one in February and one later in the fall I’m not exactly sure when.  My plan is to get all my general requirements out of the way prior to entry in the cohort so that when I actually finish the cohort portion, I will be done and ready for my diploma.  I have heard it can be very difficult for a student to continue after the cohort, having to finish up with lower level courses to satisfy general requirements.  By getting mine out of the way up front, I’ll be finishing the program on a high note, ready to put my education to work for me instead of trudging through more generals.  The other neat thing about the cohort is that I will enter it with a group of students, who I will have for each and every one of the 12 classes in the cohort.  Unless students drop out, the class will remain the same for all 12 sessions, the only thing changing being the subject and instructors.  I’m told this really lends itself well to the education of each student since a sense of teamwork develops and with that the students become stronger together and finish better.  I’m looking forward to that.

The cohort is already structured for me, but until then I need to keep my own schedule full.  To help me with that I have found I can enroll in many classes ahead of time.  Right now, I am enrolled in classes through July of 2006.  I’m keeping my schedule on line here at asajay.com in a WebCalendar which you can view.  This makes it handy for me to check my schedule from anywhere as long as I have access to a computer, the Internet and a browser.  By making a schedule for myself I’m able to keep myself on track.  This is the longest forward looking project I’ve done ever, I think.  Even when we were building our house, our plan was only about a year out though it did take almost a year and a half.

So I’m one class down, Research and Writing is now chalked up as an elective toward completion of my goal.  My next class is the Sociology of Death and Dying.  Yea, I know it sounds morbid but I’m at an age where my parents are getting pretty old and there have been many other deaths of people close to me in the last few years.  I’m actually looking forward to the course to see what it delivers.  The cool part is that it satisfies a general requirement, part of my plan to get done as quickly as possible.  I start tonight; we’ll see how it shakes out.

Asa Jay

I’ve just finished my Research and Writing course at Whitworth tonight. During our last night, our instructor took some time with us individually to solicit feedback about class, and to give us personalized feedback about her impressions of our writing. I found what she had to say enlightening and that I’m not really what I write, when I write for class.

I’m not really into writing essays. It probably goes back to that “think too much” thing, and the “test anxiety” I’ve had in the past. Here I am writing freely and coming through pretty clear, but when writing an essay, I seem to start “not being myself.” Subconsciously, I think I knew that was going on, but I think it took someone I respected, like my class instructor, to tell me what was really happening and make me see it up close.

Part of our class was spent on our own time posting messages to a discussion board. I did this with quite some zeal. I felt I had a lot of experience that I could relate, and in many discussions I felt I had something to say. My on line writing for the class was read by the instructor and gave her a good impression of who I was through my writing. Unfortunately when she started reading my essays, she started to wonder who had written them because they didn’t seem to be written by the same person.

The point she was making, was that my essay writing was very different than my personal writing. She was encouraging me to try and figure out why I was being different, and to try and overcome that difference so that more of “me” was coming out in my essays. I found it to be some pretty interesting feedback and we talked for a while, with me “analyzing” like I tend to do which was probably the wrong thing to do.

I’m sure my essay writing is stilted, because when writing papers outside of just personal expression, I tend to write in a technical fashion. Hmm, seems as though I’ve transferred that to my essay writing, and I need to stop. As I’m writing this, the words are coming freely and without much “pre-thought” to it. This is the kind of thing I need to bring to my essays. So from now on, I need to keep writing in my blog here, and when I do writing for class, I need to try and write in a similar fashion that I do here.

I think it was very valuable feedback, as I continue to work toward my degree and will be doing a lot of writing in the next two years. I’m a bit embarrassed about it all really, and I do need to concentrate on it more in the future, or perhaps I need to -not- think about it so much and just try to “be myself” when I write for class.

I need to get “me” into my essay writing, wish me luck.

Asa Jay