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
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