The Second Half of My Education Continues

I was accepted to Georgian Court University today.  I don't know if I should feel all that excited about it, being that it is a local university, but I think it's pretty big in scale.  Tonight, I am going to fill in all of my FAFSA information and make my appointment with advising.  I have only one obstacle standing in my way, a math class.  They want me to take Survey of Mathematics to round out my requirements.  Now this isn't a big deal to me.  I would rather do this than calculus or statistics, so I'm not really complaining or grumbling all that much over the issue.  There are many other issues that I have to deal with when it comes to preparing for this school that are far more challenging than my last Ocean County College requirement.  Of course, these issues have nothing to do with my academic life.   There are things that I will miss about coming to OCC, like my radio work at Viking Radio, but there will be other things to occupy my time I'm sure.  I never thought that I would be doing all of this in my late thirties, but better late than never at all.  I have a classmate in my Biology class who is older than me and she is taking classes so that she can go into the biomedical field.  I find that even more inspiring to me, because it gives me more incentive to pursue my dreams.

The thing about OCC is that it's not really like a university in that it's a very relaxed atmosphere when it comes to most curriculum, grading, and classroom environment.  In fact, not to criticize some of the instructors that work at this institution, I think some of them just come here to teach part-time as a means of not fully retiring or not dedicating themselves to a full workload.  I have an instructor like that this semester, and I feel like I'm really not learning all that much from a lecture perspective.  All of the literature from the course, that I read on my own time, makes up for most of it.  So I have to take into consideration that my next step isn't Hooper High, it's a real university.  Not all of the instructors from OCC are like this though, because I have some really wonderful professors over my time here.  These are the people who really cared about their students and taught me.  My favorite English professor at OCC, William Kanouse, improved my writing skills by one-hundred-fifty percent.  Unfortunately, Prof. Kanouse passed away a few years back.  He was the toughest teacher I've had, but I learned a great deal.  My former Shakespeare professor, Dr. Botein is awesome too!  I really found a new interest in the plays through her class.  I'll miss classes like those.  There are good and bad apples, as they say, wherever you go.

I had gone through different choices about what to do with the rest of my educational career and I have come down to two different paths.  One is to pursue an English/Education degree that I can use to teach with, and the other is pursuing Journalism, which is very uncertain.  I have been accepted into the teaching program at the Woman's College at Georgian Court University, but I am going to minor in communications and journalism.  I want to keep those hopes alive in case I want to change majors sometime in the future.  The bonus with going into their teaching program is that I get the inclusive courses in the No Child Left Behind program, which will add to my certifications.  This will be a tough course-load, but I am willing to work hard.  I realize that all of the radio dreams and all of that will not be part of my future right now, but you never know how things will change later on.  I'm not completely counting it out right yet.  I'm really excited about my life right now and I can't wait to be a student at GCU.