End of Third Quarter Final

Hi all.

So....hope everyone had great holidays. Mine was pretty okay. :) My new books for next quarter have arrived and they look pretty interesting. I am, however, currently wrangling with the Sallie Mae people about loan funding. They have, for some inexplicable reason, done away with the Signature Student Loan that was an alternative loan funding source allowing you to borrow the remainder of what you need for school plus extra for expenses like room and board, etc. With that loan, repayment is made starting 6 months after graduation. The interest rate is ridiculous, but it was a great source of funding, especially being able to borrow extra for living expenses seeing as I am still (grrr!) unemployed. Now, the only loans they are offering require you to make payments on the interest while going to school. Ummm...hello? Are they high? I'm not working, I have no income, how the hell am I supposed to make payments on a loan? So....I called them and they said that I did not qualify for grandfathering for the Signature Loan program and that the interest payment option was the only one left to me. This....pissed me off, so I wrote all my state and federal senators and congresspeople and also the President and basically said "WTF?" I've heard back from one state representative's office, but we're playing phone tag. I dunno. What I do know is that employers are now requiring a freaking Bachelor's degree for a damn secretarial position. Supposedly there are all these displaced worker programs going on to help people become more employable - - well...I'm trying to do that, but without the Signature Loan program, wtf am I supposed to do? If I can't get that, I can't go to school full-time because I can't afford it. If I'm not attending full-time I lose most of the rest of my governmental funding and grants, plus the on-time graduation scholarship from my school. So...not surprisingly, the saga continues....I'll keep you posted.

At any rate, my final progress report is out and my overall GPA remains 3.84. Yay me! My last grades were all A's and I got 100's on my final World Geography paper and my final fiction project for Creative Writing. Pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself. So....for taking 6 classes this last quarter, I received 4 A's, 1 B, and 1 C - I'm thinking I did pretty good all things considered. :)

So....classes resume next Monday. So far, we're still on the fence about funding so while I have looked at my books, I have not removed the shrink wrap or anything until we have some final determination and I know I can afford to stay in school and take all of my classes. But....so far everything looks really interesting. The last time I went through college I never got to take real writing and literature courses and stuff so I'm really, really enjoying those. If everything goes as planned, I will be taking Introduction to Literature and Visual Communication in the Media online and Figure Drawing and Digital Media Production on campus. Visual Communication in the Media reminds me of a Mass Media class I took in the 10th grade that I liked. Anything having to do with literature is right up my alley. Figure Drawing would be this quarter's torture class and Digital Media Production just looks exceptionally cool.

Until I hear more, things are kind of in limbo. Hopefully some resolution can be worked out over the next couple of days. I love school and learning, I always have, and having the opportunity to learn new things that interest and fascinate me (even when some aspects piss me off) is about my idea of bliss on Earth so....we shall see. Keep a good thought if you will folks.

Cheers!

End of the Quarter and All That Jazz

Hey again all.

So....this quarter has not been very conducive to the blogging, that's for sure. Six classes is a crazy lot and leaves no time for any kind of life; especially not when College Algebra is part of the schedule. So....sorry I've been so lax here as of late. First and foremost, let me say that I am extremely glad this quarter is over. It was long and hard and fast and crazy, all at the same time. It definitely felt different than my previous two quarters. I did not have nearly enough time to fully concentrate on everything I wanted to, and I had a great deal of frustration this quarter. I also was very sick twice this quarter, plus had a great deal of family and personal life drama going on so....yeah....it's been a wild and weird 11 weeks. But, it is over! Huzzah!! I have determined that I am going back to a regular four class schedule and told all of my nearest and dearest that if they ever hear me mention increasing my courseload again, they have my permission to slap me completely senseless. So....there's that.

Final grades are still coming in, but I have three I can share with you and some projects from all of them. As more come online, I'll be back to update you.

First, let's go ahead and discuss algebra. This class was the bane of my existence this quarter. I am not a math person - at all. I can spell anything you want me to, and I'm a pretty good writer, but math is not my thing. Oddly enough, I can program mathematical calculations in programs like Excel and make wonderful things result, but your basic mathematics is not for me. It took about two weeks of me trying to get through all that nonsense on my own to realize that I couldn't and needed some serious help. Luckily, the tutor center at school had someone on staff who was awesome and got me through the quarter. It was also a very, very difficult class to take online. In a classroom setting, if you have questions you can ask the instructor right then and get the concepts explained to you. Online, you're at the liberty of your instructor's life schedule and ours admitted that we were her third job, and she had a family so....guess where we came in? She did the best she could and was very helpful and understanding, but it was a really difficult class to take online.

Almost as difficult as actually working out the problems was entering them in the Word document using Equation Editor and Graph Editor for submissions. The graphing part was an absolute nightmare and I kept getting things lost in the translation. Another really difficult part for me was all of the online quizzes. It's really hard to work off of the computer screen like that for me. I also had serious problems with the quizzes timing out on me and eating all of my work while I was taking the time to work the problems out on paper. So....about halfway through the quarter I started writing out the quizzes, then going back and entering the answers after I'd worked the problems out. It improved my grade immensely and kept the system from booting me so much. I had similar booting problems with other quizzes in my other classes, no matter which browser I tried to use. Since I've yet to have a quiz that is not open book, I really wish the quizzes came with a print option so you could print them out and work them on paper and then submit the answers. None of them are timed either so....I don't see why that can't be added it. But, whatever. Either way, thanks to writing those out, getting tutoring help from tutor girl and the SmarThinking online tutoring, I managed to get a solid C in that class. I passed and never have to take that again! And there was much rejoicing!!! :)

Second class to discuss - Fundamentals of Web Authoring and Design. This class was the class that put the nail in the coffin of me ever taking design classes online ever again. I thought no instructor could be worse than my Typography instructor from my first quarter - I was so wrong. This guy was just....where to begin? Unprofessional does not seem a strong enough word. His version of feedback on something was "ok, looks good". WTH is that??!! He would say "great job!" on a discussion grade, but only give 95% with no explanation of why there were percentage points taken off. When he did post in the forums, which was rare, it was usually some snotty comment. There was a big issue with an assignment that in his mind was a big research paper but read as a regular written assignment and he couldn't understand why us stupid students couldn't figure it out. He asked me for clarification, which I gave (and very politely too tyvm - I want a cookie and a gold star for that) and he still wanted to argue the point and then just said "I don't get it but, whatever." He gave no lecture notes and only linked Adobe tutorials which you can find on your own. Our book was Teach Yourself Dreamweaver in 24 Hours, and that's what we did. We taught ourselves and he dialed it in and did the least amount possible to pull down the paycheck. For less than I paid for this class, I could have bought the damn book myself and gotten the same experience, but without the snotty commentary from the instructor. And when we had a problem with linking our final projects and were told to contact our instructor, what did he say? Pay $4 on our own for some web space cuz he didn't know either. And who was his favorite student? The guy who used sexist female imagery on his final project of course! Is there something I'm missing here about graphic design? Is every guy in graphic design a sexist asshat or am I just getting lucky here with these instructors?

Either way, I have made it very clear I will not pay for anymore classes with this instructor and I will not take anymore design classes online. They are completely ineffectual and the instructors do not do the job when it comes to helping students to understand the concepts; it was just utterly useless. However, I do have a final project to link and for never having done anything in web design and teaching myself, I'm pretty proud of it. Naturally, the instructor hated it. According to him:

"Not bad, Amy. Your navigation works. Your external link works. I'll count your order form as a feedback form, though they aren't the same thing. Your layout and design is weaker than I'd like though. The overall look of your site isn't quite professional yet. Your buttons are HUGE and your layout is just blog style which is all dead giveaways for amateur web design. Work on that and you'll go far."

Huh - maybe if I'd had a decent instructor to, oh, I dunno, EXPLAIN some things, I might have been able to do better. Anyhow....I got a B in that class. Here is my final project: http://sotd.us/amyburns/HomePage.html

And here is the project by the class star pupil: http://www.ocalanightlife.com/

Now, personally, living in this town, I know this Ocala Nightlife thing has been around for years. I'm not sure how much of this he actually did himself and how much he took from what already existed, but....whatever. Don't you love the images? (puke, gag, retch) I'll give him that it looks professional, but it's also incredibly offensive and pedestrian. But he's got an A for sure cuz all those male instructors seem to just love to objectify women. }:(

Last of the three classes I have a final grade for is 3D Animation. My grade is an A. I still love this stuff so much. However, this quarter was really difficult. Unlike last quarter when there was no one in the computer lab and there was plenty of time to get in there and work, including on the weekends, this quarter it seemed like every person in every other major decided the computer lab was an extension of the student lounge where they could come in there and play on MySpace and Facebook and blare music out of headphones and talk and horse around and act like idiots. When that wasn't happening, the computers were glitching. It made working on my project really, really difficult. The weekends unfortunately were not any better as there were continually people bringing their kids in and having loud conversations, letting their kids on the computers (which they aren't supposed to do) and being disruptive. For the amount of money I'm paying for these classes y'all, I think the computer lab should be off limits to anyone not in the Design program so we have a place to go and work. I would have loved to have had the 3DS Max software at home this quarter so I could work in peace and quiet and on my hours. But....didn't happen. So....with all that, I still managed. Yay me. I'm actually pretty proud of my final projects. Or I was until I went and saw Avatar and now they just look really amateur and stupid. But, I just remind myself that this is only my second animation-type class and that I'm only in my third quarter of my first year so....give myself a break. So....first project was our Course Assessment. We had to design a solar system, make the light source come from the sun, apply materials to our planets, make them rotate around the sun, and add in a flythrough camera path. So....here it is:



Our final project was an animation of our own creation. I went through a lot of different ideas and storyboards, but finally came up with this. I call it Snow Shock. See what you think:



We also had a final paper to complete, but it's not worth posting. We simply had to choose a kind of animation to discuss and write a paper about it. I chose claymation. It was just your basic research paper, blah, blah, blah.

So....that's all I have so far for grades. Still waiting for final grades from World Geography, Creative Writing, and Astronomy. As they come online I will be back with more to share with you.

Next quarter should be interesting and quieter, I hope. I'm taking two on campus classes and two online classes. Monday nights on campus is Figure Drawing, which will be with the same instructor who I had Drawing Design and Art Theory with, so I will get a chance to ask him wth happened with my final grade there. Wednesday nights is Digital Media Production which should be with my same instructor from my two 3D Animation classes and a lot of those classmates so....that should be good. A lot of my classmates from 3D Animation should be in Figure Drawing too so it'll be nice to know some people. Online I will be taking Introduction to Literature and Visual Communication in the Media. Those should hopefully be easy classes. We shall see.

Aside from that, I'm just enjoying the downtime from this quarter and the break before next. Next quarter starts my sophomore year so I'm making progress and school seems to be going by pretty quickly. I'm hoping that this next quarter kind of renews my warm fuzzy feeling toward my school. I've had a lot of concerns about things here lately, not the least of which is whether or not they are fully accredited, whether or not potential employers will consider it a "real" degree or an online degree, and whether or not I am getting the best educational experience for my dollar. I went online to the Pixar site to check things out and they use a completely different software called Maya that according to all my reading in the course catalog, my school does not even have or teach so....looks like I'm headed to the Internet for info on that one. As I say, we shall see how this quarter works out. I've been researching other schools and if I don't feel like things are moving in the right direction, I'll transfer what I can somewhere else. But then, there's another concern - will any of these credits even transfer somewhere else? Suffice it to say that in my mind, Rasmussen is on probation with me right now. We'll see how next quarter and the future go.

So....that's it for now. More to come in follow-up as more grades come online. Also - on a non-school note - if you haven't seen Avatar yet - GO SEE IT!!! That is the most visually stunning and amazing film I've seen in a long time. It totally reminded me of why I returned to school and what I want to be able to do when I get out. I'm already working on a couple of screenplays and stories and have so much I want to do. I just need to get the skills and knowledge to do it. So....cheers for now all!