Tinwhistler's college journey as an old man

Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

I didn't wanna keep fluffing up the minor victory thread. :D

So far, I've passed Intro to IT, Logic and Critical Thinking and Intro to Communications (where I had to write a paper and record a speech in addition to passing a test). Now, on to English Composition, where I have to write 4 essays--each in a different style.

Course instructor says it's possible to pass the course in a week. I'm not sure...but I'm off to a good start. Started the class today, and my first 950 word essay rough draft is done. I'll check it over tomorrow with fresh eyes, and then turn it in and move on to the next one.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

For what its worth, nontraditional or returning students are usually extremely good students. All those life skills help tons in time management, connecting material to life experiences, and transitioning skills from the workplace into schoolwork that is designed to prepare students for the workplace. The primary exceptions to the nontrad students being the gems in the classroom are those nontrad students with severe mental health issues. This is true of any student, of course, but those nontrad students often have years or even decades of issues dogging them. It is sad to see it but they really struggle more than most I've taught.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
When I started back to college I'd been out of school for 14+ years. I sat near the front because that's what I do. I was also the first one there. The second person there was a really good looking girl who came and sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. My ego was soaring! Until she told me she sat next to me since older students tended to be good study partners and that I reminded her of her dad.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dave said:
When I started back to college I'd been out of school for 14+ years. I sat near the front because that's what I do. I was also the first one there. The second person there was a really good looking girl who came and sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. My ego was soaring! Until she told me she sat next to me since older students tended to be good study partners and that I reminded her of her dad.
Click to expand...
I almost never say this, but...

OOF.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Dave said:
When I started back to college I'd been out of school for 14+ years. I sat near the front because that's what I do. I was also the first one there. The second person there was a really good looking girl who came and sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. My ego was soaring! Until she told me she sat next to me since older students tended to be good study partners and that I reminded her of her dad.
Click to expand...
"14+", of course, includes such numbers as 15, 16, 18425, 3625716, and ∞ .
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Dave said:
When I started back to college I'd been out of school for 14+ years. I sat near the front because that's what I do. I was also the first one there. The second person there was a really good looking girl who came and sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. My ego was soaring! Until she told me she sat next to me since older students tended to be good study partners and that I reminded her of her dad.
Click to expand...
1590588090707.png
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

I'm not as old as you, but I also went back to spend a year as a student recently to get my MA. On the whole I think I got along well with my classmates, possibly because I'm still a teenager at heart. I noticed early on that there was a slight tendency for people to defer to my opinions during group discussions, possibly because I was older, so later on I stopped talking so much, to give other people a chance to speak first.

The hot female classmates were nice too.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

bhamv3 said:
I'm not as old as you, but I also went back to spend a year as a student recently to get my MA. On the whole I think I got along well with my classmates, possibly because I'm still a teenager at heart. I noticed early on that there was a slight tendency for people to defer to my opinions during group discussions, possibly because I was older, so later on I stopped talking so much, to give other people a chance to speak first.

The hot female classmates were nice too.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, WGU is an entirely online class. So i don't get any of that college life experience. Nor do I get to meet freshmen with daddy issues :(
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

blotsfan said:
I miss college so much other than the classes. Online college sounds like the worst.
Click to expand...
I did about 100+ hours of my degree online, for free, thanks to Pell Grants and a close partnership between Columbus State and Ohio State University. Because of this, I saved more than $20,000 in tuition fees. Online was by far the correct way to do this and I wouldn't trade the money I saved for anything.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

AshburnerX said:
I did about 100+ hours of my degree online, for free, thanks to Pell Grants and a close partnership between Columbus State and Ohio State University. Because of this, I saved more than $20,000 in tuition fees. Online was by far the correct way to do this and I wouldn't trade the money I saved for anything.
Click to expand...
Obviously. On the other hand, no. You "saved" $20K because of a broken, horrible system; convincing people that on line just-learning-the-skills-as-quickly-as-possible, destroying the college/university campus is problematic. I don't mean frat parties and drunk campus rapes, obviously. Students developing themselves as thinking individuals, growing into politics, getting to know people from different backgrounds and areas, having the means and time to develop their own thoughts and thought processes, etc is all vital for the proper functioning of a society. Maybe you can create good engineers and software developers by just having people sit in front of a PC for 8 hours a day when they're 19-20; you can't create psychologists, sociologists, or any of the humanities that way.
Educating the next generation is essential in keeping life improving, changing, evolving - making life better for the next generation. It's one of the basic elements of a functional society, especially one that wants the average person to do well.

But, you know, we're back to politics, sorry :)
 
Adam

Adam

I'm in school again taking my second Master's and the mature students are both the most annoying and best students there are. They have a wealth of experience and unique perspective which is great, they just don't shut up about it and usually dominate conversations because they don't have the deep-seated social anxiety or fear that many younger students have.


Added: Also at 40, I think I'm pretty close to a mature student as well.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Adam said:
I'm in school again taking my second Master's and the mature students are both the most annoying and best students there are. They have a wealth of experience and unique perspective which is great, they just don't shut up about it and usually dominate conversations because they don't have the deep-seated social anxiety or fear that many younger students have.
Click to expand...
I could totally see me doing that, too. :D

My first essay passed. Working on the 2nd one now.

Bubble181 said:
Obviously. On the other hand, no. You "saved" $20K because of a broken, horrible system; convincing people that on line just-learning-the-skills-as-quickly-as-possible, destroying the college/university campus is problematic. I don't mean frat parties and drunk campus rapes, obviously. Students developing themselves as thinking individuals, growing into politics, getting to know people from different backgrounds and areas, having the means and time to develop their own thoughts and thought processes, etc is all vital for the proper functioning of a society. Maybe you can create good engineers and software developers by just having people sit in front of a PC for 8 hours a day when they're 19-20; you can't create psychologists, sociologists, or any of the humanities that way.
Educating the next generation is essential in keeping life improving, changing, evolving - making life better for the next generation. It's one of the basic elements of a functional society, especially one that wants the average person to do well.

But, you know, we're back to politics, sorry :)
Click to expand...
:I agree with much of this, honestly. But for someone in my position, WGU is perfect
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Bubble181 said:
Maybe you can create good engineers and software developers by just having people sit in front of a PC for 8 hours a day when they're 19-20; you can't create psychologists, sociologists, or any of the humanities that way.
Educating the next generation is essential in keeping life improving, changing, evolving - making life better for the next generation. It's one of the basic elements of a functional society, especially one that wants the average person to do well.
Click to expand...
It's worth mentioning that 100+ hours was only about 2/3rds of my degree and mostly just the GE portion of it. I still had 60 some hours at OSU, on campus, mostly in my major. I also didn't start college until I was almost 30. I just turned 35.

Also, my major? Psychology, with a focus in organizations and personnel. The MOMENT I set foot on OSU campus and began to interact with the staff, I was being asked by my professors if I'd ever considered going into research... because they knew I had what it took. I'm taking some time to find work and get my life into order, but I plan to take them up on that offer someday. So, I assure you, it's perfectly possible to develop yourself into an actual person while still taking online classes when you can. You're still going to interact with your classmates, on their level... there were times when I was older than my professor and could still relate to the fellow students better. You're going to interact with your professors too. It's not some mind-numbing skill challenge... virtually all of my classwork at both CSCC and OSU was team based and required creative thought or application.

You have some weird ideas of what a path in the humanities looks like if you take online courses.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Second essay complete. It's an "evaluation essay" so, naturally, I chose "What's the best penny whistle a new musician can buy?"
 
Last edited:
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

3rd essay was Causal Analysis. My topic was "Why is voter turnout so low in the US". That came back today as passed.
Just turned in the 4th essay, a Proposal Argument....in which you propose solutions to the problem described in the previous essay.

Bubble181 will be happy to know that many of my proposed solutions were along the lines of "Be more like Belgium: Make registration automatic, voting easier by allowing mail-in ballots, and make voting compulsory. They have a 90% voter participation rate, you know"

Though I did have to pad that out so that it covered 5 paragraphs and 1400 words ;)
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

To be fair, there's a sizable group of the people here who wants to get rid of mandatory voting because they're afraid of further pushes people towards f-u votes - people who don't want to vote (because all politicians are corrupt /thieves /etc) have to go and just give their vote to the most anti - political politician that can find.

Oh, also, voting on a Sunday helps since most people are off anyway
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

We need Tuesday elections though so we can all make the 1 day trip into town to vote while still being able to spend Sunday at church and subsequently resting.*

*that is actually the reason our elections are on a Tuesday
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
blotsfan said:
We need Tuesday elections though so we can all make the 1 day trip into town to vote while still being able to spend Sunday at church and subsequently resting.*

*that is actually the reason our elections are on a Tuesday
Click to expand...


And it is in november so that you have time to get your harvest in beforehand, but still early enough for the snow not to have made the trip impossible.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

Bubble181 said:
To be fair, there's a sizable group of the people here who wants to get rid of mandatory voting because they're afraid of further pushes people towards f-u votes - people who don't want to vote (because all politicians are corrupt /thieves /etc) have to go and just give their vote to the most anti - political politician that can find.
Click to expand...
There was an election in Taiwan where I didn't like any of the candidates, so I wrote my name in the margin and put the stamp next to my name. It would've counted as a spoiled ballot, but I like to think that I received one vote for political office in my lifetime.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

One of my other 'voter turnout' problems was unlikeable candidates. In the course of my research, I found that both Clinton and Trump had historically low approval ratings, pre-election, according to Gallup. Lower than any candidate has ever had, across all 10 questions they ask, since they started tracking such things in 1956. That's pretty....amazing.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Started my 2nd term's classes today (First term complete, 1 month 1 day). First class is Intro to Physical Sciences. I've read the first chapter. They're covering things like "what's a law vs a theory vs a hypothesis." and I honestly feel like I'm back in junior high. I think I'm gonna take the pre-assessment tomorrow, and if there aren't any big surprises, just skip all the reading and take the final then too. I mean, I went into the nuclear program in the navy. I feel like I probably know anything they're gonna ask ;)
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
Careful, that's the kind of overconfidence that gets people crushed.

--Patrick
Click to expand...
I did the same thing with my first two courses (Intro to IT and Logic/Critical Thinking). If I do well on the pre-assessment, it's a good bet I'll pass the final. That's what the pre-assessments are for.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Tinwhistler said:
I did the same thing with my first two courses (Intro to IT and Logic/Critical Thinking). If I do well on the pre-assessment, it's a good bet I'll pass the final. That's what the pre-assessments are for.
Click to expand...
I mean, I'm having to go through recertification because of a change to the way our training works, so I'm wading through things like, "Here is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, it is important to know the difference," so I get where you're coming from, but still.

--Patrick
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
I mean, I'm having to go through recertification because of a change to the way our training works, so I'm wading through things like, "Here is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, it is important to know the difference," so I get where you're coming from, but still.

--Patrick
Click to expand...
Generally, you're supposed to read the material, take the mini quizzes, and finish the whole class, and THEN take the pre-assessment. And if you don't do well, the evaluation will tell you areas that you've got to study harder on. But you can take the PA as many times as you want, and it switches up the questions every time, so you can't just memorize the PA. And you're allowed to take it whenever you want, so if you want to take it at the beginning, and just skip the entire class if you already know the material, you can do that. In fact, WGU encourages it for students like me, who have a ton of experience but no college. It's why they rank their classes on "credit units" and not "credit hours". If you can take the final and pass, you don't need to slog thorugh all of the lectures, videos, mini quizzes, reading, and stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top