Learning never stops
Wow! It’s my first day of school.
I remember going off to my first days of school at various times in my life. There was kindergarten at some private school in Pasadena. Then there was starting 1st grade which I still either recall or I’ve just made up a fake memory for it with mom taking me to class too. There were plenty of brown bag school lunches and even a couple lunchboxes that are probably worth 10-grand, if new.
Starting my undergrad was a big deal as I moved myself to Goleta to attend UCSB. I had to find an apartment and figure out roommates.
Getting my MBA was cool. There was a lot of orientation stuff that somehow mixed booze into the formula so the orientation events were actually more fun than not. I recall going to my first class on my first day, driving 30 minutes to school, parking, walking across campus, meeting up with some other new students for coffee then off to a Managmenet Science course that was being taught by a new MS professor. It was at 8am. Being near last in the alphabet is still a curse I thought to myself when I had to register for those 8am courses my first semester.
Today, I don’t drink coffee, mom is in a nursing facility in California (fortunately my sister lives nearby), and I don’t even leave home to attend class. Heck I didn’t even leave home to go get books thanks to Amazon, ebay, and other places. Now the books come to me via FedEx Ground, USPS, and UPS.
Change happens.
I’ve logged into both courses and I really don’t know what to expect of the courses. What I mean by that is I don’t know what the course dynamic will be like. I know what the reading material is and I have some idea as to the content of each course. What really makes a course is the students and the instructor. As a former instructor I know that instructors have good and bad days and classes vary too.
I’m interested and excited to see what will happen.
No one will be making me sack lunches for this degree – I love you mom.
Fall-2011
December 12th, 2011I really owe some time back in this blog. The Fall Semester was pretty crushing. My Mom passed away and after that happened nothing I did really seemed to matter for many weeks. I took two classes this Fall and I passed both of them with A grades. Well, an A- in one of the classes. If I wasn’t such a proficient and experienced shooter I would have likely pulled out a C or just failed the classes.
Life happens to us regardless of what we want to occur.
If you are a student and life happens to you make sure to let everyone impacted know about it. I told both of my instructors who gave me added time. They didn’t have to do this. The death of a parent is something we all go through at some point. Their sympathy as well as the extra time they gave me to complete assignments really helped me complete my classes.
It helps to be very active and participatory in class from the start because it sets a personal standard for you and demonstrates your capabilities, willingness and eagerness to be successful. Don’t let your abilities in photography get in the way of your enthusiasm in a class. Don’t deny your abilities, just don’t rest upon them.
At my Mom’s funeral I said, no matter how much she cared for us we were never able to pay it back to her. This is how families and life operate. While, I can never pay back my mom for all the wonderful experiences she provided I can pay that forward into what I do in life.
The teachers at AAU provided great help and support this semester and I’ll pay that assistance forward as well.
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Posted in Courses, General Comments, PH 623: Portraiture, PH 801: Group Direct Study - Concept and Image
Tags: class death of a parent Don eagerness extra time Fall fall semester life mom semester shooter time willingness