Kaplan University

Hello Everyone, The Humble Fishe here, back from another long hiatus.

Summer's come and gone, and a lot has happened in the world.  In my corner of our planet, I've had a nice Holiday season and New Year.  So, with a new season of life upon me, I figured it was time to continue my educational pursuits.

You see, I made a promise to myself a few years ago wherein I promised myself that I would earn a college degree by the time I'm 50!  That promise remains, as yet, unfulfilled.  So I'm trying again.

I've chosen  Kaplan University's Online Information Technology Associate Degree program (to start), and their Bachelor Degree program to round out my first--and probably last--college educational endeavor.  I may or not need to get a Master's, but Graduate degrees are another matter, have different dynamics than the undergraduate programs, and have their own inherent nuances, challenges, and politics.

Better to leave the Graduate degrees alone for the time being and concentrate on the more immediate need of obtaining my Associate Degree.   And what an Associate Degree it is!  At $33K, it's quite the two-year.  The thing is, I  haven't found any way to be reasonably successful with local colleges, and I'm online all the time, anyway, so I figured that "it's time to just go private!"

Private schools are more expensive than their public counterparts, but they also often provide more personalized service than their public counterparts.  Online education is different from in-person education.  I believe that online teaching should take advantage of the medium, and not try to be a "mere copy" of an in-person classroom experience.  If I wanted that, I have a plethora of local choices from which to choose.

Well, I choose Online, instead!

I'm more comfortable in the privacy of my own home, where I can concentrate.  Since I have ADHD and other "cognitive learning disabilities" to begin with, this makes more sense from a "quiet and central place to work and plan" point of view.

It does present the challenge of all the adherence to the attendance of live, online seminars (of which many of Kaplan's online courses are made up of), and navigating the online environment's homework portals, library, and other such matters, but to a person who's used to working with Arch Linux, I don't see this as being much of a problem, let alone, a challenge.

Point-and-click to the correct item on the web page, hit the Submit button, and you're there!  Homework 101's done for the week!  (At least, that's the simplified version ;->.  There are almost always exceptions.  Still, I deal with these things pretty decently for most, if not all, items.)

I'm still in the preliminary stages of the application process, and won't know more until tomorrow, Friday.  I need to get through the Financial Aid process, and this will either make or break my ability to participate at Kaplan.  I can be only hopeful that a positive attitude will get me through the process, and onto the more important elements of class participation.

I look forward to keeping everyone updated.  I shall add more as time progresses.

Best Regards,
The Humble Fishe