Enemy of Entropy
What was her name?
While I was reading friends’ updates at Facebook today, something reminded me of a girl I knew back in high school. She went to my high school, and as far as I know she was in my graduating class. I didn’t meet her at school, though, and I don’t think our paths crossed there. I knew her from church. She introduced me to the guy who became my first husband (who she had dated in the recent past).
Now I’m driving myself nuts, because I absolutely cannot remember her name! I can see her face, plain as day. I remember that she had a somewhat uncommon last name. I think she had an older brother who had been a big deal on the football team a year or three ahead of us. Why can’t I remember her name?
I’m really bad with names, honestly. A Facebook application was asking me to verify 130+ people as high school classmates, and truly, I didn’t recognize many of them at all. I didn’t remember most of the people I saw at our five year reunion. After 25 years? I’m hopeless.
Maybe I should get my old yearbooks out and look at Facebook and the yearbooks at the same time. I don’t know that I’d be any better that way, either. I need context for most people — not just a face and a name, but also something like “that guy from homeroom who was always drawing cars in his notebooks” or “that soprano who bathed in Emeraude” or “the cute geeky drummer who seldom made eye contact with anybody” (okay, him I’d recognize, and I do remember his name).
Our yearbooks aren’t the sort that listed people’s activities with their photos. You would have to search through all the activity listings to find out who did what, which is much more annoying.
Have any homeschooling or education thoughts?
Today’s entry, Homeschooling High School in College?, is over at Academy Caritas. I expect to update there more regularly, now that we’re officially homeschooling again.
Teen Assaults Teacher, Activist Worries About Teen?
A 17-year-old running back assaults a high school teacher for doing her job.1 He tosses her around and breaks her finger.
Who would you worry about? The attacker, or the victim?
Read on…
School update
School is going along fine. In fact, another semester is almost done for me, and Katie’s almost at the end of her semester, too. She’s kicking ass and taking names. Now that she’s settled academically, she’s stretching out into some extracurricular stuff and making more friends. We’ve managed to connect with a Girl Scout troop, (finally!) despite silly paperwork slip-ups.
I think I need to rearrange my classes for the next part of the semester (I’m already registered), but this unit’s classes are going very well, and I’ve actually learned useful (in one class) and interesting (in the other class) stuff.
I had told the school when they initially did my transcript evaluation that I didn’t have as many upper-level credits as they said I had, but they insisted that I’d done my major work and wouldn’t really listen. Weirdnesses kept coming up, and I kept pushing about things like the Hope Scholarship not coming up in my financial aid package. Someone finally said, “Oh — you aren’t eligible because you already have a bachelor’s degree.”
What? Um, no. You see, I’m in the Bachelor’s Degree Completion Program because I don’t have a bachelor’s degree yet. Capiche?
Well, it seems that when Mercer University sent over my transcripts, they couldn’t manage to just pull the transcripts for Cynthia Roberson (my name when I attended that school) with my Social Security Number and my Mercer Student ID. No, they also sent over Cynthia Armistead’s transcript — someone whose name was Cynthia Armistead when she attended Mercer and got a bachelor’s degree, someone with a different SSN and MSI and middle initial. And instead of noticing these discrepancies, my school blithely entered this transcript in and gave me credit for her work!
So there’s been a whole big deal about getting all of my transcripts again, and re-evaluating them anew, and changing my planned classes to reflect the results. I’m getting two sorts of attitude from the bureaucrats I have to deal with in straightening out this nonsense: people who obviously think I should have shut up and taken the credits, and people who think I was trying to pull a fast one (hence the business about them getting all my transcripts again, directly from my old schools) and re-evaluating them).
Fortunately, the classes I’ve taken so far are classes I needed to take. Yay. The classes that start in a couple of weeks are in question, so I need to talk to my so-called “advisor” about them. The “advisor” is the person who deals with everybody who is in the bachelor’s degree completion program. She doesn’t do individual advising, really. She doesn’t give a flyin’ flip about me or my plans, abilities, background, etc. She meets with students once, when they enter the program. That’s it. That’s the plan. She doesn’t want to see us again. She’s not happy that she’s had to talk to me more than once.
I was just way spoiled by my marvelous advisor at Southern Poly, Dr. Mark Stevens. Nobody else can live up to that standard. But this woman shouldn’t have the same title. She’s a paperwork-stamper.
I’m actually enjoying the database portion of my current business/computer course so much that I’m looking at which technical concentration in the bachelor’s degree completion major would give me the most opportunity to go deeper into the topic.
Oh — with the other person’s bachelor’s degree transcript, I had something like 91 transfer credits. That’s the maximum you’re allowed to transfer into the school. Without her transcript, just using my credits, I’m coming in with 79 credits. The science class I’m taking now should have been my last “core” class, but this school counts “Science, Technology and Society as a 400 level class. The STS class I took at Southern Poly was a 200 level class. So one more core class, some business and management stuff required for my major, and then the technical concentration courses. Three full semesters, at least, maybe four, since there may be prerequisites required for some of the technical concentration classes that I don’t have yet.
That’s not too bad — just another year of school, really. Wow. I can see the end.
Dragon Con, weekend planning, and back to school
I won’t be going to Dragon Con unless a ticket (or pass — hey, I’m willing to do panels, ya know) falls out of the air. Sam will be running games and the girl will be working the con, so they both got passes. 
I’d happily meet out-of-towners for lunch or something, though. Jeannie, you still coming?
I expect lots of fun photos (with you in them, not just of the crowds!) and stories from y’all next week to make up for not going, of course.
I’m trying to plan some self-care so I don’t get too lonely and grumpy over the weekend. I’m figuring in stitching time, definitely, but could use some suggestions as to movies to watch while stitching. I never go to the cinema, so you can safely assume that if it’s been out in the last two years, I haven’t seen it (except Serenity, of course!).
Other suggestions for the weekend?
My current “fun” reading is Widdershins by de Lint, but I’m not really getting into it for some reason. I need to see if the library has something fluffy like the “Undead and ____” novels. Yeah, they’re easily bought, but I read them like literary M&Ms, so the high cost of paperbacks just doesn’t seem justified. Dekalb’s library doesn’t suck, but I miss Gwinnett’s far better selection of genre fiction, as well as living close to a branch of the PINES system as we did in Cobb.
I did something for me today, though: I put things in motion to return to school. If all goes as the school thinks it will, I could actually be doing some online classes next week! That is, if they give me the financial aid package I want. If not, I’ll wait ’til January. But I’d really like to go back now, as I’m feeling extremely empty-nested with Katie gone back to school. I don’t want to do just online classes, because I really miss the discussions of a “real” class and I think it would be good to have something regular for which I have to leave the house.
On the other hand, online classes take lots less energy, which leaves more for the actual academic pursuit and the rest of my life.
Happily, Katie prefers doing her homework next to me rather than holing up in her room as I did at that age, so I get a fair amount of time with her when she’s home. That really does push the need for a laptop, though, as she can’t be online (or just typing) and be in the living room with me and Sam. When she had one she made really good use of it.
I really like the fact that she’s attending a school with a good location and community ties. We couldn’t really ask for better than where she is in that respect. I’m looking forward to moving closer to the school, though.
