Date: 2020-01-17 05:01 pm (UTC)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
From: [personal profile] brin_bellway
Sort of both? Sort of neither?

I was fast on *this particular course* because it assumed I was starting off with very little tech-competence, and in particular zero experience with Microsoft Office (and/or its open-source alternatives). Also there were no exams on this one (never had that happen before, though some courses have only had one exam), so I didn't have to devote any time to pre-exam revision. In general I am slow, taking 4.5 - 6 months to complete [two courses when I didn't have a job, one course now that I'm usually working ~10 - 20 hours/week].

(And part of the reason I dropped to one course is because I figured that if I *did* find enough time for more than one course per [4.5 - 6 month period] while working, I could always just complete one-course-at-a-time faster. Which is exactly what I did in this case.)

Since my university is mostly aimed at people who already have a lot on their plate (many people work *full-time* and still find the time and energy to study! maybe I'll work my way up to having that kind of capacity someday, but I do *not* think I am there right now), you get six months to complete a course by default, up to twelve if you pay extra. You are officially a student as long as you take at least one course per year; reading between the lines of some of the student statistics I've seen, it looks like the average courseload per student is about three courses/year, so my current courseload of ~two courses/year is actually not far off.

(I knew Normal Students were expected to get everything done in four months, but I was shocked to learn that they're expected to do this for *five courses at once*. God, no wonder people talk like "a magic tower that cuts four years off your lifespan" is a reasonable metaphor for university. Although apparently the expected hours/course/week varies: my school says to expect 10 - 15 hours/course/week, and Mom said hers was like 6 - 10.)

((Also, FWIW, Mom took 11 years to complete her bachelor's, in large part for financial reasons (she spent a lot of time coasting on her one-free-course-per-semester job benefit). So while I am aware of the Normal Students suffering over--*waves vaguely*--there somewhere, my own environment has been pretty supportive of the tortoise method.))

---

(Sometimes I worry what my current and historical workloads say about my capacity to work full-time even *without* night school, but OTOH I feel like a lot of my productivity problems are caused by task-switching: after a lunch shift, by the time you've gotten home and processed the afternoon's events and changed out of uniform and eaten something, there's not *that* much time left before dinner prep (and even on days I'm not *participating* in dinner prep Mom tends to make a lot of noise), so it's hard to get stuck in. And if your dinner shift starts at 4, you have to stop studying at 3 so you can go have an early dinner and get ready to leave. A single 40 hours/week load might well be easier to bear than two 15 hours/week loads, especially with the motivating force of a paycheque behind all of it.)
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org

Profile

brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Brin

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18 192021222324
25262728293031

Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 08:02 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios