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.))
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(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.)
no subject
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.))
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(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.)