Wednesday July 21, 2004

I promised another journal entry a few days ago, so here it is. The only noteworthy thing that recently happened to me was my financial aid coming through, so I'll talk about that and maybe a little bit about the upcoming school year. We'll see where it goes.

So as I said, I accepted my financial aid today. Just an hour or so ago, actually. I got $2,900 per semester. Unless there was a sharp increase in tuition, that's more than enough. I mean A LOT more.

Last year, I probably spent $3,000-3,500 on school, both semesters combined. That's books, parking, tuition (of course), the whole shebang. Getting almost $3K for each semester has me sitting pretty.

So since I'm getting a lot more than I need, I figure I should take more classes. Sure, I could take the minimum number of hours and just pocket the excess dough, but it would take too long to reach a degree doing that. Who wants to be in school for six years when you can do it in four? That's taking advantage of the system too. And big time. I don't want to be one of those people.

The classes I'm leaning toward right now are Speech (have to take it whether I like it or not), History 201 (there's no History 101 I guess), Natural Science 101, English 201, and a "fitness" class. That's basically bowling or some activity like that.

And since bowling, what I will probably take as my fitness credit, will basically just be a chance to bowl for free a few times a week, I may take even another class.

If I take the same number of hours the following semester, I think I may walk away with my associates degree AND be classified as a junior the following year. That would just kick so much ass.

I'm not sure about my associates degree, though. They gave me a checklist full of the basics, so those are what I chose my classes from. On this checklist, there's a column for Undeclared majors (me), and another for Undecided majors. Don't ask me what the difference is, but the undecided column is much shorter. At the bottom of the undecided column is a note that says "This is NOT a degree plan." So I don't know if that's for the much shorter undecided column or if it's for both columns.

I'd really love to walk away from this year with a degree, though. I hope I'm not mistaken. I'll probably register for classes tomorrow and get all those questions answered. I'll update again soon.