Post 25: Here We Go Again: Summer and Fall Classes

Let me tell you a little bit about my past. When I finished high school in 2009, I had planned to attend a local university and graduate by 2013 with my bachelor's degree in computer science. Then I learned I would be moving to Kansas after I graduated and settled on attending University of Kansas where again, I would spend four years there and then graduate in 2013. But things went weird. The start date of the fall 2009 semester for KU was in August, awfully close to my June 28 arrival in Kansas. I had also heard about there being a community college that I could attend in the city I was moving to.

I decided that I would wait for six months until my citizenship in Kansas was made official so that tuition costs would be cheaper. Hence my decision to forego the fall 2009 semester. I would simply take a few months off of school and work. Things got a little complicated. I did most of my preparation for college from home and made lots of phone calls. Unfortunately, the financial aid department answered their phones quite rarely and I estimated that about 10% of all the calls and messages I left were ever returned. After missing an important financial aid deadline in December of 2009 I found I would not be able to go for a spring 2010 semester.

Several months later I get a ride from one of my friends who is a fellow student at the college to plan out my fall 2011 classes. I take a standardized test and get my grades immediately. There were three fields: math, reading, and writing. My grades were all 95 and higher. However my math grade in particular, a 98 as I recall, was the highest the woman officiating the test had ever seen. I scored so high that I tested out of needing to take college algebra and could go straight into calculus. I talk with the woman and get my classes for fall 2010 settled. I also decide to take an online class for the summer: HTML. It did teach me quite a bit however I've been doing Web coding since high school as a hobby so it's a breeze for me.

Fall 2010 comes around and I do exceptionally well, scoring a GPA over 3.8. This semester was the first time in a year that I set foot in a classroom. All of my other friends that had gone to college were already in their sophomore years of high school. I had taken a gap year between high school and college, working in order to save money for my advanced education.

Spring 2011 was also a good semester. Most of it was online although I had one afternoon class. There were two times when I suffered burnout and struggled to maintain a decent pace. However I wrapped things up at the end and surprised myself in two classes in particular. Macroeconomics was very hard for me and I missed on two assignments. Nonetheless, I found the 14-question final exam to be a relative breeze. About a week ago I was with my advisor planning my next sets of classes and the instructor for macroeconomics asked if I would become a tutor for the class, stating that I did amazingly well in the class! The other was sociology. There was a term paper I needed to do and I didn't get it done until the day it was due. I didn't think that the paper would be any good but I was greatly pleased and surprised when I discovered I had an 85 on it! Overall this was a successful semester and I scored a perfect 4.0 GPA, making it onto the Presidental Honor Roll.

(Please pardon me if my writing style is somewhat bland. I've been reading Kings and Chronicles from the Old Testament and, well, those are hardly exciting books.)

During that aforementioned meeting with my advisor I planned out the rest of my classes for the summer and fall 2011 semesters. All but two of them will be totally online; the others will require me to go to the campus once or more per week. At least three of them will be relatively simple for me as I already have some knowledge in the subjects:

• Calculus, which I took in high school;
• American government, something that I learned up on as a hobby during my younger years. I know a fair deal about the Constitution and what it says;
• Java programming. I know several other scripting and programming languages to some extent (including JavaScript, PHP, C++, and Python) so this will be easy.

As of December 8, 2011, I will complete my education at community college and receive my Associate's of Science degree for computer science. From there I am going to transfer to one of two universities, although I have not decided which one yet: Kansas University, my original choice, or Kansas State University. The deciding factor is going to be the computer science program. I want to go to the one that will best maximize the chances of me getting a job in programming. I have not yet found a way to measure this so I have yet to make a choice. By this point in time my college-bound friends will be in their junior years of college and perhaps moved on from their community colleges to universities. I will finish community college a semester early due to a combination of college credits earned in high school and summer courses, but I will remain a year behind my peers - not that it is of any bother to me.

I also want to find a computers company in whichever city I move to (be it Lawrence for KU or Manhattan for KSU) that will take a university student with an AS degree so that I can work while I'm at university. This will serve the double purpose of providing an income and providing experience. Then I will either find a new place to work or continue there. Either way, I intend on settling in my own place of residence somewhere and beginning my adult life.

This December date makes things seem suddenly closer than before. I have yet to decide on which university to attend; I've also yet to get a driver's license. I need both of these things to move out of my current city and go to higher education. Fall 2011 will have five classes, more than I've ever done before. It's going to be hectic but I believe that with patience, planning, and prayer I'll make it through with great results.