Category: Academic

• Instructor for one of the required courses, SOCI 350, has granted a permit
• Dr. Miller and the registrar at Gaston have worked out the issue and the grade will post early
• Dr. Ankrah (Sociology chair at FSU) has revised his position. A permit may be granted as soon as evidence of a grade of C or better is presented for the SOCI 210 course. No official evaluation will be required before I can register
• Dr. Ankrah guarantees me a closed-section override for any course that is full by the time I register (once SOCI 210 posts)
• Dr. Ankrah has assured me that I will have no problem getting into SOCI 333 🙂

• The registrar at Gaston (Dellinger) responded to my e-mail about what Dr. Miller said (“The instructor says you won’t let him post my grade early”), asking for who the instructor is (you know, cause looking me up in the system to find the course and instructor would be hard cause of my common last name)
• It is my suspicion that because of the nature of things there might be a loophole to the condition that Dr. Miller believes exists for posting a course grade (I smell a paper form and lots of ink from a dean’s pen).
• My advocate in the Distance Ed office, Ms. Wells, seems to have bumped my email up to the Director of Distance Education, who replied. I was asked for the name of who denied me a pre-requisite override, what was specifically said and what courses I need. I was also assured that she would do whatever is in per power to resolve this.

It still feels like there are some balls up in the air, but at least people aren’t replying and telling me “you can’t do that”. I suspect that if I can’t get approval from the chair of Sociology for an override, then someone above the department chair may be able to help, assuming that the director of distance education cannot unilaterally grant the permit.

If all of that falls through, Dr. Miller is willing to grade me early (seems almost eager on the idea), but believes the registrar won’t let him. The registrar on the other hand seems to believe that there is no reason that he can’t grade me now. I think on that front, I’m going to quietly work on my paper and let this adventure work out between the registrar and instructor.

I guess if all of the people currently working for me manage to drop the ball I might be able to get favor with my potential instructors for Spring and maybe get a tiny touch of sympathy for what I’ve gone through just to take their courses.

Just as a little reminder, this all started because I wanted to take SOCI 333 (Intro to SPSS) and didn’t have the pre-requisite for it. Speaking of which, once I jump through the rest of the hoops in my sociology minor, I STILL have to get a pre-requisite override for the sociological statistics course to take SOCI 333. On that front I at least have the assurance of the instructor that it will be handled.

The situation:

• Registration opens on November 1. I have no courses left in my major that I need to take, but I have several to complete in my minor (sociology).
• I must have the pre-requisite course SOCI 210 to register for courses in the sociology minor.
• SOCI 210 is not offered in a form that is accessible to me from FSU.
• I planned to take SOCI 210 during the summer, but no seats were available, so I registered for SOCI 210 for Fall at Gaston.
• The Sociology department at FSU will not allow a pre-requisite override on the basis of the course-in-progress.
• Note: if I were taking the SOCI 210 course at FSU, it wouldn’t matter that the course is still open, I would be allowed to register. They are discriminating because it is not a local course.
• Because the course is self-paced and I am almost finished I am attempting to get the grade posted early and the course transferred ASAP.
• The registrar at Gaston told me to contact my instructor about the possibility of posting the grade early.
• Instructor says he is fine with posting the grade early, but that the registrar will not let him.
• Instructor volunteers willingness to write a letter to my department to set things into motion.

I have taken the following measures to try to ensure me being able to register:

• Pleaded with Sociology chair – he seems unmoved and unwilling to override.
• Sent e-mail to College of A&S counselor – she seems optimistic, but generally unhelpful.
• E-mailed the individual course instructors – no reply yet.
• E-mailed the Director of Distance Programs. Her role in life is to ensure equality between distance and normal students and to fight for distance students where possible – No reply from her yet. She seems like a good alley to have.
• Attempted to get permission for the grade to be posted and transferred early.

Ultimately there are only two things that can resolve this:

1. Someone manage to get me an override permit
2. Somehow get the course transferred early

Options don’t seem to good at the moment, but I’m trying to get all of my colleges and all of my departments working for me. 

There is one course I could find available online at all of the colleges, ART 111 – Art Appreciation. It seems to be the only constant, which I find to be a little funny since it is the first online course that I ever enrolled in. Another thing I found was that a lot of the community colleges are lacking any sense of a physics department, but yet most will have biology and/or chemistry.  There are some schools that no longer have the CSC program, but instead have CTS, which has minimal programming courses. Many of the colleges have “distance education” links displayed prominently on their web pages, but only a few seem to have any significant distance education effort. There are a good number of colleges that by the time I was beginning my course search for spring had not yet made an attempt to publish an online schedule.

A few hours ago I sent an “Advisement Verification Form”, an official declaration of my intentions for the registration period that is opening on November 1. This will be my last time filling out one of these forms. The schedule I transmitted is as it appears in the table above, with the exception of a few “safety” electives to fill space in the event of a problem.  As some of you will probably notice, the schedule presented is 4 courses, or 12 credit hours and I prefer to plan for 15 credit hours in most semesters. I will NOT be taking any serious course to fill the last spot, but will use it for something fun or interesting.

At present I am considering Art History 1, one of my “courses of regret”, to fill the spot. Other alternatives would be something like Figure Drawing if I could find it offered somewhere. Alternatively my thoughts have gone to more technical courses such as Database Programming or Advanced C++ (if I could find somewhere that offered it). A final thought goes toward something more rigorous, but yet in a different mental space, such as Physics II. I previously had an option for taking the course, though UNC-Chapel Hill’s Friday Center for Distance Education, but that course is now closed and I can not enroll in it. So yet another course is left up to the whim of the institutions. I have 58 community colleges in this state, so at least one of these courses that I wish to take should be available somewhere (with the exception of the drawing course, which obviously must be in person).

Below is a list of all of the courses that I have considered taking or wanted to register for in the past that have never been completed.

Focusing on graduate school information and trying to prepare for the GRE (Graduate Records Examination) enhances the anxiety that I already have about my undergraduate career coming to an end. It is like I am in the moments right before a major life change. My undergraduate career has been a very interesting ride. I have been through several majors and attempted numerous programs. I guess I have determined my academic track by trial and error. Baring some major disaster I am on track to graduate in May and I feel scared. All I have known is the way of the undergraduate world. Now I find myself preparing for something completely different.

I remember this feeling. I had this feeling in the months before graduating from Highland. I guess you could say that I don’t mind life changes, but I don’t really like when there are these huge formal separations between the parts. I managed to keep myself away from the emotions when I graduated from high school. I quickly found ways to “transition” to my new academic life. I took dual-enrollment courses and I also took courses during the summer. I did everything except stop and look at what was going on around me. In a lot of ways there was a support mechanism in place to transition me from high school to college. This is a bit different. I am going from college to graduate school. There is no guiding hand (or guidance counselor), there is no net. I am doing this by myself. The funny thing here is that the times I have been offered the advice of an advisor I have refused it, usually while quoting requirements from a catalog. Well, in this case, I have read the catalogs and I have looked into everything I think I need to know, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. It all just feels so isolated and lonely.

The worst thing for me is that my undergraduate career represented a time of exploration for me. I discovered some things I like and some things I’m good at. Also discovered a few things I’m not so good at, but those are still good things. I don’t want to have to declare a major and make a 100% commitment to it. I know what I want to do, but that doesn’t mean that being locked into it doesn’t make me feel unnecessarily confined. There is something freeing to know that at any moment in your undergraduate career you could take leave of your sensibilities and actually change your major to Studio Art and it would work out. Admissions to undergraduate programs is just kind of flexible like that. I will have no problem focusing on my program and completing it, but just feels like there is something missing.

• Physics II – a continuation of basic college physics. Covering more on the topics of electricity, magnetism, light and optics. From this course I specifically would have loved to have gotten into the optics section. Unfortunately, I never took this course. It appeals to a variety of my interests, from the electricity topic covering how energy moves and how it is converted to its various forms. I would have found that fascinated; to my interests in astronomy and photography that would have been aided by learning more about optics. I never needed the course for a major or anything and thus, it never really happened for me.
• Art History I – In this series of courses, I only took the 2nd part. Well, that’s not completely true. I registered for the course and worked at it for a while, but then ended up dropping it because it seemed like a lot of work at the time when I already had enough of a load. I would have liked to have covered the art of pre-history and concentrated on the basis of art, how we have come to know art as we do today.
• 2D Design – Two-dimensional composition is something I feel like I got a healthy dose of in Drawing I, but I do not think I know enough to be competent in most mediums. The opportunity for this course just never really presented itself.
• Figure Drawing – This course I wanted to take, but it was never offered. I feel like I have missed out on this. I have an appreciation for the human form and would have liked to have gotten to know how to properly render it. Mr. Biggers wanted to show us some in Drawing II, but unfortunately he became ill and did not get to teach that particular course.

Just a few of my undergraduate regrets. Surprisingly I thought this list would be longer. Thinking about it, all except for Figure Drawing I could probably pull off between free hours in the spring semester and the summer session for which I currently have nothing planned. Should I go for it?