Category: Academic

I am trying my absolute best in my Personal Health and Wellness course, but for the past 3 weeks I have scored 99 out of a possible 100 on my weekly test. I am happy the scores are high,but am slightly pissed at myself because I can’t manage to push them over the 100 mark… and it doesn’t make me feel any better that I have 38 points of extra credit…. the extra credit in my world is supposed to be an extra cushion that will let me have a worry-free final exam session, not make up for mistakes during the semester. I guess if I am going to keep this stress-free I’m going to have to chill a bit.

The number one problem with distance education courses is that the instructor isn’t close enough to strangle when they do something stupid. I have a health assignment due on June 14th, and it is still not posted to the course website. There were problems with the instructor not having things posted early in the semester, and I assumed that this was because the course had just gotten started and the instructor has a new baby. The missing assignment was noticed by several students about a week ago, and it would appear that the instructor hasn’t been in the course since then. A little funny, students are supposed to check in to the course twice per week, but I suppose that doesn’t apply to the instructor whose primary job it is to keep up with the course.

For my personal health and wellness course this semester I had to fill out a worksheet stating my feelings about sex and other assorted topics. As most of you know, I am gay, with a tendency to act asexual most of the time. I don’t make a lot of other information available to my general audience.
This evening on the course discussion board there was a married guy who was objecting to the worksheet and was requesting an alternate assignment because “Many of the questions are only acceptable for discussion between me, my wife, and my physician – certainly not in an academic environment.” If this was a survey at the start of a programming course I would agree with him, but its not, this is 2 weeks into “PERSONAL Health/Wellness”. Sexual health is part of the overall wellness circle, so we have to cover it. If I was dealing with a gym teacher and this material I would be more concerned about this, but my instructor is quite qualified in the area.
Below is the worksheet. The rules are that all questions must be answered to the best of our ability, and she will keep all answers confidential (unlike her human sexuality course which has to discuss everything openly).

I have been a college student for almost 5 years now (since August 2003) and I still don’t know what I want to do. I am a Software and Information Systems student by major designation, but anyone who meets me (that didn’t know me when I was a computer dork) doesn’t seem to believe that. Honestly, I don’t know that I believe it anymore. I like computers and know a reasonable amount about them, but there seems to be more to me than that. In my Digital Photography class I have already (3 weeks into the class) been designated as the go-to guy for technical or artistic questions. What is it about me that makes my knowledge so versatile? In some ways I feel like I should be some sort of engineer. Engineers are technical, but also have so much of an artistic influence on things. I can’t seem to find what it is that I am supposed to do. So many of my friends know their place so easily it seems. Jeff has graduated with his economics degree and is moving on to a PhD in Economics… that’s dedication to the field. I find it often quite funny that there is no doctoral degree available in the arts, but then I remind myself, that it is because at that level it technically changes fields. If you put enough thought into art to obtain a PhD, it is no longer art, it is a branch of Philosophy (Aesthetics). Not that it matters much to me, since I can’t seem to pick a field long enough to want to pursue an advanced degree like that.
I feel like I am lacking guidance, and like there is something wrong with me. When does that little buzzer in my head get to go off and tell me that I have found something that I should be doing for my life? I have a good feeling about Art, but its not something I can see myself doing for my entire life, primarily because I don’t feel that Art is something that can be commercialized without sucking its intrinsic value from it. Art is personal, Art is love. When you put a price on Art you are putting a price on the soul of its creator.
There are days when I wake up and I can think of nothing but writing, and there are days when I wake up and can think of nothing but some form of art (changes seasonally) and then there are days when I wake up and I can think of nothing but source code (then there are the days when my cock wakes me up, and we are not going there in this blog). Does this mean my career has a multiple personality disorder (I know thats not the name for it anymore, but its prettier than Dissociative Identity Disorder)?
I wish I could just wake up and know what my purpose is. Everyone else is in their lives already, I’m just sitting here, and I’m pissed at myself.

There is something I failed to report on in my blog…. I decided to completely drop American History 1 from my schedule for Summer. I will take it in the fall or as a self-paced course. I started the course and just realized I wasn’t into it or motivated for it at this time.
Also, last week I visited Gaston College and declared my intent to get the two degrees that I have earned from them. I will receive an Associates in General Education at the end of the summer semester and I will receive an Associates in Art at the end of the fall semester, or whenever I take American History and/or British Literature (or any literature course and history course I select). I have decided I will also take the steps toward an Associates in Fine Art at Gaston as well. Depending on how that goes, I will likely finish it off as a BFA at UNCC or another University in the area, perhaps even the Art Institute of Charlotte (yeah, right, when tuition checks write themselves).
Not that anyone cares, but I got authorization from my dean at Gaston College to transfer the Digitial Photography class back to Gaston for my AFA degree. Now I just have to get the departments to agree on what is supposed to happen to that form now that it is finished. The dean’s office tells me to take it to the registrar, the registrar tells me to send it to the registrar at the other school… I am so confused. If I send the form to the other school, how will Gaston know that they are supposed to credit me the way the dean specified?

Umm.. since my last post, it occurs to me that for some of my readers not residing in my mind, it may be helpful to be given my official summer schedule…. here it goes:

All of my courses are online this summer, as they are every summer.