Category: Academic

All of my academic life I am used to there being certain people I can count on to make me feel “at home” in my curriculum. I was worried that I wouldn’t find this at UNCC after last semester, but I am now begining to find my niche and fit in with certain people and breaking down my own walls of fear about things. I am at UNCC for 3 – 5 years (or 6 if you ask the registrar; Degree/Decree Expected Date: May 2010). This isn’t a small part of my academic life, this is just the begining of phase 2. During Fall 2004 I was very concerned and almost alarmed about the fact that I didn’t really know any instructors or how to properly get to know them (or any of the students for that matter). The answer to how to get to know them… simply let it happen naturally. It doesn’t take a small class to get to know an instructor, and small classes don’t really help with it at all. This semester I commited myself to a minor in philosophy (because I like the way it makes me feel), with that commitment comes the acceptance of a limited set of instructors to complete it with. I have sort of accidentally selected Dr. Presler as my instructor of choice. Dr. Presler seems to understand me and I like her teaching style.
When I am in an academic environment I seem to attach myself to certain people, not sure why, but what I do know is that I get this feeling of belonging once that attachment is made. I have that attachment now for my minor, just days after it being declared and confirmed.
As for my major, I have selected Mrs. Sara Scott. I will likely only have her for another course or two at most, so I can’t become too attached, but I am also getting along well with my advisor/director, Dr. Bruce Long. In the past 2 weeks I have began talking to Mrs. Scott more and more. She isn’t as much of an air-head as believed during day 1.
I can’t say for certain if my isolation felt previously was because of the department I was attached to or not, but what I do know is that I feel right at home in the College Of Information Technology.
Recently I have been feeling particularly isolated from my fellow students, and im finding that this is making me quite uncomfortable. I am trying to make contact with people, specificly Robert in Calculus, Kent and Chuck in Accounting, and Waseem in Business Programming.
Off I go into my world of academics and people who will likely disperese before I get up the courage to really get to know them.

As I get closer to my change of major being finalized I am realizing what it is that I want to persue in my education and possibly my career. I was at first a little nervous about the switch to SIS from MIS, because of the increased math load and various other factors that made me think that I couldn’t handle the work for SIS. I have come to realize now that SIS is where I truely belong and that if taken a step at a time I will have no problem completing the requirements for the major, and on the plus side, I think I will actually enjoy doing it. Any type of time-based goals I had for completion of my degree are irreleavent, I must focus myself only on creating a stable platform upon which I can build the rest of my life. By the time I have finished my degree I will likely have enough credits for an additional degree in a different area, because of my tenancy for finding lots of elective courses that I like. I think at some point I missed the point of being a freshman. While most freshmen were figuring out what they really wanted to do I was busy working towards what I thought was my selected path. My own confidence in my academic world (probably the only place I have any significant confidence) drove me to think that I didn’t need an advisor and that I knew everything I needed to know to get myself through college without any significant guidance from anyone. I was more than a little off on that assumption. While I could select courses for myself and talk a dean out of pre-requisits at Gaston College for dual enrollment without any major issue, this was not representative of actually persuing a degree program, just sort of a pre-college warmup.
Now is the time for me to focus myself and realize that while I want to know everything, doing so is not practicle and I must select only a few areas in which to specialize my knowledge.

Found an interesting page earlier that I would like to share with my loyal readers: http://www.city-data.com/zips/28223.html.

After having classes for five semesters straight with no breaks it has finally hit me that I should take seriously a decision to not take any courses during the Summer 2005 semester. I originally wanted to take some courses for my own interests, but now that I am looking at that idea I have determined that I just can’t handle it. I haven’t been as interested this semester in anything as I should be, based on my enthusiasm entering in Fall 2004. Last summer I took classes because I had nothing better to do, but this summer I have rediscovered several of my hobbies and I have plans for having a lot of fun during the summer and I don’t want to be the one saying “well, I would love to, but I have this paper to write”. Anytime anything like that is hanging on me I always wait until the last minute (there is an optimal amount of mental fatigue which keeps me focused), but it becomes an excuse from the time it is assigned until an hour before I start it. The summers of my youth are becoming numbered, I don’t want to murder another one with course-work. If I do anything this summer it will be completely independant study (and not recorded by any registrar). This summer I just want to be a normal blond guy with some amount of ab definition, playing on a beach somewhere.
The summer of 2004 was mostly a waste as the season goes. I didn’t spend nearly enough time outside and I didn’t let myself rest until about a week before classes started at UNCC. Summer is supposed to be a fun season. I can see myself getting up at sunrise, just to watch it, then begin my day by doing some reading for leisure, then go outside to enjoy the sun at some type of activity, either sports or something. If I get bored with that I can always join a gym or something. At sometime passed mid-day I can find a nice shady place to take a walk, enjoy the smells of summer and just spend time contemplating, perhaps about my morning read. That should bring us up to about 4 or 5PM, a good time to go visit my garden and see how things are progressing, harvest something if it is time, or whatever. Not sure how well my fantasy summer will work out, but there is always room for modification as long as no long-term commitments are made, such as academic responsibilities.
I think the point of this entry was to state that things are getting to me this semester and I need time to chill. My overachieving goals are unrealistic and I should focus on actually enjoying my life and not getting so wrapped up in stuff that doesn’t matter in the end. Since I am human I have a restriction on my availible time on this planet, I am going to try to not waste it.

The identity crisis with one of my courses just got more complicated…
When the course was still being planned it was called INFO2231, but then was posted to the registrar as ITCS2231 (by the ITCS department), and I enrolled in the course. For this semester the course is listed only as ITCS2231, but for the summer it is listed as INFO2231, with a cross listing of ITCS1214, meaning that ITCS1214, INFO2231 and ITCS2231 are essentially the same course. The course itself evolved from some internal issues between the Belk College of Business (COB) and the College of Information Technology, department of Computer Science. The COB decided that the CS department didn’t teach programming in a way that was effective. The ITCS department responded with a request for the COB to rewrite the curriculum to the way they wanted, the course essentially was the same, except for sucking all of the fun out of the course. ITCS accepted the changes, but assigned the course to Sara Scott, the only ITCS instructor who has never been called “mean” or “difficult” by anyone, and who makes the course fun anyway. As of this point the new course has NOT been written to any catalog or course description list in the University, which makes me question whether or not either department will declare it as existing, or if it will fade away with no record, and things will continue with ITCS1214 as the introductory programming course, but offered with VBA instead of Java.
Fortunately for me, this change of opinion of ITCS2231 will result in it being able to count as ITCS1214 for me and I won’t have to take ITCS1214 as an ITIS (COIT: Information Systems) major.
note: ITCS/INFO 2231 is “Introduction to Business Programming” and ITCS1214 is “Introduction to Computer Science”.

I would like to start this entry by stating the following: At this time I am retracting my hatred of mathmatics.
My previous hatred for math was based on a predisposition to it being a foriegn concept due to 3 levels of Algebra in high school. My predisposition was then linked to the instructor, Mrs. Diane Ward. Mrs. Ward has a great personality and is a good math teacher to most, but it just didn’t work with me. The predisposition likely caused me to fall off the horse for second time in AP Statistics when I allowed myself to become discouraged. I must have learned something from the course, I managed to pass the Advanced Placement exam.
I don’t know why, but for some reason this evening I decided to complete some Calculus homework that is due next Wednesday. The homework covers limits and the concept of handling infinity in a limit situation. I noticed after I completed it that I used some of the concepts that I learned in logic (primarily orderly execution of a formal method) in completing the assignment. Either Jae Woo Jeong is a great instructor, or Calculus is easy. I still don’t want to try the other version of Calculus (for engineers), but I feel a little better about my math skills now. I won’t know until final grades are posted whether or not I made a mistake by circumventing Campus Pipeline’s registration system validations. At the moment I think I made the right decision, but it is still possible that it was a mistake.
Now off to do Accounting homework, or maybe just read a little Plato… either way, there is educational stuff to be done. (ok, how many of you know that I am going to run off and work on GITI or something?)

I have now dropped LBST2102-022 due to administrative errors at UNCC.
I went to Denny 215 as scheduled for my course today at 3:00PM, when I arrived there was obviously something wrong, Dr. West was in the room and the course was supposed to be taught by Mrs. Bonaparte. The administrative issue occured in the communications department, there was some sort of communication failure between the department and its faculty [laughter is now appopriate]. Mrs. Bonaparte was never notified that she had been scheduled to teach the course specified and as a result the communications department had no one to teach LBST2102 in that field. Earlier today a book was even specified for the non-existant instructor. The error was not caught until 9:30 this morning when Dr. West was looking over the information for his department (general education). By 3:00 a replacement instructor had been located, Mr. David Johnson, from the history department. Upon hearing the department of the replacement I felt like fate was sending me notification that 18 hours is just plain nuts. As soon as I could get logged into Campus Pipeline today I dropped the course (that was no easy task). I will do almost any topic at UNCC, but I draw the line at anything history again.
Dr. West mentioned that 3 other errors like the one with our course occured in the commnunications department. This seems to be just another example of how badly Campus Pipeline is fucking up the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. All issues I have had while at UNCC have occured because of that system and its related systems. UNCC, it is time to throw away CP, it sucks. We have an MIS, SIS, and several Computer Engineering departments, you would think that UNCC could develop its own proprietary system without much of a problem, but of course outsourcing takes less effort. I have gone from not liking Campus Pipeline to despising it.
Bottom line is that I am now at 15.0 credit hours and there is no intention to replace the other course.

Ok, I think I should have figured this out earlier than this, but I have a really not-so-great schedule for myself for the Spring 2005 semester. Chris was looking over the schedule and pointed out the errors to me. I have a packed schedule with only 10 minutes between classes, and im arriving on campus about an hour earlier than I am used to. My Fridays have been expanded to an hour later because I missed the fact that there was actually a gap between Physics and English last semester. The courses causing the problems are ACCT2121 and ECON2102, the two from “my department”. Is this any shock to anyone? I thought I would just simply change majors to one of the related fields because I decided I didn’t like the business concentration in the Management Information Systems major, but when I asked the registrar’s server to audit my present courses against the other majors there was a slight suprise: the same bullshit courses are required in those majors also. I am not overly concerned with ECON2102 because im familiar with it and know what to expect, and ACCT2121 makes sense, and may be practicle. My concern is with the fact that I am treating myself like a machine, going from one course to another throughout the day with no break, just like in high school. Chris pointed out that this behavior is more than a little dangerous to myself and will serverely limit my time for interacting with other people. I know without a doubt that I will meet and become familar with 6 people at UNCC during Spring though, the PHIL3060 class. The people of the Plato course are likely to be a tight group, as there are only 7 of us and the reigning queen of Philosophy at UNCC, Dr. Judith Presler. I’m not sure what to expect from the course, but knowing Dr. P it will likely be fun. I think Thursday will be the most enjoyable of my week. At the moment I am uncertain as to what to do about the ACCT2121 and ECON2102 situation. I guess I can always use the last minute drop/add thing if I have to, although when entering UNCC I decided that I would never do that and that I would have all of my academic plans in order ahead of time. This can not be happening! I am not supposed to be foulable, it isn’t in my plan!
My Overall Thoughts: i thought this was the semester that could screw me or unscrew me, but im just as screwed as i was before, only now i know that i am equally screwed on either path and i can select the path with which to screw myself at a later date without wasting any credit hours.