Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Trying To Figure It Out

My summer semester for school's just about to get started. Of course, that brings along it's own frustrations. I'm only taking 3 classes, but it looks like it may be a challenging semester. Not necessarily the information in the classes but meshing the classes and my schedule altogether. Let me explain....

Looking ahead I know I'll need to travel down to Texas for approximately a week. This is to fulfill my large animal requirements for the program. I'll be taking what they call a Fast Track Lab. It was either that or ride around an entire semester with a large animal vet. Considering I still need to work and make money and also maintain my current position of employment, this isn't an option. So going down to Texas is the only way. However, I'm not sure how long I'll be down there or when I'll be down there until after the semester starts (May 12th). They have to first see how many people are in the class and what the actual campus schedule is before scheduling the lab. This causes a possible conflict at work considering the summer months are considered our "busy" months, along with another coworker going on maternity leave in the summer. Add on to that the cost of flying down there, paying for a hotel/car, etc. This will get kind of costly. I had dealt with the fact of paying for it, but then here comes another thing....

I will be taking a Cooperative Education class. Basically, a co-op. I think this is kind of uncalled for given that my entire time while in the program I've been "co-oping" or having on the job training. In addition, I need to fulfill 16 hours of continuing education (CE). This is plain ridiculous. I'm in school and I have to have CE? Not only that, but I have to pay for it. Not to mention, my first year of being Registered in Ohio doesn't even require that I have CE considering I'll have been right out of school. Being in Ohio it's not like I have all that easy access to any major conferences (this time of year) and in searching online for days I came to the conclusion that I'll just have to fulfill it by flying to Myrtle Beach and attending a conference. Once again, how am I going to pay for this? Not to mention, with the Texas trip, our cruise in the fall, and then this I'll most likely have no vacation time to use. Okay, so I just figured I'll have to deal with it. So much for a stimulus check.

Then I signed online yesterday to find that information has been posted for this class. Good to go. I started reading to find that my CE can be almost anything I want. I could sit and talk to Doc for an hour a week and have it fulfilled. That's cool, even though I was just warming up to the idea of Myrtle Beach (it's still not out of the question). Then, that's when I got blindsided. As stated above I must fulfill 240 work hours total for the summer. That comes out to 20 hours per week. Piece of cake. I do around 44-47 hours average per week. But wait! What about when I have to go to the fast track lab?? I shot a quick email to my professor and finally received an email back today saying that I must fulfill a minimum of 20 hours per week. I can't use overflow from one week to the next. And if not, I don't pass the class "No exceptions. Sorry, that's the requirement and it's out of my hands" Whoa, whoa, whoa. So what, are you telling me?? I have just called him and left a message. Now, there's a chance that this Fast Track Lab may be just a 4 day weekend type thing that wouldn't interfere with my work hours too horribly, allowing me to fulfill my requirements. However every document I have says that it can be from 4-7 days depending on the amount of students involved. So, it looks like if it's closer to the 7 day type of deal I'm screwed. This truly frustrates me given the fact that I wanted to do the large animal class last semester (as did my employer) but the school advised me not to take my classes in that order and that I should wait for the last semester. Right. Way to advise. I could be (and hope) that this seems like a bigger thing that it actually is, but still, it's frustrating given that I'm so close to the end and this could easily turn into me having to take another semester.

Update: Just got off the phone with my professor. Looks like they're going to work with me in regards to me going down to Texas/Co-op. So no need to worry about that. As for the CE, I'll have to figure something else out.

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