School has finally begun full swing. Fernando started classes almost a month ago, so he is out of the house Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights attending classes. This is his last semester. He is technically also doing an internship this semester, but his "intership" is "gaining management experience" at his current day job at Pacific Sales. This isn't requiring that much more work than Fernando was already doing--he was already on tract for management training. After his finals in Decemeber, Fernando will be an official college graduate--long time coming but worth the wait! CSUN doesn't have a ceremony for winter graduates, so Fernando won't be walking in his cap and gown until May 2010, but he will be walking. Hopefully we can throw a little party for him then. When I met Fernando over seven years ago, he wasn't serious about school. He'd been out of high school for three years and he only have a few COC credits to his name. I'm proud of all his hard work. I don't know if he went back to school just for me, but I know he now knows the importance of his education and appreciates all his hard work over the past five years to get his bachelor's degree.
I have finally attended at least one session of each of my three classes. My classes were slow to start because the first day of classes was the Thursday before Labor Day, and my Tuesday class only meets every other Tuesday. My current schedule seems very manageable-the only downer is the long commute to and from classes three nights a week.
Above: A picture of me being a dork and showing off my "back to school" look.
My Monday night class meets from 4:00-6:50pm on the main campus in Thousand Oaks. The name of the class is Programs and Functions in College Student Personnel. This class seems like it will be my most "fun" as it is most directly related to my specialization. Some of the assignments include attending a few student life events at a few different college campuses and reporting on them, interviewing student affairs professionals at a few campuses and reporting on them, and developing a new student affairs program in groups and doing a final paper/presentation to the class.
My Tuesday night class, which meets only 2 Tuesdays a month, meets from 7:00-9:50pm on the main campus. This class is called Tools for Research, Practice, and Professional Development. As far as I can tell, this class is going to mostly be a joke. The instructor is a recent graduate from the same program as me (although he is PPS, not CSP--which means he specializes in jr. high/high school students). The job of the class is to teach us APA style, how to search databases, how to use Excel, and how to use PowerPoint. Our projects are a short paper that synthesizes the findings of 2 or 3 peer reviewed articles, written in APA style, and then a PowerPoint presentation done in groups. The only new thing I'm learning is APA style, but the teacher is teaching us APA style by making us watch a 20 minute internet video about it. Also, this teacher told the class that magazine articles from "respected and trusted magazines like Time" count as peer-reviewed journal articles. Again. What . . . a joke. Well, at least it's an easy 'A'.
Finally, my Thursday class is called Counseling Theory and Practice and meets 7:00-9:50pm on the Woodland Hills Graduate Center. The building is really cute--a grouping of classrooms centered around a "lounge," which is a room with two tables, a microwave, a coffee maker, and a soda machine. I can bring my dinner with me and heat and eat there! Anyway--this will probably be my hardest class. It's mostly theory with a little practice thrown in. My instructor is a little cooky, but I've found that most psych instructors are. Our main assignments include a review of a journal article about a multi-cultural counseling issue, a short paper where we apply 14 different counseling theories to the same population of students, and finally, a large 8 page research paper about one of the theories from class, which also requires us to do a 15 minuite long PowerPoint presentation to the class about the theory and a demonstration of one the counseling techniques from that theory. I've been assigned "Feminist Theory." There is also going to be a take-home final which we'll have to write short written responses to a few prompts.
So that about wraps up what school is all about for the Vasquez clan. Other than school, life is going well for us. I'm tutoring like a mad woman and am actually in the middle of attempting to get a part-time nanny position. I've already had a successful phone-interview with the mother, and she wants to set up a time for me to meet her, her husband, and their daughter in person. The daughter is almost 2 years old, so if hired, I will probably be going through potty-training with her (fun!). I'd have to wake up super early and be in Castaic by 6:30AM three days a week. But, the benefits of a nanny position are it'll be fun, educational (at least for me), and I can use naptimes as study time. Also, more income that is tax free. Fernando is excited for fall because his beloved football has returned to TV, and Fernando spends several hours a week monitering his fantasy football league teams. That's right, I said teams, with an "s."
I took some pictures of the main Cal Lutheran campus the last tmie I was there, so maybe I'll share those with you soon. Until then . . .
~LOVE~
