Wake up taking Abnormal Pysch, go to bed taking World Religious Traditions II

It's been an interesting day. Not the least of which was waking up sure that I was starting Abnormal Psych tomorrow and going to bed tonight already having started World Religious Traditions II, which at noon today I had no intention of taking it. At least not this semester.

This all started when I realized that the end of the month is approaching faster than I would like it to, because my Behavioral Analysis and Intervention Class ends July 3 and I took "a couple of days off" a couple of weeks ago. Ooops.  See, this is a Guided Independent Study class and that means it's me and my syllabus and my texts.  No classroom, no dates on the assignments.  Just me and a teacher to whom I email assignment.  I do the work independently and email it to a very nice woman named Phyliss, who is a special ed teacher and is one the approved Guided Independent Study instructors for this class.  She grades my work. She's wonderful and answers questions and all, but there aren't any "class sessions" and it's not an "online class," so there is no discussion between classmates or others doing the same work as there aren't any classmates. Just me and my books and Phyllis, receiver of email assignment and answerer of questions. 


So, for the last couple of days I've actually been doing my homework. I took a couple off weeks off as I have been in college for 3 years now with nary a semester off and I'm pulling a 3.976 (darn that A- I got last semester anyway, ruined my 4.0).  So..... now that it was time to get back to the grindstone, I did my work and prepared to email in an assignment.

Whilst emailing in that assignment I noted that I had an email about my Abnormal Psych class which was to start tomorrow.  It had been canceled.  They cancel classes for less than 6 enrolled, and it's summer and we're a smaller campus down here in Colorado Springs. So they canceled it. This is bad.

It's bad for two reasons. First, I'm getting a minor in psych.  This means I need FOUR (count 'em, FOUR) 400 level psych classes. This class was to be the fourth.  As in, I take the class this summer and am done with Psych minor. 4 classes in summer (including this one), 4 classes in fall, student teach after Christmas. Graduate.  As in no time to be a class short. So, here I was at noon today.  Finding out the powers that be at Regis canceled my psych class. Boo hiss.  Second, it's bad because I get very nice financial aid, grants and loans.  This is based on my being a full time student (4 classes at 3 credits each = 12 credits).  They canceled my class, which brought me to 9 credits, which means I was no longer full time. That's no good.

So, what do I do? I look for new classes, that's what I do.  So at 12:30 this afternoon I pull up classes. I'm in an adult studies program (College of Professional Studies at Regis University, which is in Denver). I am in their Colorado Springs campus.  Only Psych class they have going in the summer at this campus is one for business majors all about HR stuff.  Lovely, but not my thing. I'm going into Special Ed with  my psych minor, not the business world (been there, done that (law), have the t-shirt and don't want another one) And the other psych offering at my campus is a psych class I already took.

Ok then, time to look at Religious Studies. Lovely, there's a World Religious Traditions I that is starting (Eastern Religions). Oh, it's starting TONIGHT.  Well, okey-dokey then, I sign up and 4 hours later I drive off to class.  Oh, books .. yeah, books. Hmm, well I'm very good at finding used text books on line for CHEAP. However for a class that starts TONIGHT, that won't work.  Call bookstore. Bookstore tells me price of books and name of books. Drat -- books are SAME books I used last summer when I took World Religious II  (Christianity, Judaism and Islam).  And I sold the books back last summer. Drat. I now get to rent them for $110 for the two of them, for a 5 week class. But beggars can't be choosers and I did at least get a class I will find fascinating in a subject I love and am good at. So I fill out paperwork for book voucher (online) and process that so I can get the books with aforementioned financial aid.

Ok, that's done. Now to sign up for fall classes, but that's another post.

I went to school, picked up my books at the bookstore, went to class, 10 people in class, a teacher who is very nice and very entertaining in his teaching style. Up for tonight - overview of world religion terms - monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, and assorted other terms and numbers of worldwide adherents to various world wide religions. Then  overview of syllabus and our next few weeks.

Week 1: Overview of this class- start Hindu
Week 2: Hindu Religion
Week 3: Buddhist Religion (but I need to miss this class as I'll be in LA for my dad's retirement, in fact this day will be my birthday and I'll be at Disneyland, but that's another post). I'll have to do make up assignments for this class. Which is a shame, as I'd really like to be in class for this.
Week 4: 4th of July - no class, so we'll do assignments at home (out of text) on Chinese Religions
Week 5: Japanese Religions.

Should be interesting. I do love comparative theology and world religions and learning how people believe and why and how that compares to what I believe and why.  But it's not exactly what I was planning on studying this week.

Oh, one last note, this class has one three page paper per week (on one text) and one five page paper per week (chapter summary/question answering) from the other text

And I have a bunch of work to do on my other class

Back to school, apparently my "summer vacation" from school work is over.