Last month I took my Level II C++ class, and it was the worst experience ever. I will post more about this, but for a bit of background, I am taking 5-week online classes at the University of Advancing Technology out of Tempe Arizona. My online instructor disappeared from the class for 3 of those weeks (later we found out he had a death in the family), we didn't get a new instructor until about 9 days left of the class, and were still awaiting grades and answers to questions from Week 1 on through. In the end I had to chalk this one up in the loss column and even decided to change my major to Web Design and Development:
Comment below any of your horrific class experiences you have lived through.
Suffice to say that the following is merely the class review that I wrote and posted:
This class has been the worst class I have ever taken in my education career,
and considering that throughout the past 14 years of my post-high school
education I have attended 3 professional colleges, and multiple military
training courses that is saying something. We didn't even get access to our
Pearson book until almost week 2 and even then content was missing and out of
order. It is now week 5 and I still have unanswered questions from week 1.
I am very sorry to hear of Professor Gardner's loss but I don't see how the
college can expect and entire class to pay for the way this class has gone. I
was originally told that if I filed for an incomplete that I would be provided
with 4-5 additional weeks to complete the coursework and given the lack of
grading, feedback, instruction and responses I felt that this would be necessary
for me to even get close to grasping how to successfully complete my
assignments. Now that I have realized that I will only be provided with 1 more
work with an incomplete after not having instructor assistance for practically
3+ weeks, I know that I just don't have the knowledge, experience or know-how to
successfully accomplish these tasks, to sit here and say that I truly do not
have the tools for success in this course honestly has brought so much stress
and many tears of frustration. We have been set up for failure in this course
and I commend those that have been able to pull out a win. I have slept no more
than 2 hours a night for weeks now to try to make it through this class and to
also stay on top of my other class that I have been taking at the same
time.
Disappointment doesn't even come close to what I feel for the way that
things have gone in this course. I had to have extensive talks with scheduling,
my advisor and other school officials due to this course. I have even made the
hard decision to step back and put myself backwards in my education to change my
major because this is just now an acceptable way to gain an education for me. I
am paying a lot to attend UAT and I had to get an additional personal loan to
pay for the difference between FAFSA and I have to work additional odd jobs and
second jobs on top of being a single mother just to afford to go to school and
then to have an experience like this is truly very frustrating for me.
I
have given so much to this course and I was failed. I understand that Professor
Coddington is not to blame for the previous issues, and I have had wonderful
results working with her in other courses. Unfortunately by the time that she
has come in to this class it was just too little too late for me. The damage
was already done. I have had to stand here in defeat to know that I must take a
loss for this course. It is very hard for me. I have never failed a college
course before in my life. I have never felt so inadequate and so utterly
deserted by an instructor. I have lost the trust that I had in my education
here. I have busted my butt to have the 3.9 GPA I have on top of life and this
kills me inside. I honestly don't know what else to say in reflection of this
experience.
I wish all of my classmates the best as they make many
additional life altering changes due to this experience from withdrawing from
school completely to changing colleges to changing programs of study and to
pushing through somehow. We have definitely put our blood, sweat and tears into
this, and I am drained. Thank you to anyone who has offered advice,
explanations and assistance. I treasure all of the votes of confidence and
apologize for failing in my own part of the effort.
Showing posts with label life altering choice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life altering choice. Show all posts
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Insight Into My Worklife
In case anyone is interested in knowing a little bit of the mysticism surrounding me at work, I wanted to share this with you. I don't talk about work very often but when I had to write about a difficult challenge I had faced I ended up resorting to one of many projects I have worked on in the past. Let me know some of your challenging situations if you are open to share, whether work related or not. Here is one of mine:
As a contractor working on a military education and training base I was tasked with being the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the main Application Exercise (APEX) for the students. This exercise tests the previously learned skills of the students to ensure that they have actually learned what they needed to out of the 6 month training course to go out into the operational Air Force. During this time I was asked to combine a previous 3 Day Exercise with a 6 day exercise, turning it into a 9 day exercise that was synchronized and flowed easily, as well as to update the information from static dates of 2008 to static dates of 2011. Although both exercises featured the same countries in play they were both created by different people and taken from different sources using various dates. During initial creation they were intended to be separate stand-alone exercises. This was a massive task that was assigned solely to me intended to be done with the combination of multiple companies and several people. Due to the reassessment of personnel I ended up doing the majority of the work single-handedly on behalf of the company I worked for. To add onto the massive project there was a timeline of 3-6 months in order to have the project completed on time for the re-write of the course that I was supporting as all material had to be completed at the same time for it to be approved and signed off on by the military. The end result was 1042 pieces of message traffic for a day and night shift as well as a plethora of products (imagery, tracking products, PowerPoint briefings, etc.) I can also throw in the fact that I was in my 2nd and 3rd trimester of my pregnancy with my first child as a single mother during this time. Needless to say this was a daunting task, but it was one that I welcomed with open arms. I love nothing more than to be faced with a challenge that I can shape into the best work I can accomplish. Initially I had to start with figuring out what needed to be included in this project, the resources that I could utilize (as this was a classified exercise and not all resources are readily available) and the timeline that I had to work with. I worked first on scrubbing (going through and seeing what was still relevant, what needed deleting, what needed changing) the message traffic. After this I had to make personal contact with resources (personnel and websites) around the military that had worked with similar information and countries. I had to use quite a combination of finesse and effective communication/people skills over the phone, and through email to get pointed in the right direction. This was ongoing for many months to get the full range resources and the knowledge that was needed. I had to come up with the best time management and most effective method of accomplishing all of these things. Halfway through the project my timeline was cut from having 6 months remaining, to 3 months remaining. I put in many overtime hours and was able to get all of the products including plotting over a thousand forces on Falconview (a computer based map of the military forces in play). I had to constantly keep up communication between companies involved to ensure that both sides were synchronized in timing of events, visualization and messages that were dependent upon one another. During this time I created many new products, still utilized years later, to help any teaching instructors to understand the exercise, and to be able to effectively teach the exercise with the best result of learning and knowledge absorption for the students during the hardest tasks they will face yet in the course. Although many of my solutions to this problem took on a creative tone, it wasn’t until most of the time consuming work was done that I came up with the best solution yet. My most creative solution to this monumental task was to take all of the work that I had previously accomplished and put myself in the shoes of the student, to try to envision myself as the audience that would be presented with and tested on this material and see it from their eyes. I wanted this exercise which had now become my baby to be the most effective and most beneficial 9 days that they could be faced with at the end of their training. I went through the exercise and acted as though I was in charge of all of the groups at once (during a normal class the students are broken up into 5-6 separate groups to track different aspects of the military forces (Air, Ground, Navy, Defensive Missiles, Special Ops/Ballistic Missiles). I went through all of the visualizations; I read through each piece of message traffic (multiple times) and I acted as though I was one of the students. I took each of these groups and I created student products of PowerPoint briefing to track the forces and to brief to the instructors, I moved the forces along with the traffic to ensure that force structure and amounts were adding up to where they should. I had to track along and ensure that events would follow likely TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) for my target countries. I had to be sure that this exercise was as realistic as possible given the static dates that were chosen. From this creative solution I caught multiple minute force structure and number discrepancies that would not have been as clear otherwise. In so doing, I was able to save credibility of the exercise when it came to the scrutiny of an actual running class as well as many man hours searching through for these discrepancies after the fact. This also allowed me to ensure that I could confidently hand over this finished product to the military for validation and official release as an exercise that would be utilized according the military training standards across the Air Force. I was also able to come up with number and force structure cheat sheets for the instructors to utilize for the beginning and end of each exercise day so that the instructors were able to adequately gauge the status of their students’ ability to keep track of what was going on in the exercise and better assess their finalized briefings.
As a contractor working on a military education and training base I was tasked with being the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the main Application Exercise (APEX) for the students. This exercise tests the previously learned skills of the students to ensure that they have actually learned what they needed to out of the 6 month training course to go out into the operational Air Force. During this time I was asked to combine a previous 3 Day Exercise with a 6 day exercise, turning it into a 9 day exercise that was synchronized and flowed easily, as well as to update the information from static dates of 2008 to static dates of 2011. Although both exercises featured the same countries in play they were both created by different people and taken from different sources using various dates. During initial creation they were intended to be separate stand-alone exercises. This was a massive task that was assigned solely to me intended to be done with the combination of multiple companies and several people. Due to the reassessment of personnel I ended up doing the majority of the work single-handedly on behalf of the company I worked for. To add onto the massive project there was a timeline of 3-6 months in order to have the project completed on time for the re-write of the course that I was supporting as all material had to be completed at the same time for it to be approved and signed off on by the military. The end result was 1042 pieces of message traffic for a day and night shift as well as a plethora of products (imagery, tracking products, PowerPoint briefings, etc.) I can also throw in the fact that I was in my 2nd and 3rd trimester of my pregnancy with my first child as a single mother during this time. Needless to say this was a daunting task, but it was one that I welcomed with open arms. I love nothing more than to be faced with a challenge that I can shape into the best work I can accomplish. Initially I had to start with figuring out what needed to be included in this project, the resources that I could utilize (as this was a classified exercise and not all resources are readily available) and the timeline that I had to work with. I worked first on scrubbing (going through and seeing what was still relevant, what needed deleting, what needed changing) the message traffic. After this I had to make personal contact with resources (personnel and websites) around the military that had worked with similar information and countries. I had to use quite a combination of finesse and effective communication/people skills over the phone, and through email to get pointed in the right direction. This was ongoing for many months to get the full range resources and the knowledge that was needed. I had to come up with the best time management and most effective method of accomplishing all of these things. Halfway through the project my timeline was cut from having 6 months remaining, to 3 months remaining. I put in many overtime hours and was able to get all of the products including plotting over a thousand forces on Falconview (a computer based map of the military forces in play). I had to constantly keep up communication between companies involved to ensure that both sides were synchronized in timing of events, visualization and messages that were dependent upon one another. During this time I created many new products, still utilized years later, to help any teaching instructors to understand the exercise, and to be able to effectively teach the exercise with the best result of learning and knowledge absorption for the students during the hardest tasks they will face yet in the course. Although many of my solutions to this problem took on a creative tone, it wasn’t until most of the time consuming work was done that I came up with the best solution yet. My most creative solution to this monumental task was to take all of the work that I had previously accomplished and put myself in the shoes of the student, to try to envision myself as the audience that would be presented with and tested on this material and see it from their eyes. I wanted this exercise which had now become my baby to be the most effective and most beneficial 9 days that they could be faced with at the end of their training. I went through the exercise and acted as though I was in charge of all of the groups at once (during a normal class the students are broken up into 5-6 separate groups to track different aspects of the military forces (Air, Ground, Navy, Defensive Missiles, Special Ops/Ballistic Missiles). I went through all of the visualizations; I read through each piece of message traffic (multiple times) and I acted as though I was one of the students. I took each of these groups and I created student products of PowerPoint briefing to track the forces and to brief to the instructors, I moved the forces along with the traffic to ensure that force structure and amounts were adding up to where they should. I had to track along and ensure that events would follow likely TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) for my target countries. I had to be sure that this exercise was as realistic as possible given the static dates that were chosen. From this creative solution I caught multiple minute force structure and number discrepancies that would not have been as clear otherwise. In so doing, I was able to save credibility of the exercise when it came to the scrutiny of an actual running class as well as many man hours searching through for these discrepancies after the fact. This also allowed me to ensure that I could confidently hand over this finished product to the military for validation and official release as an exercise that would be utilized according the military training standards across the Air Force. I was also able to come up with number and force structure cheat sheets for the instructors to utilize for the beginning and end of each exercise day so that the instructors were able to adequately gauge the status of their students’ ability to keep track of what was going on in the exercise and better assess their finalized briefings.
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| Pregnant me about a month before my son was born |
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Lessons Motherhood has Taught Me
In case you are interested in getting a sneak peak into some of the lessons I have had to learn as a single mother, I wanted to share this with you. Of course there are millions of tiny little lessons and this just touches upon the very tip of it, I thought it might be nice to hear some of your lessons as well.
Within the first month of me going from full-time military to a civilian contractor in support of the military, I surprisingly discovered that I was pregnant. From that moment on, I knew that to go through with this meant that I would be doing it completely on my own. At the time I wasn’t sure how this was going to work with my job and with being in the middle of gearing up for a house move. I admittedly knew very little about being a mother and the costs entailed and decided that I needed to make some life altering choices to make this work for me. I decided to go with a much lesser house to have a lower rent payment and I was doing what I could to prove myself at work so that I wasn’t in a position to lose my only source of income now that I was going to have another mouth to feed. I was actually gearing up to go back to school full time at this time as well and I had to put that on hold. It took several years for to find any sort of confidence in my “mommy” skills and to find the best routine and security in my job. I did end up changing companies for a better family benefits package and more job security. Now that I have established more security and stability, I no longer need to put school off, I am ready to go back. I have already been setting aside time in advance to ensure that I can succeed in this venture.
Before I get ahead of myself, I guess I better get back around to describing what I have learned from being a mother. I have learned more than can ever be put into words. I learned what the true meaning of time management is. You don’t realize how much free time you are wasting in life when you are younger until you forget what sleep is and pray for an extra 5-10 minutes in the morning to make it to work on time. I have learned what it truly means to be selfless and sacrifice for another human being. Previously I had thought that I was being selfless in life, but until I was a mother I never knew how easy it would be to put someone else needs, future and wants before my own. I learned what true unconditional love is. I have always had love for animals, but never had the love I felt for a person been unequivocally unconditional. I experienced the highest levels of stress and I learned the definition of “mommy guilt.” I have fought so many internal battles as I have grown as a person and entered into the process of learning what it is like to care for another person’s every need; to wish any pain and any hurt could be taken into me so that my son would never feel a second of discomfort. As my son has entered into toddler stage I have felt stress at the constant pushing of limits to constantly re-evaluate the way that I teach him in the best way possible for him. The search for the best way is new and different every hour; some days every minute. I have learned that in times of high stress I can reach anger much too quickly and that to yell can make me feel like the scum of the Earth. I have learned that I need to be easier on myself, that some days are good, and some are bad. Other lessons I have learned include learning how to take that deep breath and walk away until I am more level-headed. I have learned that I am not alone and that as our family of two, we are a team and must move forward together. Time management has become my best friend and has made me more efficient than I ever knew I could be at the most menial of tasks. I was always good at multitasking, but I have become a machine now.
Most importantly when it comes to incorporating these lessons into being a prospective student, I now know my limits, I know what I can and can’t handle and I know that pursuing education further is the best plan for me to achieve long-term security for my small family. The heightened confidence that I have achieved as a mother will be incorporated into bolstering my passion, drive and motivation to successfully accomplish this goal. I have the ability to do this at this time in my life, as routine has become second nature. I know that the longer I wait to get started, the more that I would enter into regret for lost time. As I have learned so many lessons thus far as a single mother, I relish the idea of all of the new lessons I will learn in the future.
Within the first month of me going from full-time military to a civilian contractor in support of the military, I surprisingly discovered that I was pregnant. From that moment on, I knew that to go through with this meant that I would be doing it completely on my own. At the time I wasn’t sure how this was going to work with my job and with being in the middle of gearing up for a house move. I admittedly knew very little about being a mother and the costs entailed and decided that I needed to make some life altering choices to make this work for me. I decided to go with a much lesser house to have a lower rent payment and I was doing what I could to prove myself at work so that I wasn’t in a position to lose my only source of income now that I was going to have another mouth to feed. I was actually gearing up to go back to school full time at this time as well and I had to put that on hold. It took several years for to find any sort of confidence in my “mommy” skills and to find the best routine and security in my job. I did end up changing companies for a better family benefits package and more job security. Now that I have established more security and stability, I no longer need to put school off, I am ready to go back. I have already been setting aside time in advance to ensure that I can succeed in this venture.
Before I get ahead of myself, I guess I better get back around to describing what I have learned from being a mother. I have learned more than can ever be put into words. I learned what the true meaning of time management is. You don’t realize how much free time you are wasting in life when you are younger until you forget what sleep is and pray for an extra 5-10 minutes in the morning to make it to work on time. I have learned what it truly means to be selfless and sacrifice for another human being. Previously I had thought that I was being selfless in life, but until I was a mother I never knew how easy it would be to put someone else needs, future and wants before my own. I learned what true unconditional love is. I have always had love for animals, but never had the love I felt for a person been unequivocally unconditional. I experienced the highest levels of stress and I learned the definition of “mommy guilt.” I have fought so many internal battles as I have grown as a person and entered into the process of learning what it is like to care for another person’s every need; to wish any pain and any hurt could be taken into me so that my son would never feel a second of discomfort. As my son has entered into toddler stage I have felt stress at the constant pushing of limits to constantly re-evaluate the way that I teach him in the best way possible for him. The search for the best way is new and different every hour; some days every minute. I have learned that in times of high stress I can reach anger much too quickly and that to yell can make me feel like the scum of the Earth. I have learned that I need to be easier on myself, that some days are good, and some are bad. Other lessons I have learned include learning how to take that deep breath and walk away until I am more level-headed. I have learned that I am not alone and that as our family of two, we are a team and must move forward together. Time management has become my best friend and has made me more efficient than I ever knew I could be at the most menial of tasks. I was always good at multitasking, but I have become a machine now.
Most importantly when it comes to incorporating these lessons into being a prospective student, I now know my limits, I know what I can and can’t handle and I know that pursuing education further is the best plan for me to achieve long-term security for my small family. The heightened confidence that I have achieved as a mother will be incorporated into bolstering my passion, drive and motivation to successfully accomplish this goal. I have the ability to do this at this time in my life, as routine has become second nature. I know that the longer I wait to get started, the more that I would enter into regret for lost time. As I have learned so many lessons thus far as a single mother, I relish the idea of all of the new lessons I will learn in the future.
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