Scrapin' my face on the sky

I'm looking forward to Introduction to Psychology more than Intermediate Algebra, which only makes me feel like a smug jerk, but I'm glad just because I'm excited about school instead of anxious for a change. July 7th.

For about a year, at least, my good friend Jonathan has been working at Lowe's, and talking about going for his Master's degree. His main problem is the GRE- the Graduate Record Examination. He hasn't gotten good enough scores to be accepted into a graduate program at the schools he was looking into, and I think without serious study (which I highly doubt he'd commit to), he probably won't get an 1100 or 1150 or whatever it was. It looked to me like he'd be working at Lowe's forever, stuck in limbo. He has a Bachelor's of History, but without a teaching degree, he can't do much with it. Because he didn't get into a graduate program in the fall after he graduated with his Bachelor's, Jon's options were to work as he does now, do volunteer work at state parks, or take a job as a border guard in Arizona-- he almost did that, until we told him about the crazy drug war going on. Some of that was to build on for his eventual aim at working the higher levels of the national parks, but his options are limited by his formal education level, which is the reason behind his drive for a Master's.

The last time I spoke with Adam about his plans, it amounted to sticking around Ypsi. In the next year or two, he should be done with his Bachelor's, but things are a little more difficult than just graduating and finding a job. His fiancee, Courtney, is on the wait-list for the nursing program at Washtenaw Community College. She has a four-year degree already (Women's Studies), but it's because of MET (Michigan Educational Trust) obligations and the fact that Eastern's nursing program wait-list was a year longer than Washtenaw's. That's not saying much, since WCC's is a year itself, and Courtney only graduated this spring. She'll have her spot on the list as long as she's taking classes there, and she's been doing that almost immediately since she left EMU. Still, that means the earliest she can enter program will be Summer 2010, by which Adam should have already graduated.

This is where it starts tying together. Adam is planning on going to Eastern for his Master's right after his Bachelor's is done. He has his own problems with standardized tests, so I mentioned the GRE issue. He was afraid of that too, but after looking through the graduate programs there, he discovered something very interesting- EMU has a graduate Art program that doesn't require any standardized test scores.

I've looked into it, and Eastern offers two types of Master's degrees. The first is your run-of-the-mill graduate program with typical thesis-prep classes. The other is a virtually identical program, but without a thesis requirement or thesis preparation credits. The thesis-based degrees DO require a GRE score (1150 in EMU's case), while the cognate programs (those were the credited classes in place of thesis-prep) do not. Why even bother with the thesis program then? The greatest difference lies in the answer to that question. The cognate program, while not requiring a test score for admittance, removes the option to go on to a doctoral program. That path lies in the thesis degree.

Jonathan, a day or so after I told him about this program, said "I'm going to Eastern." When I asked when, he told me either January, or next fall. That means three of my closest friends are going to be there in a couple years from now...

Which means I'm probably going back to Eastern to finish out my Bachelor's. Not now, of course. I'm still sticking with my OCC plan. But when that's done, and they're all out in Ypsilanti, and I have to choose between OU and EMU? I'm going back. I can't pass up an opportunity like this, it'll never happen again. It's exciting, I wish it were sooner.

In the meantime, I've been trying to map out my time left at OCC. When I did that, it seemed like tons of required classes disappeared, but I guess there weren't that many. I had a harder time thinking of what to spend 17 credits of electives on. That's 5-6 classes. And if they're not general education stuff, they'll be harder to come by in the summer. The way it all came out was that my Fall and Winter semesters will be mostly electives. Hey, that's fine by me! I did it all in a spreadsheet, too, I feel like a dork. But it's a gameplan, and it looks very doable.

A lot of my electives are actually dedicated to Psychology classes. If I get a B or better (and I absolutely should) in my Intro to Psych class this summer, I am planning on taking Experimental Psychology in the Fall. "In a labratory setting, the student will conduct experiments in operant conditioning, learning, psychophysics, perception, motivation, and emotion." Doesn't that sound fun?! The other three I'm looking at are Psychology of Coping, Psychology of Organizational Behavior, and Abnormal Psychology.

In one of those other posts, I wrote about how I love psychology and philosophy. It's more like thought. I love thought. After Experimental Psych, I'll be taking Intro to Logic in the Winter semester. It's a philosophy course, rather than psych, but out of the four philosophy classes OCC offers, it's the most interesting, and as I see it, the most practical. Basically the study of argument, formal and casual. I can't wait.

I'm only taking four Psych classes, and Logic counts as a required Humanities class, so I needed at least three more credits to graduate. So Fall 2010/Winter 2011, I'll be auditioning for Concert Band. Two credits a semester. I should be able to make it in.

Unofficially, I'm off my meds. The place I went to filed bankruptcy, but my therapist is renting part of what they left (the rooms, that is), and I still see her, but not my psychiatrist, which is kind of the important part. I'm saving a couple weeks' worth of pills in case I can't get a new appointment with the psychiatrist (and therefore a refill on my RX) before I start my classes again. I realized that not being on this stuff was what I felt, after ruling out lack of sleep, lack of food, and lack of exercise (when you start to pace like I do, it counts).

It's taken me over a day to write this, and I'm glad to finally be done with it.

Sean