The World of Higher Education~a blog by Read

Nice post! You have so many books.

~8.22.2015~

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the one year anniversary post of The World of Higher Education!

Okay well it's not been exactly a year but considering I'm typing this under the almost exact same conditions as my very first post I figured it was close enough. I sit in a hotel room, in the same hotel (not the same room though that'd be creepy) and in the morning I'm going to drive to my university and to my on-campus apartment and move in and get ready for my junior year. I'm halfway done guys!

Unlike the first post however I won't be listing out a bunch of stuff cause I'm really tired. 

My classes this year will be Digital Imaging, Photography, Cost Accounting, Chemistry, and Wellness (which is like health/wellness/nutrition whatever). I get to keep my car and I'll be in an apartment with a kitchen and my own bedroom so I'm super excited about that and I'll post pictures of my room tomorrow.

Well like I said I'm gonna get sleep before trying to tackle the horrible herds of people trying to move in in the morning so...see ya.

Rock on beautiful people.

Nice entry! Good luck in school and your classes seem interesting.

nice!

congrats.
sounds awesome!

cant wait for your next entry

This is a lovely post, Read! Good luck with moving.

I was wondering if you could maybe explain how the university system works in America for me, though? Just a brief overview LOL. In the UK, you pick a subject you're interested in - say Chemistry - apply through an organisation to universities you're interested in and hope that you get a place. Once you've secured your place, you obviously start classes but the classes are all based around the subject you've chosen. {so for medicine there would be a module just on biochemistry}. It appears that it doesn't work like that in the U.S?  

Plus, most unis here start in October.

OMG Yas read your doing photography!!!

Thanks everyone  

@Eleanor YES I'M SO EXCITED

@Anika Sure!

Alright so junior year of high school (ages 16-17, which I understand to be year 12 I think?) you start looking at and applying to colleges and universities (here the words are practically interchangeable). You also take either the SAT or ACT which are college entrance exams and your scores have a big role in deciding if you're accepted and what scholarship money you get, and you can take them several times before you graduate to get higher scores. Most people have an idea of what they want to do, and they take that into consideration when picking a school, if they have a good program and reputation for that area of study (sometimes it doesn't matter cause people change their majors all the time). Some people have no idea what they want to do so they just pick a good college with lots of options and are called undeclared until they taste-test some classes and eventually pick a major. 

Senior year, the next year, you can still apply for schools but by now you start getting accepted to some and offered scholarships. There's no limit to how many schools you can apply to but obviously you can just pick one. Then you can spend the rest of your last year of high school having fun and mostly goofing off (mostly because you still have to have good grades but a lot of the pressure is off). 

A lot of schools make you take lots of general education classes before you even get started in your major (mine doesn't do that thank goodness. I took an AV production class my first semester). In addition to the specific classes you have to take gen eds: stuff like math and science and English and humanities kinda similar to high school classes. Depending on the type of degree you're after, you have different gen eds: bachelor of arts, or bachelor of science. B.A's mean more language and writing and humanities, and B.S's mean more science and math. (I'm B.S. even though I'd enjoy B.A. more because I didn't want to take Spanish but that's complicated)

I don't think all schools have such focus on gen eds though...mine is a liberal arts type school, so they want students well-rounded which is good but some probably don't have as much of a focus on making chemistry students take history and creative writing and whatever.

Gen eds are important but it's not a big deal if you don't do well in them or even fail cause you can retake them but major classes (like digital imaging or cost accounting for me) are more important, plus they're what you're there for so you should enjoy them at least a little.

After four years of this (usually, people graduate early a lot because they take extra classes or have credit from special HS classes), you get your diploma and are welcomed to the real world where you try to find a job. Most people take internships which can help with that. Internships are kinda like mini-jobs for credit at businesses where they do what you want to so you can get experience. Sometimes they're paid, mostly not. Hopefully I'll have one in the spring or next year. 

That really wasn't brief...oh well. Hope that clears things up, haha

It's an amazing subject, I'm sure you'll love it!

Ahhh, I see! It's very different to the system over here. I mean all the way up to the end of grade 12/year 13, it's pretty much identical. We do our A-levels, possibly equivalent to the SAT or ACT {?}, for applying to uni. For certain universities and subjects though, such as Oxford, you're required to take aptitude tests.  Do you guys have that for universities like Harvard or do they just look at your SAT/ACT scores? :3 Plus for us, there's a certain period of time we can apply within. I like how you get to do a combination of subjects. That system would be good here for people who are slightly unsure of what they want to do.. I mean, it took me ages to decide I wanted to do medicine and I had to go through a gazillion options because the option you pick basically dictates your future career. {not much pressure {!!}]. Most uni's here have intern-ships also - paid or unpaid - for throughout summer breaks.. not so sure on after uni though!  

Anywho, thank you for the overview! I appreciate how much detail you went into for me. <3

Hm, yeah I think most of the more prestigious colleges like Harvard do an interview along with their application. And internships are just for while you're in school...I think I phrased that wrong haha. No problem!

~8.26.15~

Okay well I said I'd post pictures the day I got here and I didn't so you get them now!

Here's my bedroom:

Spoiler:

It's tiny. Like really tiny. I call it the brownie pan because it's 9x13 feet haha.

But that's okay cause here's the rest of the apartment

Spoiler:

We still haven't quite unpacked everything yet. 

And here's the crowning glory:

Spoiler:

JUST LOOK AT IT 

I haven't stopped staring at that view since I got here. If only my old dorm building wasn't in the way...but you can literally see the entire city since this is one of the highest buildings on the highest hill in Nashville and I'm on the top floor.

Classes start today and I only have 2: Photography and Chemistry. Here's hoping the manual 35 mm camera I borrowed from my friend's dad is the right one for this class cause otherwise I'll have to rent one :/

Rock on, beautiful people.

YOUR APARTMENT IS SO LOVELY AND THE VIEW!!!!! Are you sharing your apartment with other people or going solo?

Omg it's beautiful!! Your room is the same size as my real life one

Wow that's such a wonderful view! I love your apartment, so beautiful ;D

Anika wrote:YOUR APARTMENT IS SO LOVELY AND THE VIEW!!!!! Are you sharing your apartment with other people or going solo?

It's a 5 bedroom apartment so I've got 4 roommates. Which, is a problem cause most of the apartments in the building are 4 bedroom so they're all built for 4 people, not 5. For example, there are only 4 drawers in the bathroom and 4 chairs at the kitchen table lol.

thanks for sharing.

did you get a drawer ?

Drawer? Yeah I've got a dresser next to the desk.

Omg so does one of you have to sit on the floor and eat???

King K wrote:Omg so does one of you have to sit on the floor and eat???

Nah, we rarely all eat at the same time, and when we do we either eat in the living room or drag a desk chair from one of the bedrooms.

Lovely apartment if I do say so myself

~9.17.2015~

Heeeeeyyyyyy

Just thought y'all should know that I am, in fact, not dead. Just super busy.

See, even though I'm taking 16 credit hours, I actually spend 23 hours per week in class. That's not counting homework and such. Add my weekly 11 hours at work, and homework, and eating, and sleeping...

It's not pretty. 

BUT! Change is on the horizon, because yesterday I met this guy who runs an in-home tutoring service for elementary, middle, and high school kids and was looking for tutors. So I went up to him and was like "yes tell me more sign me up PLEASE HIRE ME"

Okay I didn't say that but you catch my drift. Anyway, he's supposed to email me the application and I just really hope and pray I can get this job because that's what I love to do AND it pays way more AND it'd be less stressful than the job I have now at the dining hall. There, even though I've had this job for almost a year, I feel like I'm new because we have a new building and everything's in a different place and most of the people are different and it's really frustrating. My first Saturday they gave me a freaking 12-hour shift at the new fire pizza oven. Which, fire pizza ovens are really cool and I'm kinda proud that I know how to operate one now but

12 hours. Fire. Big heavy stick things I have to move the pizzas around with. And lemme tell you, college kids eat pizza like there's no tomorrow. Not. Fun. I "kindly" asked my manager to Never Make Me Do That Again for the Sake of my Sanity and Health. And I haven't, thank the Lord above. Now I wash tables for 4 hours on Wednesdays and manage the salad bar on Saturdays. 

I really hope I get that tutoring job.

Onto classes. 

Cost Accounting: I'm doomed. Even though the professor works as a pricing director and knows what he's talking about, he's never taught before and it's so obvious it hurts...my grade. This specific kind of accounting deals with pricing individual items and how to cut costs in a business and is very detailed and micro-managing which I hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I want to be a tax accountant or an auditor, not figure out how much to sell pencils for. But alas I have to take this class. Also it's Thursday nights from 5:30 to 8:15 which is HORRIBLE and you should NEVER DO IT if you can help it. I couldn't.

General Chemistry: Ok, compared to cost accounting it's not so bad. A lot of stuff (so far) I remember from high school chemistry. The new stuff (they use the q-word {quantum} *gasp*!) isn't so bad either, really. I think as long as I organize all my notes and basically do what I"m supposed to I'll be fine. 

Wellness/Junior Cornerstone: Basically, we just do group projects all semester. We don't even meet when we're scheduled to unless we have a group meeting somewhere on campus. Easy enough.

Digital Imaging: YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY! This class is just learning some of the Adobe Creative programs: InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. We're gonna finish up InDesign today and start Illustrator next week. No out-of-class work, no hassle. I just get to play on the computer for 6 hours a week.

Photography: One of those classes that shouldn't be stressful but it is. It's my first experience with a manual film camera and it's so delicate and the process is so exact and complex it's actually terrifying. My first demo roll of film got ruined before it even had a chance. I processed my next two rolls for my first assignment yesterday and almost started dancing when they actually came out like they were supposed to. Now I just have to find time to get back in the lab and develop and print them this weekend. Then there's the darkroom. You've heard of it even if you've never developed your own film. It is PITCH BLACK in there and you have to pry your film out of the canister with a bottle opener and wind it on these plastic reels and put it in this tank thing...blind. No light whatsoever. Then you get to dump a bunch of chemicals in there (in the light, thank goodness) and shake it and take your film out and dry it then take it to this other room where you use the big machines to actually make the prints. And it all takes forever.

Okay that was rambly sorry but anyway that's what I've been up to. 

Rock on beautiful people.

wowowowowow sounds like
too much fun for one semester...
think mountains...
is adobe flash in this stuff?

Great post, Read. I have friends that take photography and they're in the same boat as you. A lot of people underestimate how much effort goes into it and I see how much work my friends put in after school/ lunchtimes and break times. I certainly believe it would be a lot more time-consuming than any of my subjects, haha.. xD {we have a dark room, too}


Your classes sound pretty epic, specially chem. <<totally not saying that because I love chemistry or anythingg..>>Digital imaging sounds so sOO COOOL. I really hope you get the job you want, Read! It sounds like it'd be more fun for you. ;D