Quotes

Quotes from: The Long Haul, by Myles Horton

“I was working on the idea that you learn what you do, and not what you talk about.”

“It also became clear that there had to be a place where people could learn how to make decisions by actually making real decisions. That's how you learn – by doing it. I believed then and still believe that you learn from your experience of doing something and from your analysis of that experience.”

“We had to set ourselves a goal, but we didn't have the slightest idea of how to achieve it.”

I chose these quotes because I feel like they relate to me the most. I feel like these three quotes are closely linked to each other. With the first quote, I feel this is very true and realized this with myself recently. It is easy to have a lot of ideas and talk about them, but the only way to really get a good understanding of what it takes to do something, or to show people that you are serious about something is by actually doing it. I have talked probably since I was a teenager about wanting to own my own business and wouldn't it be great, etc. etc. But, I never did anything about it, I just had ideas and thoughts. Now, with where I am in my life, I am just now staring to go through the process of making this a reality. I still don't have anything to show that I am doing it, but I know for myself, that I am serious and taking it a lot more serious than I did in the past.

The second quote goes hand-in-hand wit the first one for me. I am gong through the learning process now at College Unbound. It is a project for me, but a very real one. If the project doesn't go as I want it to, it may not be a problem from the CU point of view because it is all a learning experience for me. It is something that I have ever done before, but am going though the process so I can learn for myslef what it is like. Hopefully it works out, but if it doesn't, I can look back on it and see where I should make changes or do things differently, and then try again.

And, the third quote goes right along with the previous two for me. I have no idea how I am going to achieve my goal, but I know that I am not going to be able to achieve anything if I don't have a goal to begin with. Right now, I have a broad goal and as this semester goes on, I am going to narrow it down in to a defined goal. In the past years, when I simply thought about owning my own business, I didn't really have a goal in mind, or wasn't working towards anything because I always had a job and it wasn't like I needed to do it now, I could put it on the back burner for a while. Now it is right up in my face and I know I need a goal in order to achieve anything.

Disruptive Innovation

These articles about disruptive innovation were very interesting to me. One little idea could change the future for another company and millions of people. Someone who just wanted to improve on another idea ended up turning it's world upside down. Blockbuster seemed like it was a strong business, then Netflix came out and they went bankrupt. It's scary that with the rate that technology is improving these days, that can happen, and it can happen fast. Who knows what company or business will be next to be Netflixed, right now it looks like college is about to be Netflixed.

With the way that colleges insist on staying in their old fashion ways and with the prices as high as they are, I'm sure it is only a matter of time before people start revolting and going to more unconventional schools and taking online classes. These schools refuse to change and that was the mistake that blockbuster made. They thought Netflix was only going to be a niche market, but it ended up taking over the entire market. There's a saying that goes, “If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.” There is no remaining idle anymore. Either advance yourself or your company, or get run over by someone who wants to advance.

When I think about staring a business, I am thinking about businesses that people are going to need in the future, not just something that is a fad right now. I am thinking about things that will always be around, or at least in the foreseeable future. I think there are very few things that are always going to be around; we will always need food and water, shelter, and clothes on our back. These are the things that I think about when I think about starting a business. I don't want to be able to get Netflixed out of what I am doing. I want it to be stable and I want it to be able to grow and prosper. Disruptive innovation can be a great thing for some, but can also be deadly to others. I want to make sure that I am on the right side of it when it comes to effecting me and what I do.

Disrupting Ourselves

The article Disrupting Ourselves, by Randy Bass relates to what we are doing at College Unbound in a few ways.  It talks about how there have been a lot of innovative changes to the ways we learn, but the ways of teaching haven’t kept pace.  Teaching has stayed the same as was a hundred years ago.  In the article, it talks about the most powerful learning outcomes from a student’s perspective.  The students said that the most powerful learning experiences that they had in college were from common intellectual experiences, learning communities, collaborative assignments and projects, service learning and community based learning and internships, among a few others.  I mention these because I believe these are all things that we do at CU.

The article also talks about how the practice of high-impact learning could only be done through small classrooms, but now, with the use of technology, it can be done at a larger scale and have a better effect.  This can be made possible through the use of ePortfolio’s.  This is the same thing that we are doing at CU.  All of our work gets posted online so you can see a running timeline of work that has been done.  You can see the progress that is being made in the projects we are doing and the improvement in the work that we are doing.  You can go back and look at where we were, and look at the more recent posts and see where we are today.  In the article, Bass quotes Bret Eynin saying, “Drawing on the power of multimedia and personal narrative, recursive use of ePortfolio prompts students to expand their focus from individual courses to a broader educational process.”  This is what we do at CU.

Bass goes on to talk about bridging the classroom with experiential Learning.  He talks about paying attention to elements like prior learning, experiential knowledge, program-wide learning goals and the long view of expert practice.  These are all things that we do at CU to maximize the learning outcome.  We look at our past experiences and see how we can relate them to our current situations, or maybe even someone else’s situation that is in our cohort.  We set program-wide learning goals and work towards achieving those.  We have an end goal of what we are trying to achieve; for the semester and for the year.  We are able took past the short term and see our long term goal.

In this article, Bass also talks about how college students with the traditional learning style dont necessarily feel a sense of community, sense of mentorship, sense of collective investment and a sense that what they are creating matter.  At CU, we have all these things.  We have the mentorship from the staff at CU and also from our Professional Advisors at our internship.  We have a sense of community because we are interacting with each other, along with each others works that are in the surrounding community.  We also see what is going on in the community, whether it is art shows or plays that are going on and go see them and relate them to our learnings.

I think someone needs to get a hold of Randy Bass and let him know what is going on here in Providence, RI.  We have a lot in common with what it is that he talks about of higher education.  I think he would be presently surprised.  

I Need a New Plan

What is my story?  I guess I will start with high school.  I went through high school without putting much thought into college.  At the time my family owned a chain of grocery stores, so my thought was that it didn’t matter; I was just going to work at the stores.  Then a series of events led to my family selling the stores and I needed a new plan.  I still didn’t put much consideration into college because I was too uncertain about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  I guess I was under the assumption that I needed to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was 17 years old. 

Once I graduated from high school, I needed a job, so I worked through the summer.  After a few months of hauling 60lbs bundles of shingles up a ladder three stories, I realized that I needed to do something different with my life.  I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I was certain that I didn’t want to break my back working construction my whole life.  I explored two options: community college and the military.  I went with the military.  For me the choice was easy, either I go to school at a community college and work at night, or, I join the Air Force; travel, go to school for free, full health and dental coverage, all m meals paid for and all the other benefits that go along with it.

By the following February, I was in Texas for basic training.  I did four years in the active duty Air Force and returned home in 2007 to serve in the MA Air National Guard.   I got to travel to different places and meet a lot of different people.  Unfortunately the job I had in the Air Force wasn’t something that I could use in my civilian life.  I guess not many commercial airlines were looking for someone to load munitions on their planes.  So, I still needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  I decided to stick with the Air Force area and go to a technical school to learn about maintaining aircraft in general aviation. 

After school, I got my FAA certification and started a job maintaining helicopters.  The job had no benefits, and I had to drive 75 miles each way.  I had no guidance or teaching; it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do for the long term.  I was almost spending my entire pay check on gas and health insurance, on top of having a boss that was rarely around and didn’t want to teach or guide me in any way.  The job had no room for advancement so; I started looking for jobs elsewhere as soon as possible. Because I was working on helicopters, I started looking for jobs working on wind turbines, because I figured that would be the way of the future and I passed about 3 of them on my way to and from work each day.  I ended up finding a job in Boston working at a renewable energy company.  I started out as an Assembly Technician making solar-powered inverters.  I really didn’t know anything about solar-powered inverters before I started, but the people I was working with were really good about teaching me. 

Shortly after, I was promoted to Assembly Lead, and then about a year later to Manufacturing Assembly Supervisor.  I managed to work my way up the chain at Satcon without my degree, but I knew that if I want to go any further, I was going to have to get it.  I am not content with just being idle; I need to advance.  I tried to take some college courses at night, but it didn’t exactly work out as I was planning.  I took one traditional English class and tried to take a hybrid course which alternated between meeting in class one week, and having an online session the following.  One class wasn’t a problem; adding the second class where we were supposed to meet every other week during the winter was a little more of an issue.  We went through a stretch that winter where we had a lot of snow so I had about a five week period where we didn’t meet in class at all.  Going that long was just too much time without interaction with the teacher.  The class was structured so that a lot of the material was explained during the classes when we met in person.  I needed help from him first hand, rather than trying to have a conversation via email.

Even without the difficulties of not being able to meet for the class, at the rate that I was going, I would have been in school for four years.  Again, not something that I could have done with my work, military and personal schedule.  Then I found out about College Unbound.  At first I was skeptical, but once I spoke to Jamie, she alleviated a lot of my concerns.  I loved the idea that I could receive college credit for my life experience and other courses that a traditional college probably wouldn’t have accepted.  I received credit for tons of experience; from the military and technical courses, to my professional development courses.  I was ready to chalk up all that experience up as a loss before I spoke to Jamie.

The other part that really turned me on to CU was how I would be using my everyday job as an internship.  I wouldn’t have to alter my schedule much from my everyday work hours.  I was already spending between 8 and 10 hours a day at work, so I could use some of those extra hours to work on my project for that semester.  I thought it was a great idea to have us as students get the experience of working on a project that we wouldn’t normally be working on.  It gave us experience and it helped the company because it is a real project that someone would have to do anyways; a true win-win scenario.

Another point that I liked about College Unbound was the idea that I would be interacting with other students that were in the same scenario that I was in.  We could relate and sympathize with each other because we knew what one another was going through.  Traditional schooling didn’t work for us, so we had to find an ulterior way of being educated.  We could share stories and relate to the people that we were working with.  We could share ideas of how something worked for us, but other things didn’t.  We would be learning from one another, along with the CU staff and our Professional Advisors.  We would be interacting with each other on a more personal level; similar to a work environment.

I liked the idea of the education and learning plan being based around me.  You wouldn’t have to bother with all of the excess material that you really didn’t want to go through, just because you had to.  We would be “cutting the fat” out of our education.  We would only be taking in the useful information that would help us grow and achieve the things that we wanted to achieve.  But, it would still be up to us to do the work and take on the responsibility.  Just because it would be based around us, wouldn’t make it any easier; maybe a little more convenient with our schedules, but not any easier.  We would be taking on twice the work; a full-time job and full-time school.

For me, it wasn’t easy the first year keeping up with all the school work, my full-time job and life.  I was a new husband, a new father and I was killing myself at my job working 60 to 70 (sometimes more) hours a week.  I would take the train to and from Boston when I could and either read or do school work for that hour.  I would come home (exhausted) and spend 20 to 30 minutes with my wife and daughter before they fell asleep and went right back to doing school work.  There were so many things that I needed to do around my house, that just had to wait.  I needed to spend time on my school work.  When big projects came up at Satcon, my school work suffered.  I couldn’t not be fully focused and dedicated to Satcon; this was my livelihood.  I needed to provide for my family first and do my school work second.  I struggled for a while with this just because the projects at work didn’t let up for about a year.

My story has been filled with a lot of uncertainty.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do in high school.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do after high school.  Uncertain about what kind of school to go to after the military.  Uncertain about where my job was/is going.  The one thing I am certain about is that I need my college degree.  There are many reasons why I want my degree, but those aren’t as important as the process of obtaining it.  At CU, there are many great aspects of the program; like the flexibility in schedule, class collaboration, work internships and “real” projects, but my degree is not going to be handed to me.  I need to take charge of my own learning and get the work done on my own.  There are going to be plenty of people all around me to offer me help and support, but it is going to be up to me to get the work done.

My Story

What is my story?  I guess I will start with high school.  I went through high school without putting much thought into college.  At the time my family owned a chain of grocery stores, so my thought was that it didn’t matter, I was just going to work at the stores.  Then a series of events led to my family selling the stores and I needed a new plan.  From Junior to Senior year, I still didn’t put much thought into college because I was too uncertain as to what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  I guess I was under the assumption that I needed to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was 17 years old. 

Once I graduated from high school, I needed a job, so I worked in construction for one of my friend’s fathers through the summer.  After a few months of that, I realized that I needed to do something different with my life.  I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I was certain that I didn’t want to break my back working construction my whole life.  I explored a few options; community college and the military.  I went with the military.

By the following February, I was in Texas for basic training.  I did four years in the active duty Air Force and returned home in 2007 to serve in the MA Air National Guard.  My experience in the Air Force was a great one.  I got to travel to different places and meet a lot of different people.  Unfortunately the job I had in the Air Force wasn’t something that I could use in my civilian life.  I still needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  I decided to stick with the Air Force area and go to a technical school learning about maintaining aircraft in general aviation. 

After school, I got my FAA certification and started a job maintaining helicopters.  The job had no benefits, and I had to drive 75 miles each way.  I had no guidance or teaching; it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do for the long term.  I started looking for jobs elsewhere.  I found a job in Boston working at a renewable energy company.  I started out as an Assembly Technician making solar-powered inverters.  I really didn’t know anything about solar-powered inverters before I started, but the people I was working with were really good about teaching me. 

Shortly after, I was promoted to Assembly Lead, and then about a year later to Manufacturing Assembly Supervisor.  I have managed to work my way up the chain at Satcon without my degree, but I know that if I want to go any further, I am going to have to get it.  I am not content with just being idle; I need to advance.  My three years at Satcon have been extremely busy.  I tried to take some college courses at night, but it didn’t exactly work out as I was planning.  I took one traditional English class and tried to take a hybrid course which alternated between meeting in class one week, and having an online session the following.  One class wasn’t a problem; adding the second class where we were supposed to meet every other week during the winter was a little more of an issue.  We went through a stretch that winter where we had a lot of snow so I had about a five week period where we didn’t meet in class at all.

Even without the difficulties of not being able to meet for the class, at the rate that I was going, I would have been in school for four years.  Again, not something that I could have done with my work, military and personal schedule.  I believe it was during the following summer that I found out about College Unbound.  At first I was a little skeptical but, once I spoke to Jamie, she alleviated a lot of my concerns.  I loved the idea that I could receive college credit for my life experience and other courses that a traditional college probably wouldn’t have awarded me credit for.  I had tons of experience from the military and from my technical courses, to my professional development courses that I was able to receive credit for.  I was ready to chalk all that up as a loss before I spoke to Jamie.

The other part that really turned me on to CU was how I would be using my everyday job as an internship.  I wouldn’t have to alter my schedule much from my everyday work hours.  I was already spending between 8 and 10 hours a day at work, so I could use some of those extra hours to work on my project for that semester.  I thought it was a great idea to have us as students get the experience of working on a project that we wouldn’t normally be working on.  It gave us experience and it helped the company because it is a real project that someone would have to do anyways; a true win-win scenario.

CU is also great because we are interacting with people who are in similar situations as each other.  We understand what one another are going through, and we can share our experiences, issues, difficulties or what has worked for us and allow others to use that information and learn from it.  We are interacting with people on a more personal level, like you would in a work environment.  We are not just showing up to a class, listening to someone lecture and then going home and trying to process it.  We get involved with each other and provide real useful feedback. 

We are taking real subject matters and relating it to our school, work and everyday lives.  The big ten learning goals are areas that really apply to our jobs.  Hearing stories, or watching videos of real people talk about these subjects, really help us relate them to ourselves.  These subjects are the skills that are going to help us succeed in our careers; they are the skills that people are looking for when they go to hire people.

Something that I am still having difficulty with is finding the time to keep up with the work load.  This year, I have been having difficulties with two online courses that I signed up for with Roger Williams.  I thought it would be a great way to get credits toward my degree, and be able to fit it in my busy schedule.  I thought wrong.  I have found out the hard way that this style of learning doesn’t work for me, at least not in the position I am in now with two little girls and a job that is always changing.  I figured out that if I don’t show up somewhere to show my deliverables, I am going to put it on the back burner and focus on something else that I know I am going to be held accountable for in person.  I know that I can’t show up to one of our Monday sessions without the work that was assigned the week before.  This is something that I am trying to work on as the semester goes on.

Another part that I have had trouble with is that my work is very fluid.  Things are constantly changing, like our business model.  Last year we were planning on building a product in our facility in Boston, so my project was based around that.  Then our model changed again, and my project was no longer applicable.  This year, I started a project and shortly after my company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  I am still able to do the project, but a lot of the people that I was planning on using, have been laid off.  I am still able to complete my project, but I am not sure if it will be implemented.

My story has been filled with a lot of uncertainty.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do in high school.  Uncertain about what I wanted to do after high school.  Uncertain about what kind of school to go to after the military.  Uncertain about where my job was/is going.  The one thing I am certain about is that I need my college degree.  There are many reasons as to why I want my degree, but those aren’t as important as the process of obtaining it.  At CU, there are many great aspects of the program; like the flexibility in schedule, class collaboration, work internships and “real” projects, your degree is not going to be handed to you.  You need to take charge of your own learning and get the work done on your own.  There are going to be plenty of people all around you to offer you help and support, but it is going to be up to you to get the work done.

Resilience

Resilience

Part 1

Resiliency is a great trait that you need in order to succeed in anything that you do.  If you don’t have resiliency, you are going to fail one time and never get back on your horse, you are going to find something easier to do that is less fulfilling.  You are always going to think about the time you failed and never tried it again.

One important trait that they talk about in Parent Resources is staying calm under pressure.  If at the first sign of pressure, you crumble, you are never going to be able succeed.  You need to be able to take a deep breath, gain your bearings and handle what is going on.  For example, if you are feeding your infant and he starts to choke, what do you do?  You can’t run away and start hysterically crying.  You need to react to the situation.  You need to keep calm and think about what is happening.  OK, my child is choking, he didn’t completely swallow his food, it is lodged in his air way, I need to dislodge it.  And that is what you do.

Another thing that I agree with in Parent Resources is how they talk about controlling our impulses.  You need to be able to wait to eat that marshmallow, because the reward is greater when you wait.  If you don’t have the ability to control your impulses, you would never be able to get anything done.  I know from my own experience that if I got up and got a candy bar out of the vending machine every time I had the impulse to eat candy, I would be getting out of my chair every five minutes and wouldn’t have any teeth left.

Something that they talk about in Weathering the Storm that I liked is how they talk about using ex-pro athletes on the trading floor.  They say that you can’t get emotional attached.  Sports players are great at this.  If they let every loss get to them, they wouldn’t be able to go on in their sport.  They would get so caught up with that loss that it would affect the way they played the game for the rest of their lives. 

Another trait that is talked about in Weathering the Storm is humiliation.  It is what drives you to not make the same mistake twice.  No one wants to feel humiliated, so your brain won’t allow you to make that mistake again that humiliated you in the first place.  You learn from this and move on.  You can move forward more cautiously.

Something that I liked that Angela Duckworth talked about was how she was measuring grit in the different groups of people.  She talked about it in the children who were in the spelling Bee’s and how the ones who really succeeded were not the ones who were spending time studying the things that they already knew.  They put themselves out of their comfort zone and really spent time studying the information that they didn’t know.  This is dedication. 

I also liked how she talked about the study that she did at West Point on the first term cadets.  They were trying to figure out the formula to predicting the cadets that wouldn’t drop out.  It wasn’t always the ones who had the best stats.  They weren’t always the ones who did the best on the SAT’s or could do the most push-ups.  The ones who lasted the longest were the ones who had traits of perseverance. 

Part 2

Some part of resilience that I hadn’t thought about before is the way that Angela Duckworth spoke about Grit and what that means.  I hadn’t ever thought about grit as being a useful attribute in success.  I thought about resilience, determination and perseverance, but I don’t think I had ever thought about grit before.  I think grit is a combination of all of these.  Grit is what gets you drives you to keep going even though you are exhausted and at your breaking point.  When you have grit, you are able to keep going through all types of adversity. 

Duckworth talked about how the cadets that really had grit, were the ones to make it furthest in the program.  It wasn’t the ones that scored the highest or were the most physically fit.  It was the ones who could dig in and go the extra mile when they were already fatigued and on the brink of defeat.  I believe that grit is a key part of being resilient

I think that being in the military has made me a little gritty.  Looking back at my career, especially early on, I can recall many times in basic training when I just wanted to throw in the towel and quit.  But part of my personality is to never quit.  I was raised in a way that quitting wasn’t an option.  No matter how hard or difficult or meaningless I thought something was at that point in time, I was taught to stick it out, because the lesson I learn from that is going to be valuable later on in life.  I owe this completely to my parents.  I think that if I wasn’t raised like this, I would have given up on so many things at the first sign of adversity.  Being in the military just allowed me to take this even further.  It prepared me for basic training or being deployed away from my family for some number of months.

Another part of the readings that I hadn’t thought of that relates to resilience is; impulse control.  Now that I have read this, it makes a lot of sense.  You can’t let your emotions get the best of you when you begin to get stressed.  If you are at work and something or someone makes you angry, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to shout at them.  It would be unprofessional and everyone around you would think you were not a professional and can’t handle stress. 

I can think of quite a few times in my short career that someone has made me so angry that I needed to do something.  One way I have learned to deal with this without being unprofessional is to write an email and address it to this person or their boss and just write all the things I am feeling.  Once I was done writing everything that I was feeling, I would read it a few times and not send it.  Maybe I would re-write it so that it was in a more professional manner and then send it to this person.  This would allow me to get all my feelings out, rather than have them bottled up inside.

Another part of impulse control is the ability to delay gratification.  I think this is important because more often than not, the payoff is better the longer you wait.  At the time you may feel like I really need this now, but it usually is better and worth waiting for.  A simple example of this is a bond.  You can cash out a bond after a couple years, but it won’t be worth its full potential.  Do you really need that money right now?  Probably not, but because it is there, you think you do.  It is better to wait and cash it out after it becomes the most valuable.

Self Evaluation

Self-Evaluation

Over the past three months, I have learned a lot from my work at school and through my job.  There has been a lot that is related between the two.  At work, I have gone through so many high’s and low’s.  It has been a roller coaster ride since August.  I have changed positions, departments, rolls, products, bosses, schedule and personnel at least a couple times in the past three months.  I have learned a lot about myself and my job through these experiences. 

Reading about self-evaluation makes me look back at where I was a year ago and three months ago.  Over the past year, I feel like I have grown tremendously through all the experiences I have had.  In the past year, I traveled to Alaska for the military, received a promotion at work, found out my wife was pregnant, got deployed to the U.A.E. with my military unit, brought my second daughter into this world with my wife, changed departments at work, introduced a new product at work, started my second year at CU, changed departments again and am currently going through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy with my company. 

As I look back at the past three months and evaluate where I am and where I would like to be, I can’t help but think I would like to be in a different place than I am now, but at the same time, am glad I am where I am.  I don’t think anybody would want to have to experience bankruptcy with their employer, but now that I am here, I am interested to see what is going to come out of it.  I hope I will never have to experience this again, but am glad I get to learn from it.

Self-evaluation is a great tool to use, but difficult to actually do it.  I think you always want to think highly of yourself, but when it comes down to it, I think we can all improve in one way or another.  It doesn’t mean that we haven’t done good things, it is just easier to identify where you need to improve.  My PA from last year taught me a great deal about this.  He would always challenge me to think about the job that I was doing and where I could improve.  He would never point anything out right away; he would always let me say a few things and then would offer his input.  At the time, I thought he was being a little harsh to put me on the spot like that, but looking back at it now, I’m glad he did what he did.

When it came time for performance reviews, there were no surprises.  I always knew where I stood with him.  I learned from that and tried to apply that to the people that I managed.  The first time I did performance reviews for my people, it was the hardest thing I had done to that point.  I hadn’t thought about it all year, and then had to tell 15 people how I thought they were doing over the past year.  For the most part they were all good, but the ones that I had problems with, I never really brought the issues up before until that point.  I never made that mistake again.

Like the reading says, you want to be on the same page as your manager.  If your manager expects one thing, and you think you are supposed to be doing another, you want to know right away when you are straying away from the path that your manger wants you to be on.  It may be as simple as misinterpretation.  That is an easy fix; your manager clarifies what he wants and you correct your course.

I also agree with the reading when it advises to keep a running log of the accomplishments that you have throughout the year.  This is also something that I didn’t do right away, and when it came time for performance reviews and I had to give some bullet points of what I accomplished throughout the year, it was tough to try and recall what exactly I had done.  This running list just makes it easier on you when the time comes to recite what you did.

When I look back over the past three months in regards to school, I can’t help but think that I have not done so well.  I think I would have done things differently if I could go back and do it over again.  I haven’t done well with my online courses.  It is a lot tougher than I was expecting to have to do these two online courses.  The workload is much greater than I was expecting.  I have trouble as it is trying to balance my work, family, military obligation and CU, and then I added two online courses on top of that.  I should have learned from last year, when I had enough trouble keeping up with the CU workload.  But, I am here now and need to learn from this experience; it is all I can do.

I will accept whatever the consequences are for falling behind and learn from it.  Hopefully it will all turn out alright in the end, but I will have to wait and see what happens.  Going forward, I know what I have to do, but it is a whole lot easier to say than it is to execute.  Luckily, I have a good supporting cast around me to help me through this.