MY LAST BLOG POST EVER (or for a while at least)!!!

Yay! I'm done with this blog!
One less thing to keep up with!

I have to make this a real post, so I wanted to talk about the area I feel that I have strengthened during this course. That area would be using APA format. Until this term I have not had to use APA format, I was always taught the MLA format. This transition was not a welcomed one on my end at first. It took me 10+ years to learn how to properly use MLA format, and stupid me thought that it was all I would need to know, WRONG. MLA format actually makes more sense as far as it's reference layout and the in text citations, but it's just such a pain to learn something new. But between this class and my other class, where my professor is a stickler that everything has a reference (giving me lots of practice using APA format), I think I've done a good job acclimating to this new format for citation. I really wish Kaplan had sent me the textbook for this class, it would have made things much easier! Now that I've done the legwork I think APA format will be easier from here on out, but it's just too bad I wasted so many years using when in the end I would need to know MLA for my career. C'est la vie, now I know both citation formats!

Can I say it again? YAY MY BLOG IS OVER!!! :)

It wasn't terrible, I didn't mind it. Free-writing is fun, but only when you have time for it. Maybe sometime in my future I will revisit the blog world, but I definitely am looking forward to a vacation from mandatory writing for a few months!

Goodbye Everyone! Good luck & May God Bless You!

Has this class improved my writing?

Hmm...I'm not sure if this class has IMPROVED my writing. If anything I'm more educated on scientific paper writing, so I guess that's an improvement. This class was difficult for me because I'm not used to the style of writing that we are doing for the final paper. I tend to either write with lots of creativity and freedom, or very cut and dry technical. This paper has challenged me, I was surprised at the among of negative feedback on my first draft. Every first draft will be full of critiques which I am willing to accept and accommodate, but I figured I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were, guess not. One piece of feedback I received was that my paper was too FYI, like writing to inform on a general topic, and no specific enough and opinionated. This pretty much means I need to re-write my entire paper! So maybe an answer to the question would be no, it's made it worse! If anything I feel less confident in my writing skills and definitely a little bit overwhelmed at the task of rewriting my entire paper.....

A Blog about Blogging....

This blog is my first experience with blogging and although I think the concept is useful, I would not choose to continue blogging in the future, unless required as part of a grade. It's not that I don't think blogging is useful, but it's not useful for ME.

I think that the point of blogging is expressing yourself. Everyone is different about how they want and need to express themselves. Years ago I would have been absolutely in love with the idea of blogging, it's like an online journal! I was the queen of journaling, always writing down my feelings and ideas. I also enjoyed writing poetry quite a lot and participated in online poetry forums. But I just sort of out grew that whole phase of my life.

Now I would much rather TALK with someone about my feelings and ideas in person than write them down in the off chance that someone will comment, or just write them to get them out of my head. I think that this has a lot to do with my relationship. I would much rather talk to my fiance or my sister, whom I can tell ANYTHING. I think that I'm very fortunate to have people to talk and share with and that for others who do not have that kind of support in their lives, blogging may provide sort of an anonymous support system and allow your voice to be heard when it otherwise would not.

I also find it incredibly hard to keep up with all of the different methods of communication now a days. Email, text messages, facebook etc, it's just too much for me! Give me ONE method of communication and I can manage, but when I've got texts on my phone, emails at my personal and school email addresses, and phone calls to return and facebook to keep updated...the last thing I want is a blog to deal with!

New Year

As much as I love the Holidays, I have to say THANK GOD THEY ARE OVER! It's been WAY too challenging for me to focus on schoolwork with so many other distractions. I know my last blog post was about the same thing, I guess it's the biggest thing on my mind right now.

I'm totally caught up in my Medical Terminology class, thanks to getting full points for my seminar & discussion last week since Kaplan was on vacation :) gotta love it! I'm not sure about Kaplan sometimes, it seems the academic polices and the professor's policies don't always go hand in hand, it can be sort of confusing! I'm working so hard to get caught up in this Composition class, I really wish I had received my transfer credit for this class! I've already taken it, but because my other school didn't break it into CC 1 and CC2 they made me take 2 over again. UGH. I don't dislike writing, but I'm way too picky, and I'll spend TOO MUCH TIME on a paper that isn't worth it. I just hold myself to really high standards, which works out well for me most of the time, but times like this I think it's biting me in the behind.

Well anyways, it's a new year, 2010 holy cow! So its my resolution to do as well as I can in my classes. I guess that was my resolution anyways, but now it's official, I want to get no less than a B+ in both of my current classes, and hopefully A's in my classes next term. I think I would have had A's this term too if I didn't let myself get so distracted with the Holidays. I'm really excited about my next 2 classes, A & P 1 and Pharmacology. I think they will be interesting and really useful in my current job and future career!

Bring on the new year, I'm ready for a change (...and NOT B.O.'s version of change) !! :)

The past 6 weeks...

UGH.

This past 6 weeks have been dragging on so slowly in some ways and flying by way too fast in other ways. It's certainly not easy being a student during the holidays. I have so many family and social obligations but I have lots of academic obligations too, balancing them has been quite the challenge this semester. The parts that have been flying by too quick are my days off of work, time with family and any free time that I have. I think this is because I'm anticipating, more like dreading, the upcoming schoolwork and just plain work I have to do.

I'm very thankful for flexible professors in both of my classes accepting assignments late, otherwise I'd be totally lost this semester. I'm not concerned about my grades at all, it's just more of a struggle and rush to get work done, and less enjoyable than last semester.

I'm really hoping that after these last 2 weeks of December are over things will relax a bit and I'll be able to be that full-time student again. It's not very fun, but it's all about what I'm working toward, my career.

When Kaplan sent me my welcome packet, on the cover is a picture of a diploma with my name on it and everything. I cut this diploma out and taped it above my work computer, every time I get down about school or start hating my job, I just look at it and remind myself that every little day I'm working to my ultimate goal, my degree.

It's so close, but sometimes feels so far away! :(

How School Has Changed My Life So Far....

It is sort of hard to say that school has changed my life so far, seeing that I've been a student since I was 5! But I can say that COLLEGE has changed my life in some pretty drastic ways. I've been to 4 different schools since I graduated high school, 5 if I include Kaplan. I've learned something about what I do and don't want for my future from each school.

I was an art education major, an interior design major, an allied health science major, almost a dental hygiene major, and now finally, I'm a medical assisting major. The funny thing is, that in high school I was always so good at science, and really loved my AP Biology class senior year, but I was convinced that anything medical would mean I was in school for a long time. So I settled on art education because I loved babysitting and being around kids and whenever I wasn't in class I was in the art wing doing something creative. I discovered while I was in school for art education that when you try to make a career out of your hobby, you lose your hobby! I really began to HATE art and I still am not able to just sit down and paint or draw for hours like I used to.
I really had no idea what to do after I decided to give up on art education, I worked in retail for a while, which really taught me to love business, but I knew I didn't want to work in retail forever. So I decided to move 900 miles from home to go to school for interior design. This to me was the perfect compromise, it was artistic but not in a way that I would be painting all day, and it was business oriented. But after a few months I realized that I didn't want to have to convince people that my career was useful and not just a luxury. I also don't want to worry about losing my job especially in an economic recession like now. I also knew that I wanted a job where I was making a real difference in someones life, helping them. So yet again, another major change.
I was so afraid of choosing the wrong major again that I chose something basic, allied health sciences, which would cover the basics and leave me options for what to do later. I was really torn between dental hygiene and medical assisting. The only true reason I chose medical assisting over dental hygiene was that I could not find any online dental hygiene programs, but now I'm so happy with my choice.

I really feel like I'm learning important and useful information, the things I'm learning I'm actually using in my daily life and job now. It feels great to finally be in school for the right thing. I can feel the change and its wonderful!

I'm Internet Phobic!

I would definitely agree with the statement that the internet seems to blurr the lines of the term "legally owned." I mean, just look at the music business! People create things, music, writings, videos etc, and want to share them with others, so they put them up online. It's a great thing, we are so much more knowledgeable and "worldly" because of the information available online at our fingertips. But because it's so easy for people to post online, it's even easier for people to take from the internet and there is almost no proof that it was someone else's creation, so the entire concept of ownership is distorted. It's a pretty messed up situation!

I'm one of the internet-phobic people, I say that even though I attend school online. LOL. I guess I mean that I would NEVER dream of putting anything wildly personal or creative that I did not want to claim as entirely my own online. I'd be too afraid of it being "stolen" and used as someone else's. Instead the things that I choose to put online are things I want to share. I think that if you want to use the internet to post your original creations, you need to be ready to give them away to others, after all, the whole internet is one big collaboration!