One Week Down!

I just finished up my homework for this week and am getting ready for bed.  Thought I'd give a little update.

I had signed up for Comp1, Oral Communication, Ethics, Old Testament, and Critical Inquiry.  This week I decided to drop CI and add Gen Psychology.  I think that will be a good move for me.  My idea is to shoot for a Psychology minor to go along with a philosophy major.  Should be cool.

My comp professor looks just like Vanilla Ice.  

I've written about 4 papers already.  Gonna have to bone up on the APA style of paper writing and figure out how to cite authors and a whole bunch of stuff that most folks learned in high school.  

I was a little nervous about how I would fit in with the youngsters.  Turns out, I am the only old guy in any of my classes.  But everything is going famously!  I wear my red converse shoes, and everybody thinks I'll all cool and stuff.  I think the teachers don't quite know what to do with me yet.  But it's all good.  

A Little Diddy

The moments between sleep and rising

always bring the finest wise-ing.

Before the brain is all there is

the mind is there philosophizing.

It hit me flashing as I oped

my eyes, not seeing as I'd hoped.

Fumble pen, write it down.

Just a line, no more is groped.

Tomorrows verse will be as clever,

but out of tune with this endeavor.

God, if you are somehow listening,

make me lucid on forever.

Starting school next week!

     One week from today I will start my first day as a philosophy major at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas.  I am 41 years old and attending college for the first time, so I thought it would be fun to start a blog (another first for me) and chronicle my adventure!  In doing so, I am hoping to improve my composition skills, typing WPM, and overall get in the groove of academia.
     The U of O is a small private school.  There are apparently only a few non-traditional students there, and only a few philosophy majors to boot, so it remains to be seen how well I'm going to fit in.  I am hoping that somewhere in the world there are a few more "old guy" philosophy majors that stumble across this blog so we can form a support group! :)
     So why now?  After high school I went to a electronics school for a year and a half.  While in school, I got married and had two children.  Unlike many who marry early, I am still happily married to the mother of my awesome kids, who are both in college now.   I used my education to go to work in industry, and eventually worked my way into an engineering position in an automotive factory.  I made decent money, and enjoyed building automation, programming robots, etc., but after 20 years of this, I got burned out and began thinking about a career change.  My kids are doing their own thing, and no longer need much help from me, so the timing seems right.
     One day I was having a particularly stressful day, and decided to stop by the school (it is on my way), and see about auditing a philosophy class just to see how it felt.  It turns out that the tuition to take one class is $3000.00!  Not doable for me.  So the admissions guy and I talked about what it would take to go full time, and it worked out that that was my only real option, since I could get financial aid, and a pretty hefty scholarship.  So, here I am!
     Why philosophy?  Well, I've always been interested in a variety of fields: psychology, physics, biology, math, etc., so when looking at the majors, it seemed like philosophy touched on all of those areas a little bit.  And I've always been one to ask the "big" questions.
     So, I'm going to cut this off for today, but I am planning to record at least the highlights as I go along.  I think it will be cool to look back in a few years and have a record of the changes I am bound to go through.

     More to come!

Jim

PS. feel free to critique my comp skills, and if you've been down this road, let me know how it went!