Classes & Assistantship

School starts early here, so I've now had two weeks of classes. Since I currently have four emails in my inbox from friends wanting to know about my classes & my assistantship, I figured that I'd just put up a post for everyone...that way I only have to type it all out once. =)

So about my classes...

My Monday night class is basically the intro class for the program. While I really like the professor, I'm not particularly excited about the course itself. Like your typical Psych 101 course, the plan is to cover a lot of topics at a basic level, for the sake of general familiarity rather than depth. I'm sure I'll like it...but I'm definitely looking forward to tackling bigger things.

The Tuesday night class is going to be a fun one. It's about learning styles...so it's one of those classes where you get to take a lot of self-assessments and then talk about the results. And who doesn't like learning about themselves? After all, isn't that why there's some kind of quirky quiz advertised on the cover of every issue of Cosmo? There's also some interesting projects coming up that I'm looking forward to.

I haven't started my Saturday class yet, which is on Performance Consulting. It begins the second Saturday in September and meets for five Saturdays. I've heard lots of good reviews about the professor and this particular course, so I have high hopes.

And about my assistantship...

There was definitely no lag time in getting things rolling with the assistantship work...I feel like I've hit the ground sprinting.

The faculty are really into helping students to get published or to get opportunities to present at conferences. So, most of my work is aimed toward these goals. Two of my current projects relate to gathering information on a couple of different topics related to e-learning, with the hope/assumption that they will develop into full-scale research projects. And then I'm also a part of a third research project that was already in motion, but still has enough left to do that I'll end up being involved with the majority of it.

My other assistantship projects are more hands-on and practical. For instance, one involves helping to manage a professor's online class. I'm also in charge of writing material for a portion of the department's website. And I might get an opportunity to do a review of three products used for creating online learning courses.

My biggest challenge with the assistantship at the moment is prioritizing. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how much attention each project needs right away and whether there are certain things I should be dedicating more or less time to.

It seems like a lot at the moment...but it's only the second week...overall, I'm optimistic about the semester.