OUT OF THE BLUE

Holy crap. It’s almost the end of July. That means that I have about a month until fall semester starts. 30ish days. Holy crap. I’m short. (Can you really be a short timer as a civilian? I’ll claim yes, and more on that in a future post.)

It’s not that bad. I’m actually looking forward to classes starting again. All of my classes will be new material, so it will likely be challenging and interesting. (To put it mildly.) I might put some time in with the Calc book just before the semester starts; last two semesters I think I could have gotten off to a better start. This time I want, and need, to have those math brain cells awake the first week.

But enough about school. It’s still July.

I’ve been out on the new Trek a lot this month, logging 120+ miles this month. This weekend, the Trek gets to be a mountain bike, and gets dirty. I’m going camping, and taking the bike along to do some mountain biking in the Nicolet National Forest. Last summer, I was on the old bike from Target, which shifted on its own and didn’t shift when I told it to shift. The Trek doesn’t suffer from those issues, so this time will likely be more fun. I’ve also been going on training rides with the Madison (WI) Area Outdoor Meetup Group on Monday nights, which accounts for a lot of the miles I’ve pedaled this month.

I also have two other camping trips on the schedule this summer, one to Minnesota and one to Michigan, and the bike’s going along on both trips. There will also be kayaking and hiking involved on those trips.

I’ve been learning Java, slowly. I don’t expect that I’ll do a lot with it this semester, but I’m taking an online course through ACM just to reactivate those portions of my brain that are there to write code. It’s been a while, but a loop still does and a variable still is. I’m going to take the A+ exam before school starts again, too. My I Love Me wall needs updating.

I’m working on my UW-Madison transfer application. I’m putting things down on paper now, so it should be submitted soon. That’s a major step. Actually getting in will be an even bigger step, but this is the second step– the first was getting far enough at MATC to make transferring possible.

Okay, so I wasn’t done talking about school. I am trying to make the most of summer, because once the semester starts, life is all about homework and tests. I do believe that thinking about classes now and then over the summer is a good thing, because I’m happy about college. I enjoy school, even the math. (Maybe, especially the math.)

But it is still summer, it’s 73 degrees and sunny, and I’m getting out on the bike to log some more pedaling miles.

I’m still catching up from the last month of spring semester– I really put a lot of effort, coffee, and lack of sleep together and the results were good. If there’s such a thing as “in the zone”, I was in it those last few weeks of the semester. But it’s taken a few weeks to readjust to things like, say, being able to go to bed at 10:00pm without having a speech to write or a boatload of calculus problems to get done. I keep thinking I have homework due tomorrow.

So I’m not quite used to summer, but I’m adapting.

I spent a good portion of this past weekend shopping for camping supplies, and picked up a tent that was on sale at REI (among other things– tarpage, tent stakes, etc.) So I’ll be
doing some camping in the near future. I looked at kayaks, too, and have resigned myself to waiting until next year to buy one. This year’s major purchase was the Trek 820, which I needed before I need a boat. My bike rides to and from work are a lot more fun now. I’ve already been on one 20 mile ride with the ‘820– planning to get it onto a trail and get it dirty soon, too.

This summer isn’t all vacation time though. I still have things to get accomplished. I’m taking an online non-credit Java programming course, and an A+ certification exam course this summer. (It’s surprising how much I remember from my object oriented programming, and programming languages classes that I took, oh, a few years ago. Maybe I didn’t kill all those brain cells after all.) Sometime in August, I’ll pull out the calculus book again and put myself through a self-imposed refresher course before the semester starts.

And, I only have one semester left at MATC. So I’m working on applying for that other school (whose initials are UW). Just filling out the application is a big step, which is the result of having taken a lot of very small steps. There’s some anxiety here. I have an academic past to answer for– which I’m working on doing, but there’s a lot riding on how well I explain how different I am from the kid who dropped out of LSU-Shreveport a few years ago.

In any case, I’m going to be a full time student at MATC Truax in fall. Most of my classes have been at the downtown campus, and the one I have had at Truax was at night– so I’m going to be, shall we say, immersed. There is a big difference between being a working adult taking classes and being a full time adult student who also works. (At least, it seems that way as I’m writing this.) It’s not really that “I’m gonna die” scary, but it will feel different for a while. And then, by the end of the first day of classes this fall, I’ll have enough homework to do that it won’t matter. Hopefully.