Bertha

Back in School

 General  Comments Off on Back in School
Aug 172010
 

High school starts next week, but college started yesterday. I’ve already done one assignment for my accounting class.

I also signed up for a basic history class, covering “western civilization.” I chose this class for several reasons:

  • Ideally I plan to keep going to school as long as I have time and money to do so. A lot of the higher-level classes require the same first-year classes, like history, English comp, and basic algebra. I’ve already taken quite a few of those basics, might as well take the rest.
  • It looked interesting, and I was afraid I wasn’t getting into my accounting class so I wanted to take something.
  • All of my close friends and relatives are very smart people who can converse intelligently on things like history and world events. My history is quite weak and I can’t really participate. I plan to remedy this so I no longer feel like a fucking moron.

Our instructor is an energetic, self-assured Italian man who paces the front of the room and talks with his hands. He spent the first class going over the syllabus (this is apparently required, all teachers do it the first day) in between anecdotes about prior students and warning us about the dire consequences of plagiarism, failure to study, or not showing up on test day. He referred to himself several times as a “benign dictator.”

I like him already. This is going to be a fun class.

The Cost of Education

 General  Comments Off on The Cost of Education
Aug 132010
 

For a while there I didn’t think I was going to get into the accounting class I wanted. I signed up for the waitlist as soon as I could, but even after the tuition deadline nobody was dropping out. Apparently people signed up for a 200-level accounting course are able to manage their finances well enough to cover tuition. Imagine that.

Earlier this week, checking on the waitlist, I grumbled “They’ve got enough people waitlisted to fill another class.”

I wasn’t the only one who noticed that; a day or two later I got a notice that a second class had been opened and the waitlisted people were all signed up for it. Woo hoo!

So I went off to buy a second textbook. I’m already signed up for a history class, just because it looked interesting (and I was afraid I wouldn’t get the accounting class, so I wanted to take something). My history book was $170 at the bookstore ($130 used); I rented it from Chegg.com for $60.

My accounting book? That one costs $211 at the bookstore ($158 used). I searched textbookly.com and found a (new!) copy for under $60.

Same books, half the price. Why do I feel like the textbook market is a bit of a racket?

 Posted by at 12:50 pm

Conversation with the Kid

 Breeder's Corner, General  Comments Off on Conversation with the Kid
Aug 092010
 

When I go to the grocery store, I bring my own reusable bags along with me. I have some light nylon bags that fold up quite small, so I can keep them in my glove compartment.

At the checkout, I pulled out a couple of bags. “I have more if we need them,” I told the checker.

My son chuckled. “Yeah, she has a bag of bags.” He finds it amusing that my nylon bags are themselves stored in a nylon bag.

“Well of course,” I replied, “what would you keep bags in?”

“A box, of course,” he teased, “don’t you know anything?”

“I have two teenage children,” I laughed. “Of COURSE I don’t know anything!”

“Touché.”

 Posted by at 7:47 pm
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