Good for you BoL! I've never managed to get my shit together to go back to school. Also, stuff just happens. Like a class I need gets canceled without any notice of when it's coming back. That kind of thing. Makes it frustrating and disappointing.

Good for you! Although I have to say, one of my smartest, wisest, most insightful friends never went to college. Honestly, she's the only one who'd know if she hadn't told us all her "dirty little secret." It kinda just made me respect her more - like, wow, we all had to have other people pour wisdom into our heads. You just got it all on your own.

Wait, did you just give yourself another level? Weren't you Lvl 7 Mum not too long ago?

Good on you!

Learning in any form is never a waste - you never know when something you learned in one place is going to make a connection in a completely different setting. "Formal" education can open doors, no matter what it is you are studying because it shows others that you are interested, and able, to keep learning.

Education is like money - it doesn't make you a good or smart person, nor does it guarentee happiness, but it can certainly make life easier. I hope your lit class rocks!

After a long break it might be fun to get to read books and discuss ideas with grown up people for credit. Good for you! :)

Joe Mama - half the reason i want to do this is because if you DO keep learning, you never stop being able to. I read somewhere that it's not age that slows people down, it's their intellectual laziness, kind of thing. They stop exercising the brain, so it gets fat and slobby. I do NOT want that, i like learning, i don't think i'll ever outgrow it. Plus, it's taken me over a decade to find something i like enough to do more than one unit of anyways. And i'll likely change my mind again once i'm finished. But i'm looking forward to it, if only to be able to go after a Masters at the end. Dang if i don't want one of those. :)

BoL, that's so great, especially since you won't have to go into debt to do it like most Americans do. I bet you'll love it!

Yeaaa Bol! Do it!

I'll be back to school in Sept too! W00T for a larger paycheck. ;0)

Woo! Go for it! Ironically, I have decided to put off school for another year and just take some courses in the meantime through work.

But go for it! Medieval literature is so cool!

Awesome! I went back to school when GirlWho turned one. It was difficult, but it was incredibly fulfilling. A happy mommy makes for a happy baby.

Med. Lit is fun. I'm a big geek.

I think I'm going to go to grad school, probably for Library Science, in the next year.

Mamawho that's awesome. What was your first degree in? The one i'm doing is Arts (obviously) called "Bachelor of Literature and Composition". So very heavy on text analysis, which i rather like. I like it so much i had trouble getting enough electives - there's only so many lit subjects to choose from... i did a few journalism in first year, and really really hated it. So i took some Chinese (really hard studying a language by correspondence, especially when you have no background in it at all - thankfully i've studied other language before so it wasn't too bad, but i can't at all imagine what it must be like for people who have never even done that... ) And i have filled the rest of the gaps with PR subjects. Whch i hopefully won't hate, cos i don't know what i could do instead if they suck.

In the postgard stuff (VERY enticing) are a few streams of writing (scripts, documentaries, technical, etc...) which look awesome fun, but there is so little call for writers for anything in Australia (and everyone wants to BE one, so heaps of competition) that i think i would rather give it a miss and go after something more likely to have a job at the end, so i'm liking Linguistics. I did a few units of linguistics back when i was an on-campus student, and it was excellent fun. The best part, in my opinion, is i can just do 2 postgrad units for a "graduate certificate" before committing to the full Masters course. Means i can try it on for size first, without costing a fortune or several years.

I don't know if it's exactly Medieval literature, the books list, now that i can see it, is a lot of modernish text set in medieval times - must be more a medieval perceptions and concepts class. We get to read Name of the Rose and Mists of Avalon (which i think i tried to read once and got bored, if it's the one i'm thinking of. But i was only about 13, i was bored by everything.) I forget the other texts now - hopefully they're quite short, really, cos it's only a 3 month course. There isn't time to read four whacking great novels. :/

When I finish a project or two left over from when I took medical leave last year, I'll have a BA in English with a minor in Religious Philosophy.

I really liked what little bit of linguistics I got to dabble in.

I spent a good chunk of my time studying the work of John Donne. I helped with the apparatus for some of the Verse Letters for the Variorium (a big, honking, important scholarly series of books.)

i so hear you on the fulfilling thing... it's kind of difficult being the SAHM after having a fast-paced city life working in a law firm, where you were living on your nerves most of the time. And coffee and cigarettes... and now we're setting up a small business and DaD gets to go to Taiwan for special treatment and kung fu training and i'm feeling very stuck-at-home, holding-the-baby. I feel sort of like i'm fading and won't exist any more if i don't find something of my own. I'm not teaching tai chi, i'm only training in it rarely (someone has to mind Beenie), i'm not working, well, barely, and it's difficult to get the proper time to do it... plus it's not rewarding so i drag my feet in getting it done, etc etc. But working towards my own degree will be great.

I haven't, so far, had the same texts come up very often, they seem to be a very varied and broad selection of works. The only thing that's actually come up more than once was "My Brilliant Career", but that's cos it's compulsory reading in Australia, even if you hate it. (Which i do, it's really dull, and set in a period of our history i don't find in the least bit interesting.) Still, it's better than "The Battlers," which was just plain awful. We do have good literature in australia, they just don't ask us to study it very often.