Monday, November 05, 2007

The First Day of Class

At least I thought it was. It turns out that I haven't even been accepted yet.

Returning students have to attend a three week course called a "Learning Assessment Seminar." I Think the purpose is to dump a bunch of writing assignments on the potential students to make sure that they really want to go back to school (and for the school to make sure that the students can handle college level writing I suppose).

It's made me think twice about whether or not DePaul was the right choice for me though. The program is a liberal arts degree. Sure they let you focus on a particular area, but it's only a handful of courses. Most of the requirements are liberal arts, with a particularly heavy emphasis on liberal. Check out some of these:

Power and Justice:
Can analyze power relations among racial, social, cultural, or economic groups in the US.
or

Globalization:
Can analyze issues and problems from a global perspective.
or

Interconnections in the Natural World:
Can describe and explain connections among diverse aspects of nature.
Eek! What did I get myself into? I'm half tempted to take some particularly liberal leaning class and see how much they respect diversity of thought by interjecting my libertarian philosophy. Then again, completing the degree is the important part, so I probably won't try to rock the boat.

So far I've learned three things. First, the library doesn't have any books - just librarians. Second, they don't give credit for life experience - they make you write a paper about your life experience and they give credit for that. And finally, they don't teach professional writing, they teach academic writing.

I'm certainly glad that they are preparing students for the real world!

Tags:

No comments:

Post a Comment