Thank you professor for the kind words and your information on 529 plans. Well at 40k a year, I think it is at least safe to say that she is going to a good school. The best of luck to her. The 529 plans is definitely something I have to look into. There are a few different options right now out there, so my wife and I have to sit down one day and take a look at them.
As for class...Whew! One week down, and a bunch more to go. The first week wasn't too bad. It was actually a little bit easier to get acclimated to UMUC's web interface then I thought. Even the getting used to homework again, wasn't so bad. It was actually kind of a fun first week.
My secondary education had a huge gap in the middle. Immediately following high school I completed two years and then took a 10 year hiatus. During that time I gained a lot of experience and knowledge in the field of Information Technology. Now that I'm taking IT classes, it is easy to relate with items from the classroom to real world experiences. For those who don't have much experience, I think the current event articles help bridge the gap. There really is a big difference between classroom and on the job learning.
Early on in my studies (for the Network+ exam I believe), I remember learning about the OSI model. I had that thing memorized forwards, backwards, sideways and every way possible. It was part of the Information Technology gospel! I thought all IT professionals breathed this stuff 24/7. Then after stepping into the real world, I realized it was a little bit different. It is very much a fundamental knowledge of everything else that goes on. That made me realize that is what school basically is. It is a foundation on what to build upon; it isn't what exactly happens out there.
The other thing that I found particularly interesting was how the first week got me to compare my past two jobs. As I mentioned, I recently took a new position. My new job is much closer to home (10 miles vs. 80 miles), so I never compared the two much; I was just happy to have the new shorter commute job. The idea of structures made me realize how different the two organizations were, especially in the Information Technology departments. My new job is so much more of open and decentralized structure, while the old job was much more formal. I've been able to sit back and see the benefits of each type of structure.
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I appreciate your point on the shorter commute. It used to take me an hour to go to work and my current job takes about 35 minutes. My gas bill has dropped dramatically.
Most importantly, my insurance company (the gecko folks) reduced my premium because of my shorter commute distance!
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