Sunday, February 7, 2010

Inner commotion

It's been a week since I selected the new title for my blog. The more I think about this new title the more I like it. I often think that my emotions are a driver of my personality and they often result in inner commotion.

I'm finally starting to feel that I have some control over this semester. It took me a while to get caught up with my work responsibilities and my class responsibilities since returning from my "life altering" trip to China. Over this past winter break I had an opportunity to go on a two week study abroad to the cities of Beijing and Chengdu. I learned a lot on this trip. The main lesson I learned is to not take for granted the many of the creature comforts and freedoms that I have because I live in America. Although I won't go into details here (at least not now), I did learn that living in America does give me privileges such as freedom of speech, freedom to openly think thoughts of my own choosing, and the freedom to take advantages of luxuries including heat and abundant sources of energy.

What I do want to talk about in this post is the demands that my university studies is having on my life. This class is the last class that I need to take  for the MLS program at UB. When I was a course instructor a number of years ago one of my students told me that she expected the course to not be as taxing as it was and that I demanded a lot of my students in relation to the amount of reading and the course assignments. It was her last class towards her MLS degree. I bring this up because I'd like to offer a similar compliment (???) for the current course I'm enrolled in. I value the amount of work required in this course, and I value the amount of learning that I'm enduring.

I expect to graduate this May. When I was deciding to continue my studies at UB I was torn between working towards a doctoral degree or taking the easier route and just pursue a second Masters. At the time, a doctorate seemed so far into the future. Now that I'm almost done with the MLS I regret not choosing to pursue a PhD. I'm now considering what route I will choose once I'm done with the MLS.

I truly enjoy learning. However, I always have difficulty keeping up with the assignments and homework. You might ask why I don't just make my own course for learning and choose to self study. Well the answer is that I very much enjoy the social aspects of being in structured learning environments (even if it is in a distance learning mode).

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