A New Experience Here at IRE
This is my
story of being a new student here at IRE.
I know that this experience is less than a week old, but it has made a
world of difference over my first experience trying to attend college after
high school.
I am what you
call a “non-traditional” learner for I am SLIGHTLY older than the average
student, and for a matter of fact, older than some of the instructors. While age is not a factor of intelligence, it
does give me some experiences that some of you have never had and never will.
In the past few days, we have all
searched and registered for courses at Mankato State University using the MNSU Internet
connection. Imagine a time in which the
web was not the miracle that it is now.
Imagine standing in a gymnasium of your local college. Imagine standing in a line of people that
stretches around the gym, out the door, down the hall, and out the building, a
hundred yards long. This is just to get
a folder with your name on it so you could register. Now you are to stand in several other lines
to pick up an index card, which has the class you want to attend, with a
limited number of cards printed for the times available for the class. Of course you have already looked at the printed
college catalog to see what classes are available and the times in which they
are offered. This is what you have used
to plan your schedule; this is how you will plan your life for the next
semester.
Now you are at the front of one of
those lines. You ask for Calculus 1 at
10:00. The woman behind the desk says,
“Sorry, but that filled up fifteen minutes ago.” How about Chemistry at 11:00? “No,” she replies, “that was a misprint in the
catalog, and it was suppose to say 1:00.”
That is the time in which you scheduled for history, and you got the
last card. Welcome to the world of
higher learning.
Many things have changed since
then; I, for one, believe that the Internet did not grow into what it is for
the military or industry, but mainly because the engineers and programmers that
went though the same experience that I did, never, ever wanted to go though
that again.
My advice is to remember that for
the most part, you are learning the same courses and the same material as those
that have been using it since I looked at starting college. Look back and see how far we have come. Now IMAGINE what is to come next.
Proofread by Elizabeth McBride
