Best class ever?

We’re all well aware of the fact that we are the technology generation. We spend our entire day with our eyes glued to computer screens, sending more texts and BBMs a minute then our hearts beat, and accompanying our lives with a personal soundtrack courtesy of our iPods. After Twitter made it possible to tell the world what you’re doing every 2 seconds (and I found out how often some of my guy friends poop), I thought nothing could shock me.

That was until I heard that the University of Houston now has an entire class dedicated to the Wii. No joke.

The course is listed in the catalog as “online aerobics activities” and the description? A class for PE credit where students work out 20-30 minutes twice a week by playing the Wii Fit video game.

Why the heck can’t my college offer this course? I’d enroll in a nanosecond. Play video games the whole semester and knock going to the gym off my daily schedule twice a week? I’m sorry but that sounds like perhaps the most amazing thing ever. Read More »

Everybody knows college is expensive, but did you know that for a growing majority of college students — gas is trumping tuition?

According to the always lovable and informative New York Times, the numbers of students enrolling in online college courses — so they won’t have to spend all their extra dolla dolla bills driving to and from campus — has drastically increased.

“The vast majority of the nation’s 15 million college students — at least 79 percent — live off campus, and with gas prices above $4 a gallon, many are seeking to cut commuting costs by studying online” claims the article, which goes on to say that certain colleges are experiencing a 50 to 100% increase in enrollment for their online courses.

As if plunking ourselves down in front of a computer (where there’s every distraction from bad reality TV to that f*cking amazing turkey sandwich waiting for you in the fridge) in an attempt to learn wasn’t spelling enough trouble for our education, certain people (like the president of Brevard Community College, as interviewed by the NYT) fear that our sh*tty economy, combined with the price of gas, might cause certain college students to drop out of school completely. Read More »

Today, I realized I had been living a lie. When I changed my major from journalism to English last semester (big mistake – but that’s another story for another blog), I thought “Hey, sweet! I can catch up on classes this summer by reading classic lit (poolside, albeit), expanding my already-extensive vocabulary with words like ‘subtilization’ and ‘castrato’ and still work on my tan!”

Apparently, I had fallen prey to my university’s (and um, my so-called ‘friends’) pernicious lies about the elusive evil that is summer school. Both my advisor and financial counselor had blissfully encouraged me to spend my hard-earned work/study cash on summer classes because, well, they were going to be so much easier than the normal, semester-long demons I would inevitably have to struggle with during the fall semester. It sounded like a pretty good idea, and when I consulted my girls who had all previously taken summer classes, they too said that summer school was way easy. And okay, I got a little excited when I realized that this meant I could wear flip-flops and jean skirts to class every day if I wanted– something northeast Ohio school years rarely permit.

So, I took the plunge. I signed up for summer school…with little to no idea about what was in store for me.

I was still floating on cloud nine after a post-midnight romp with an attractive boy when I waltzed into my first English Studies class – totally ready to tackle Faulkner and Woolf with ease. However, as soon as the syllabus reached my freshly-manicured fingernails….I practically went into cardiac arrest. Read More »