Tserss

Feeling quite stressed of late because I am trying to go back to university and finish that astronomy degree I failed and dropped out of barely short of graduating.

I've been trying to get myself back up to speed by doing exercises from my old textbooks on a supposedly regular basis for over a year now, particularly mathematics since that is what brought me low last time, and having a hard time of it. That's a hard time in the regularity and in the successful accomplishment thereof. The last one I spent a couple of weeks asking advice and looking up online educational resources to discover where I went wrong, only to finally discover I had it correct to begin with. That's partly heartening in reassuring me I have some competence, but also frustrates me with all the time wasted.

Problem is - I may have mentioned this before - the university I had been studying at no longer offers astronomy or just about any 'hard' science courses, so I've had to apply at another one. I did that some months ago and got accepted, and also paid for a transcript for the old course and made my application for credit for prior studies, so hopefully I won't have to do the whole thing over.

That came back in the affirmative too, and now on Friday I have my actual enrolment session, where I put in the units I want to study and hope they are accepted, and that I am awarded any actual exemptions. All I got so far are credit points for potential exemptions, and I have to present unit outlines for my old classes and find out if I get to not have to repeat that part. Stressful. Will probably have to get in touch when I can this week and get some clarifications on details like, do I put down units I hope to get exempted from on my plan of study and hope to get out of them, or do I assume that and change things if I don't get them?

Especially worrying because I still have that job and want to keep it while studying, so I'm aiming to do this course part-time if I can. I didn't look for work when I was studying previously because I didn't believe I was capable of studying and working successfully simultaneously.

Also stressful because I want to move to the USA to be with my loved ones, and I'm worried that putting another 3-6 before that to get some letters after my name is a terrible decision. I'm not sure I ought to get those exemptions anyway, because it has been so long I hardly remember any of what I studied.

My plan, such as it is, is to accumulate workplace experience while here - I'd hoped to get a job right out of my library technician course in mid-2009 and have built up enough experience to be moving overseas nowabouts with some hope of being employable over there - get this degree, move overseas and potentially bolt a library Masters degree on top of it after moving. It's all very optimistic.

Well, a bit of further optimism occurred to me today. Am wanting to mainly computing units for electives, so started wondering if maybe I can do the core units, the physics and astronomy parts and their pre-requisites first, then switch to distance education and do the electives I need to graduate remotely, after moving. It may not be possible, but it could make things less stressful if it is.

Let's see if I am panicking more or less a week from now.