back to school, again

Today is my first day back to classes this semester. I have noticed that my attitude sours dramatically at the beginning of each semester because I don't necessarily want to be taking all of these classes. This is just something I think I'm supposed to be doing. Later in life I expect that I'll take some community college classes for the fun of it, but what I am doing right now is very literally business before pleasure.

Anyway, this semester looks to be the busiest of all that I have planned. I will be taking five classes at different points throughout the semester for nine credits. That's four two-credit classes and one one-credit class. I do have some reasoning for doing things this way.

The program that I am in is fifty-two credits long, and the classes have to be completed within six years of me starting the program. I get reimbursed for the equivalent of about eight credits a year through work. I am not willing to plan on stretching this to six years, so I knew from the start that I would need to have at least a couple of years where I am paying a decent chunk of change out of pocket. I figured that I would load up on credits in the first two years before tuition got outlandish (too late), then not take as many credits for the last three years. I hope to have twenty-six credits at the end of this year, so I will be able to take between eight and ten for the next three years and coast to the end.

I figured if I took this semester on the chin, the fall semester would be significantly easier. The key to this plan, though, is that I have to make it through the semester (as does Golden, as does NJ). Wish us well.