Send Ken To College

…and what you have all been waiting for, another installment in Ken’s journey towards being smart.

 I have previously mentioned that I ended up at Mt. Mercy College due to discussion with a Kirkwood instructor, and with my slightly dubious acquaintance, Bob.  I entered Mt. Mercy as a junior in part because Mt. Mercy was trying to grow the Computer Science program.  Sometimes I wonder if I should have went with a larger, better established program or if I did just as well they way I went.  Only time will tell.

My first year at MMC had one major mistake in it, I took Linear Algebra and Calculus II at the same time.  That right there taught me that I wasn’t nearly as smart as I would like to believe.  I am now a senior and I am trying to avoid any more possibly GPA damaging mistakes like that.  I am currently taking my last two CS requirements.  I have two more general ed requirements left so most of my last semester is subject to change.

My question is do I want to play it safe and protect my 3.61 GPA or risk it to maybe learn something og interest.  In my old age I have become somewhat conservative so I will have to let you know in January which way I went since I still do not know how it is going to go.

At this time I am breaking in two new instructors in the CS department, one of which is a curriculum specialist who is re-working the program’s curriculum and the other is the PhD that will be teach a number of the new and improved courses once they get designed.  The new curriculum will not apply to me but I may need to make a few trips back in the future just to see how it all comes together.

…and now we begin ‘The Kirkwood Years’.

The Kirkwood years started ca 1992 and lasted about one semester, maybe not even that, since I only paid attention until I got my student loan check.  Needless to say the partying was not out of my system yet.

Fast forward 11 years and you will find me with my partying days well behind me.  I was working at Broderbund, which became The Learning Company, which became Mattel, which again became The Learning Company before finally ending up as Broderbund.  I survived 12 rounds of layoffs, and they got me in the 13th.  To get rid of me they sold off the entire education division to Riverdeep.  I just happened to be working schools/network tech support at that time.  The funny things is about 6 weeks after laying me off, Riverdeep bought the remaining pieces of Broderbund.  By that time about all that was left was the Printmaster and Printshop programs.

Now I am about 36 years old and unemployed.  I had my severance package, 197 hours worth of vacation time that I was paid for and 26 weeks worth of unemployment.  Time to figure out what I was going to do.  I ended up going back to Kirkwood.  This time I ended up with an Associate of Applied Science degree only to find out that this two year degree was not going to get me a job.  I ended up spending another year or so taking Computer Science courses with plans of transferring to University of Iowa to finish a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.

My Computer Science instructor was an alum of Mt. Mercy College and she had spoken highly of it several times.  There also were conversations with my slightly dubious aquaintance, Bob, which led me to believe that Mt. Mercy would be the place for me to go.  I bit hook line and sinker!

Next up, the Mt. Mercy Years….

High school in Ottumwa, IA in the early 80’s…

High school was generally boring. I did well or I did badly. There were few C’s on my report cards. My grades were either low A’s or high B’s or they were D’s. I like classes like my history of western civilization class with Mr. Warren, I kind of enjoyed math class and I really like the time that I got to spend on what we would now call a PC.

My junior high and high school both had a TRS-80 Model II computer (one of which my slightly dubious acquaintance, Bob, has locked away). I was one of the few people allowed to lay hands on it and only because I had taught myself programming in BASIC. This was one bad-ass machine with it dual 5.25 inch floppy drives, 48K (yes, K not M) of memory and the cassette recorder so that we could write our programs to cassette tape.

In my senior year in high school they finally built a lab with 8 Apple IIc’s and IIe’s. This was before they became Macs. Mr. Stoneking, the science teacher, undertook a programming class which I happily joined. I was already well ahead of the curve since the Apple BASIC was pretty much what I had already learned. Mr. Stoneking had us do a final project which was to simulate a multiple listing service like a realtor might use. He stated we could use any resources open to us. That was my first professional programming gig. I sold copies of my code to classmates. I made a couple of hundred dollars which kept me in junk food and video games for awhile. I received an A- on that project because in the words of the teacher, “I got tired of seeing your code by the time I got to grade it”. Yes, I was considered a fair resource for this project and as such my classmates were allowed to purchase my code.

Fresh of this triumph I decide college was a good place for me so I packed up my 2.37 GPA and my 29 composite score on the ACT test and headed north to Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Forget computers, I discovered hard core partying and off I went…

To be continued!

It was a cold and dark December morn in the far away land of Ottumwa, IA.  It is a morning my mother still remembers well because she missed breakfast birthing me.  At about 7:10 am, I came kicking and screaming into the world and some say I still make too much noise.

From that beginning, over a rather long and rough (at times) road, I have got to where I am today.  I am doing what I should have done 25 years ago, getting a college education.  I gave it a try after high school but I’ll be darned if I didn’t discover partying and I did it well.  That was it for college until 2003 when I got downsized (note to self, see if anyone still uses this annoying reference).  I decided I would give the local community college a try.

3.5 years later I left Kirkwood Community College with an Associates degree in computer programming.  This degree did little good in finding me a job so I decided to pursue a Bachelors degree in computer science at Mt. Mercy College.   Now here it is about 1.5 years later and I am a senior expecting to graduate in May ’09 and what have I done?

I have begun applying to graduate schools.  Part of this was due to the incessant nagging of Bob, one of my acquaintances of a slightly dubious nature.  In part my decision to apply to the University of Northern Iowa was due to Dr. Bohy, one of Mt. Mercy’s new CS faculty members.

The major problem with all of this book learnin’ is that it costs money!  More on this later….