Wrapping it up

I am almost at the end of grad school.

I submitted my last paper last week. It was a 25 page case study about a school district that couldn't keep its halls and bathrooms clean. I got my grade today - 340 out of 350 points.

A week from today I take my final final exam. I have to travel for this one because the school has changed the terms of engagement, effective this term. It used to be I could arrange for someone with professional credentials to act as my proctor. Now the school gives me three options only. I can take my exam in one of their centers (the closest one is Philadelphia PA) or at a commercial testing center. Or I can buy a machine that plugs into a computer and watches me take the test - a "Remote Proctor".

The fracking thing looks like a Cylon. And it does not work on a Mac.



I am not about to buy such a thing for one test.

I chose Troy University's MPA program because it was cheap (still is), has a reasonable and balanced set of course requirements (still does), and because it supported both PCs and Macs as options. I don't believe that the school wants to support the Mac option any more. That is a shame.

Comments

Post a Comment

Please support the EGFR Resisters Research Fund!

To help improve outcomes for people like me with EGFR mutated lung cancer, please donate to the EGFR Resisters' Research Fund. All donations are tax deductible and are in a restricted fund with the Bonnie Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, a four-star rated charity. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!


Popular posts from this blog

Telling stories to myself

Truly, I have the power - the power to make myself unhappy. The most effective way I do it is by telling stories to myself. I've been a daydreamer all my life, spinning tales that I tell only to myself. There is a common pattern to these stories: I am nearly always a central character, and they don't really end, they just peter off. Events in the stories also do not go well for me. Relationships sour, people die, projects remain undone, deadlines are not met. And the stories leave a bad after-taste in my thoughts and emotions. A while ago, I went through a period of contentment. It happened to be a time when I was blogging more actively. One day as I drove to work, I realized that I had stopped telling stories to myself. Telling stories to the world in written words seems to clear my thoughts of the dark tales, and to help prevent me from making myself unhappy. Isn't this the heart of meditation - to not tell stories to oneself, to not cling to those dark tales, to let them
Read more

My Carbon Footprint Grows Ever Larger

Image
This is how I would reword Shakespeare: Nothing offends me about my life so much as the manner of my leaving it. It’s not the disease, or the timing that makes me feel that way. It’s the staggering amount of energy that is consumed as part of cancer care - energy in the form of miles driven and plastic tossed into a biowaste disposal canister. I haven’t lived an exemplary life when it comes to the amount I have contributed to landfills. I’m not even good about composting my food waste. Still, getting sick has enlarged my carbon footprint, and I’m not done yet. There’s the matter of how to dispose of my mortal remains, for one thing, plus I’m not done with blood draws and treatments. Take the simple matter of a blood draw. Initially they were all taken from a vein. Waste generated: an alcohol wipe, a rubber tourniquet, a pair of gloves, a butterfly needle with attached plastic tube, a few glass vials, and a couple of pieces of gauze topped with a bandaid. Now, however, I
Read more

New Year, Old Dusty Blog

It’s been almost a year and a half since I posted anything here except links to paid work published elsewhere. This blog has remained in my thoughts throughout the whole period of silence.  Silent here, not elsewhere. The past year has been full of speaking engagements, patient advisory panels for pharmaceutical companies, other words in other places. What I’ve written and said has been sincere and well-researched, but has not included some things I think about. When you are writing and speaking for pay, you aren’t really free to share everything that might be on your mind. The customers for paid pieces want them to be hopeful and encouraging, to suit their purposes. My time and energy has also been invested in establishing a new patient advocacy group, the EGFR Resisters . Co-founders are Ivy Elkins, Jill Feldman, Teri Kennedy, Allen Lee, Ildiko Medve, and Colleen Sturdivant. Besides a website, we also have a closed Facebook group with over 900 members who share  treatment ex
Read more