Tag: Community Colleges
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Stepping through the retirement door
Should retirement be scary? Presumably the answer is no, providing you have your ducks lined up. This generally includes having a decent pension (if you are lucky enough to have one), a well stocked 401-K, maybe an IRA or two and a house that is either paid off or close to being paid off. Ideally,…
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The virtues and pitfalls of fellowship
Ever notice how people tend to congregate with people who act and behave a lot like them? I am no exception. I live in a middle class suburb, quite similar to the one I grew up in, with people mostly of my race and around my income level. Our weekends are spent on domestic things…
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Transitions, Part Two
There are many good aspects about having only one child. There are also certain aspects that are not ideal. For one, as an only child, your child has no older siblings to emulate. I was the fifth child so when my turn came for college I knew what to expect. I was both happy and…
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Community college is not quite college
As long time readers know, I teach off and on at a community college. More specifically, I teach off and on at Northern Virginia Community College, one of the nations largest community colleges. I taught a Computer Fundamentals course in the spring semester, took the summer off, and am back teaching the same course for…
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College Pretenders
The community college system was invented to make college affordable and available locally to ordinary people. You don’t need a 3.8 average to get into most community colleges. You generally need either a high school diploma or a G.E.D. For those who come from families of modest means paying for two years of education at…
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Back to School
After more than a year off from teaching it’s back to the classroom tomorrow morning. It appears that (ever so slowly) information technology (IT) is becoming hip again. The collapse of the dot com world followed by the outsourcing of IT jobs made students leery about investing time and money in IT. So lots of…
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Ruminations on community colleges
Schools out! I teach a class in Web Page Design at Northern Virginia Community College and I gave the final exam today. Just as well because we are off to Hawaii on the 20th. This is the fifth time I’ve taught a course and the fourth time I’ve teached this particular course. My students are…
Occam's Razor 