Confessions of a Blogaholic

I knew the time would come eventually; I am ready to go back to school. I'm either going to start back at A.shland in January and take a class or wait and go back next summer to take all the classes I need at once. I have two academic goals that I would like to achieve in the near future...

1) Finish the few remaining classes I have for my Administrative license in curriculum and instruction. What am I going to do with that license in an economy where admin jobs in curriculum are few and far between? I don't know...maybe work for the Department of Education one day? Curriculum and instruction are areas in which I am VERY interested, so having the license would be a step in the right direction.

Once I get 15 semester credit hours (5 semester classes), I get a nice $5,000-$8,000 bump in pay, so I would like to whip all these out before fall of the 2011-2012 school year. "Whipping" classes out used to be sooooo easy for me since I'm such an academic workhorse and love to "play school." But...with Rylee now, I'm not sure how easy that is going to be. I have to find a babysitter and schedule classes around that, my time at home has to be divided between her and everything else that would need to be done (no more 4-hour obsessive compulsive work/study sessions!).

2) I want to find out about auditing some undergrad (or grad if they'll let me) classes in the field of English/Literature--specifically, American Lit. I miss taking classes, reading, and getting to discuss what we read. I miss taking lecture notes and learning new things. Yes, I could do massive amounts of research online to learn new things, but where do you even begin to do that research?? For some reason, I thought once I started teaching there would always be a plethora of other teachers around who would want to read and talk about books, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know anything about the auditing process, but I hope it means I can take the class (maybe at a reduced rate???), participate in the discussions, and not necessarily have to write the papers, take the exams, etc.

I love going to school. I love learning about things I am interested in. I DON'T like doing "professional development" classes/workshops/seminars about things in which I am not interested (particularly "fad" educational workshops that focus on fleeting fad ideas).

You can graduate the kid (twice!), but you can't make the kid stay away from your college or university.