The Convolution of Higher Education
I am currently a junior at the University of TN at Chattanooga. I am set to do my student teaching in the spring of 2013 and to graduate that May. As I’ve been sitting here going over my schedule for the next two semesters and making sure that all of my graduation requirements are taken care of, the realization hit me that I took SO many classes that I didn’t need while I was at Chattanooga State.
You see, here in Tennessee, we have this great little program called Articulation. It allows students to go to the smaller community colleges to do all of their general education classes at a cheaper rate and then transfer over to a university to finish the bachelor’s. Ideally, the Chattanooga State classes would have just nicely transferred over to UTC and it would have subtracted 60 hours of requirements from my UTC courses.
No. It didn’t.
It took care of quite a few, don’t get me wrong. But had I been at UTC from the very beginning, I would not have needed to take two literature courses, I would have only needed two sciences instead of four, I would not have needed to take World Geography at all, or sociology. Though in those cases I would have needed an additional history and a political science class. I only needed one of the Math for Teacher classes instead of both. I only needed one early childhood development class instead of both. I also would not have needed to take Public Speaking.
That is six classes that would have been totally wiped off the slate had I just STARTED at UTC. That accounts for an entire semester. An entire semester that I’m taking over the summer this year so that I can just be finished with the degree already. A summer that I would not have needed to spend all of my time on had Chattanooga State been with the program or if I would have just started out at UTC to begin with.
The $1000.00 a semester that I saved by going to Chatt State? Yeah, I totally ended up paying for it anyway! Between having six classes that I didn’t need, now I have to take an additional semester that I would not have otherwise had to pay for!
Bah. I should have just stuck to my original plan way back in the beginning… to just take the classes that I knew would transfer easily over to UTC without worrying about the Associates Degree part of the articulation agreement.
Oh well. Live and Learn.
Have you ever realized that you took a class (or several) that you didn’t need at all for your degree?
