I think that I would classify online learning and working full time at the same time probably the hardest thing that I have ever had to do in my life. Just the sheer physical and mental exhaustion of working 12+ hour a day and then coming home and working on homework hits me hard every day. Believe me it is definitely not for the faint of heart. You have to have a drive to want to succeed. I believe that it probably my strength that is going to help me get through online schooling. A typical work/school day for me is about 17 hours. If I didn’t have a drive to want to get my degree I would have definitely given up a long time ago. One thing that has helped me cut down these long days is the time management skills that I have learned this term. I plan to keep using what I learned about tie management to help keep myself on track and focused since I do not have much time in the day to waste.

Since I am a more visual learner it is hard to strictly focus on techniques to help facilitate my learning styles. Sure I can watch videos, but still there is a lot of reading and writing that are involved in online learning. Sometimes I wish online learning was more like putting together Ikea furniture (yes I may be the only person on this planet that doesn’t mind putting together Ikea furniture). What I mean by that is I wish there was a step by step instruction guide for everything. I think the thing that will help me is by trying to find strategies to help me to become more of a “reading” learner.

I have always been an advocate for the OSU guidance counselors and this time is no different. They are like the go to resource at OSU for almost every case that you could come across while as an online student at OSU. I have never had such a caring counselor in school. I have been pretty honest this term about how I was not very successful from the start of my online career at OSU. However with the help of my assigned guidance counselor I was about to get myself a second shot. And for that I will always be grateful.

For my upcoming term at OSU I will say my biggest goal is completing all of my assignment on time. This term I have been better that I have in any of my other terms with getting homework in on time. However there were times that I may have missed a due date by a couple of hours or might have forgot completely. I didn’t miss enough assignments to put any of my grades in jeopardy or anything, but if I can get all of my assignments in on time next semester I will feel far more accomplished. My long term goal is to have at least 4 Straight A terms out of my last 7 terms at OSU. I feel that this goal is definitely something that I can accomplish and if I start by getting all of my homework in on time every time then I will get a good start on my long term goal.

I’m going to start off with one of the biggest surprises that I have found so far this semester is how helpful that this ALS class truly is. It is something that I wish I would of utilized a lot sooner in my online learning career. I am probably taking this class for a much different reason than many of the people that are going to read this. But before I get to that lets start with some of the reasons that I have found about why online learning is best for me. Then I will cover some of the challenges that I have faced so far in my online learning career.

The biggest reason that online learning is best for me is because I am having to work to be able to pay for school. Being an online student has helped me to be able to still work to help pay for school along the way. Another reason that I have found a love for online schooling is being able to do the work at my pace. Instead of having to sit through a class where most of the time I would probably be day dreaming about being anywhere else. I have found that by me having to keep track of what is going on it has actually made me a better learner because I am not doing work because a teacher is watching me, but because I want to learn.

Now lets get to why I am currently enrolled in this class. I am going to get a little personal here but I hope that maybe someone can learn from some of my mistakes and challenges thus far in my college career. To start off this is my second and a half year as a student on Ecampus at Oregon State University. Only one and a half of those I have been allowed to take classes. I was kicked out of school for about a year due to life circumstances and personal hardships. I am not going to get into all of the reasoning behind my suspension, but I will say that the biggest thing you can do as an online student is make sure that you utilize all of the resources that are available to you. Whether it is a death in the family or having to pick up a second job to help support your family there is always someone that you can talk with at Oregon State to help you get through your hardships. Don’t always assume that you can get through everything on your own because the next thing you know you will be falling behind. And believe me you truly don’t know what you got till its gone, because before my suspension I took school pretty lightly. Since I was reinstated however school means the world to me!