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PetitePowerlifter.com
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THE HIGHER EDUCATION EXPERIENCE CONCLUDES
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THE END OF ONE YEAR, THE START OF A NEW LIFE:
Cheryl finally reached the finish line of her long journey to a Bachelor's degree, representing and speaking to the FOCUS Program students in her graduation speech at Northwestern College's Winter Commencement in Roseville, MN on Dec. 22, 2006. She now owns a Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies, having finished strong with a 3.85 GPA!! (That would have officially been a Magna Cum Laude honor, but 13 more credits taken at Northwestern College would have been required. Since she completed most of her credits elsewhere, and had reached the number of credits needed for a B.S. degree, she chose to JUST DO IT and receive her degree as-is.)
Past updates made along the 18-month road to grad day... Update as of October 2006: My current schedule is unlike anything I've experienced during my entire college journey. Aside from the "Methods of Communication Research" class I am taking at Northwestern - incidentally, my very last class there - I am also fulfilling a basic speech requirement by taking a Public Speaking class at Century College in White Bear Lake, AND studying for one more DSST exam... AND I have just begun another awesome internship, this time with the Corporate Communications Department at Northwest Airlines! (I know... freakin' CRAZY GIRL trying to do all this!! - notice, I didn't mention keeping up with my powerlifting training and helping my kid with school!!!! - but it is ALL well worth it.) That said, I've pretty much been spending these final weeks of school on the other side of the Twin Cities, around St. Paul. The countdown to graduation has turned into mere weeks rather than months. I am racking up mileage on my Sunfire trying to reach the finish line of my B.S. degree - and that ain't no B.S.! August 2006: It's down to the LAST TWO CLASSES of my degree program at NWC - Management and Communication Research. Then I've got a Public Speaking class at Century College (simultaneously), two DSST exams to take, and it's party time!!! :) Meanwhile, you may wonder where I get all my work done when I'm not on campus. In this program, six days a week, students are on their own as far as getting their homework completed for the next class meeting on Monday (and being in "self-teaching" mode). My classroom-away-from-the-classroom has been at any of the NUMEROUS coffee shops around the Twin Cities - Caribou Coffee, Dunn Brothers, but especially STARBUCKS. I have been known to visit all three shops in one day (usually sampling all the different Americanos or Depth Charges), as well as staying at one store for three hours or more in one shot. I plan to construct a page about this soon, inspired by this guy's website. But, yes, coffee and college have gone hand-in-hand. I never truly realized how much until I vacationed this summer and realized how few-and-far-between these shops are, outside of the Twin Cities Metro area... March 2006: I've added a special page about my internship with the City of Edina. September 2005: A major proposal has been presented to our class that will eliminate one of our program's required classes (Basic Web Design), thereby shortening our program by a month. This means our cohort will complete our Bachelor's Degree in November 2006! The credits from the Web Design class (formerly 2 cr.) will be redistributed and added onto two other courses. So we are still doing the same amount of work but spending more time on other courses (specifically Principles of Journalism and Principles & Concepts of Public Relations). It's great news for me personally because the Web Design class would have covered material I already know and use. (The administration proposed to drop this particular class based on prior student feedback because it covered too much technical material in too short of a time period, for a 2-credit class.) Our cohort will be the first one at Northwestern College to undergo this curriculum change, as we voted unanimously for it! June 2005: I'm currently completing my Bachelor of Science degree in Communication Studies full-time at Northwestern College in Roseville (St. Paul), Minnesota through the FOCUS Degree Completion Program. This program puts adult college students in small groups called "cohorts," and they take one class at a time, meeting one night per week in an accelerated curriculum format. The students all have work and life experience that they bring to the classroom. The small campus is beautiful, and I've been enjoying going to school here (more than any other college or university I have attended). I'm serving as Class Representative for my class/cohort, and we are all working together to complete our B.S. degrees with a graduation date scheduled for December 2006!
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© 2006 Cheryl Anderson, Site Designer and Developer |
