Loni's Life

Yahoo! Just checked into my Amberton email to discover my final project grade was a 95 and the professor asked permission to share it via his blog where he shares student papers (with the student's permission) that he deems are good examples for the coursework. Woohoo! And I logged my Professional Development Units (PDU's) for the course on the Project Management Institute site and renewed my PMP certification as well. Yippeeeeee!!!!

The past year has been hard on this particular knitter... at times, I was even too sad to knit... even knowing how much knitting helps my moods and stress levels, I had a hard time coming out of the fog. There have been a few exceptions along the way including Mama's ruffled green scarf; BFF's Christmas scarf and my matching sister scarf.. but generally, it's been a few projects knit to completion kind of year... Rarely do we catch me in a photo with my knits.. but I needed one for a scholarship application where the requirements are:  1) Know how to knit or crochet 2) Plan to attend an accredited and approved institution of higher education during the 2012-2013 academic school year  Well, I have known how to crochet since under age 10 and knitting has become a passion only within the past 10 years... with my return to grad school this semester, I figured why not apply for this $2,250 scholarship. (Notification will be made by June 1)... perhaps when I return from...

OK, it's almost to the halfway point for this semester.. and I'm staying afloat with a near 100% average on the weekly discussion work (40% of the course grad); a 100 on the first of several assignments due on the research paper (20% of the course grade) ; and a 90 on the first of four multiple choice exercises (the remaining 40% of the course grade). It's been a little bit of a juggle to fit into the schedule; but I have been managing my time.. and my DVR.. fairly wisely so that I haven't been overly stressed out.   As such, I'll be keeping the pace at 1 course per term.   Depending on the Hawaii schedule, I may take the Winter semester off.... or depending on the syllabus involved, I may just have to take my laptop and find an internet cafe in Lihue to work on homework.. we'll have to wait and see. But for now, I'm doing OK and really enjoying the challenge along the way.. at least with this PM course.  

Ok, I'm through the first 3 weeks of this return to school business and I'm doing ok.   I have A's going on the first 4 assignments and the pace and workload seems OK.  Week #4 reading is in progress and I'll have the homework posted by Wednesday night.    7 full weeks left and then off to the wilds of Alaska.     With a 1 class per term pace, I should graduate at the end of Fall 2014.  

I've been officially re-admitted as a Graduate Student at Amberton University .    I am in the process of going through the formal Educational Assistance paperwork at the office; this time instead of a MBA in General Business, I've re-applied at work under MBA - Project Management.    So I've got 3 hours down; 33 more to go.  Namely because my Bachelor's degree was in Business Administration - Information Systems and Technology so I don't have to take the 12 hours of prerequisite business courses that my BFF had to take when she earned her MBA from Amber.    So here's to a graduation sometime in 2014-2015. 

Sometimes you have to put some goals on temporary hold while you work on others... one of my goals is to obtain my MBA in General Business from Amberton University. However, another of my goals is to do that debt-free... oh sure, I could charge it... but if I was going to do that, then why not go all out and go to SMU and spend 50K+. As such, I will probably take the fall term off ~ due to recovering from some unexpected high transportation repairs on 2 vehicles... sigh... but thanks to some FPU actions, we were able to cover those repairs without creating more debt! Hooray!! I have every confidence that I will graduate in 3 years.. it's just a temporary shift to other competing priorities.

Oh Happy Day! I got an A from Dr. Tway Hooray! First class back in school and at the graduate level with tons of studying and writing. Now I get a month off for recreational reading before having to hit the books again.

Just got back the final company analysis work for Econ and got a 95... yippee... so all the hard work on the preliminary analysis paid off (also a 95). Now to wait for the Term project grade and final semester grade.... this has been an intense 10 weeks of economics study... so much so that I've been dreaming about FDX financial statements and other various economics articles - especially ones about supply/demand as it relates to oil prices. I'm glad that I have a month off; so I'll need to cram in some recreational reading before Fall terms starts.

Ok, for better or worse the last 2 projects for Managerial Economics are turned in... I pray for a solid B in this course which was a tough one to do in the summer. You'd think that one of these years I would learn my lesson and take the summer off. But the timing was my choice, because I could have taken a class in the Spring... but if I had waited until the Fall, I would have had to go thru the whole application process including sending in all the official transcripts from all my schools. Now I can enjoy the Men's team gymnastics finals.

Ok, I can tell that I'm back in school... i've been dreaming about financial statements for a couple of companies this week. One of my assignments was due this week for this Managerial Economics course. It involves having to review a Company, its products, its competitors, etc. etc. Anyhow, I've been reading about my selected Company and its major competitors; evaulating financial statements etc. I've also been speaking Economics-babble as evidenced this week when my best friend was talking about her potential audit schedule. She was saying that the managers were going to do a quarterly audit of Dept X going forward and I reply with, well you know the cost of doing quarterly audits of Dept X is not only the cost of the actual audit for Dept X but also the opportunity cost of the costs of the audits you forego for Depts Y, Z, and Q plus the costs of any potential findings for the other departments. Of course, bless her, she's already earned her MBA from th...

Just got my first Managerial Econ exam back and got a High B.. I'm happy with that. I struggled with a trio of questions dealing the same set supply/demand equations for all 3; so I figured I would either get all 3 correct or all 3 incorrect. As it turns out, I got all 3 of those correct; but missed 5 others that I was absolutely sure about. So it's back to the book tonight to see what i misunderstood and then to get the prelim analysis project completed and turned in tomorrow... and I'm already part way thru Exam 2 and have started reading to find my articles for the Abstracts. Oh joy, to be a grad student... and in the summer... Oh well, it's better than having to go back thru the whole Admissions process and get transcripts from 4 colleges sent back in for evaluation.