Educated.

The college thing is really bugging me again. Really.

No...*really*.

It's been nagging in the back of my head for awhile, but has sort of solidified in the past month or so, with the culminating point being someone asking me yesterday where I went graduated college. "Uhh...I didn't." That was bad enough, but the startled, "Oh," that I got in response was pretty demoralizing, I have to say.

The trouble is, I keep trying to get back in the saddle, as far as school goes, and I keep getting derailed by one thing or another. There are always too many convenient excuses, which is the story of not only my educational life, but other aspects of it, as well.

So, I've started doing research again, this time pulling information from my community college (which is rather highly rated, I found out) and from San Jose State, where I want to transfer once I complete as much of my community college related undergrad work as I can. SJSU has a really interesting graduate program, as well, in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, which would be something entirely different from going into actual practice. Instead, I'd do stuff like develop corporate training programs, provide input on UI design of software, research and statistical analysis of data collected by a company, all kinds of interesting stuff like that. While the idea of going into practice was the initial draw for me, and something that I've always wanted to do, I have to admit, the I/O degree really interests me.

The great thing about California's higher education is the amount of cooperation between the junior colleges and the higher level ones. I can do a *lot* of the work (if not most) for my undergrad degree at the community college, paying CC prices, and it will transfer directly over. Even better, as I've mentioned in the past, it's a guaranteed admission thing, to any of the CSU schools, and some of the UC schools.

Even better, SJSU has this webpage that gives a list of their BA Psychology courses, and their equivalents at DeAnza, my specific school.

Before, when I babbled on about school, I had general ideas of what I wanted to do eventually, which...well, not so good for the motivation, really, since it didn't lay everything out. Now, I have a plan--a list of courses that I can take for the equivalency program, along with a general idea of the electives that I'll need to complete the general education requirements, *and* a list of the classes that I'll need to catch up to where I'll need to be--mostly in math, because well, my math skills are so !l33t that it's not even funny. I mean...I'm going to take my first math class during summer quarter, and it's pre-algebra, for Pete's sake.

I counted, though, how many courses I'll need before I can transfer to SJSU with all the general education requirements done, all the lower division requirements done, and all the supporting requirements done. Seventeen classes.

Which sounds like a lot, and it is--especially since I can only take one or two classes a quarter, at most.

On the other hand, it's only seventeen classes--if I take two classes per quarter, I can be done in eight or nine quarters, two years from now. I could be ready to start officially at SJSU in the fall of 2008.

But that, of course, means that I need to *not* lose my motivation again, which is, sadly, far too easy. Strangely good thing, I guess, that these internal naggings to deal with college already, dammit, are coming more and more quickly.

Now all I have to do is figure out what I want to do for my arts/humanities requirement and my psychology electives.

One bright spot? My social science electives for the general ed requirement are done already. Sweet.