- My first “I’m really a student” look at the campus as I left the parking garage on Monday night. Credit: Me
Now I’ve gone and done it. I’ve gone and enrolled at the University of Nevada Reno as a Graduate Special student and have dipped my toe in ever so slightly. Don’t let that “Graduate Special” status fool you. We are the nobodies… people who already have a degree, who are interested in taking classes but have no plans for anything more. Except that I do have plans for something more and not quite sure how to go about that. Some academic advising is in my future. But I digress.
I’m registered for one class: Intro to Digital Photography. How hard could it be? I thought to myself. This will ease me in to more ‘academic’ courses. And besides, at the very least, I’ll learn – hopefully – how to take better pictures.
Monday night was the first night of class. And I found out that this class is going to challenge me. Oh yeah, I’ll be better technically with my camera and will learn how to manipulate my pictures in Photoshop, but this class is going to be about photography as art. And that means that I’m going to have to be creative on cue (and be critiqued on said product of my creativity). Oh. Shit.
Still, I’m excited. There were 20 of us there on Monday night. Most were degree-seeking students, but the age and life experience of the students was deep and wide. The fellow I did the “getting to know you” exercise with is the same age as my daughter (28), so even he isn’t your typical university student. Or is he? I am, I believe, the oldest student in the class, though there is one other student, a man with a wife and a couple of kids, with a fair amount of gray in his hair as well.
Monday night was full of discussing the syllabus, office hours, expectations, what we need to aqquire, how much of what we do will be outside class hours, and getting to know each other a bit. And we learned some cool stuff about our cameras. The instructor “You can call me Megan” kept us to the very last minute. She worries that the semester is already going by too fast and there is so much for us to learn.
Tonight – while we still have some light – we’ll be going out en masse to shoot some pictures and then back to the classroom for more book-learnin’.
I’m like a kid in a candy store.
Yay good job! And you’re right about the Graduate Special thing. I’m a Grad Special too and we really are the no bodies. Though technically I’m registered as a undergrad getting my second degree (just so I can get student loans), but I’m really just taking all the prereqs to get into the Speech Path masters program, grad special. This year I’m in a lot of classes with other undergrads and it’s weird because last year I was in classes with all grad specials. I feel like I’m the odd ball out now. lol
I have my late night class tonight and i’m really hoping we get out early so I can make it to the freethinkers meeting.
I may need to pick your brain on that whole taking classes to meet prereqs later!