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Cultural Corner
Learn about CDL students around the globe
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Tips for Current Students from Graduates
Color code your class materials
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Student Profile
Soldier, Mother, Graduate... Q&A with Sgt. Diahann White
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Message from the Dean
Of the Center for Distance Learning
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| CDL Connection Fall 2005 > |
A Student's View: Suzanne Ryan |
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Graduated! You have a book in one hand and you’re cooking dinner with the other. A young voice is calling, “Mommy!” or “Daddy!” and the phone is ringing. The tears are welling up in your eyes because you have a paper due in a week and a spreadsheet assignment due over the weekend. I know you. You are where I once was and it wasn't that long ago. At age fifty-nine, I very recently earned my B.A. in exactly the same manner as you are, working full-time, breathless, on the run and stressed out from multi-tasking. Look up multi-tasking in any dictionary and there is a picture of a distance learner. Somewhere around forty credits from the finish line, in the midst of almost overwhelming frustration, I came across eleven words that fueled my final drive, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” I made a little poster for my work area with my name above it and in the toughest moments, gassed my empty tank with those words.
If you’re just getting started in distance learning, disorganization will cut you off at the knees. Not the most organized person on this earth, I learned that disorganization is the key to never completing your degree. Remember when floppy discs came in only basic black? My early course papers were scattered among any number of these black beauties generating frequent chaotic search missions. When colored discs hit the market, it occurred to me to save each course on a separate color as well as taking a minute for some detailed labeling. Not a tech-driven person, discovering the Lilliputian flash drive was an authentic revelation. Eureka--what an incredible time saver/organizer. In less than an hour, I created a folder for every course in my entire degree plan and saved the whole lot to my precious flash drive. Upon starting a new course, I printed every available page in a module and marked the essay assignments with a colored marker adding the due date. Each module was clipped together with a “bulldog” clip and stored in one of those cardboard magazine boxes. My books became distinctively marked with vibrant highlighting as well as with those vivid sticky markers reminding me of critical pages. Having planned out my degree, I cut potentially significant articles from newspapers and magazines, stuffing them into files for future reference.
Since most of my research was via the Internet, I printed out even remotely useful articles, “bulldogging” those pages together to be read and highlighted at a later time. Attention environmentalists: I confess a tree gave its life for my degree. For each essay, I copied and pasted the URLs onto an in-process Works Cited page in the belief that it was easier to delete unused research than to try and locate those addresses in a week when time was of the essence.
Writing a paper became an exercise in coloring. Not certain of a sentence or paragraph, I merely colored it green, pink, purple--whatever struck my mood and continued the writing process. Color helped me rapidly locate the questionable passage when more appropriate phrasing came to mind. Color also made moving paragraphs much easier, again saving time. “Black” indicated certainty of thought.
Getting the hang of the academic vocabulary arrived as a gradual epiphany. I began to pay serious attention to the manner in which authors wrote and to their style of language. I learned to write for my reader--the professor. Not co-incidentally, my professors began to write encouraging comments on my essays. Citations are utterly critical and I made sure I cited anything that wasn’t my own original thinking or terminology. If you don’t have a copy of Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference next to your computer, you are endangering your college success and your future.
So what is the end result of all of the agony plus at least one sacrificial tree? A week after the professor in my final class notified me that my paper was accepted, I resigned from my job. In my new job, again teaching ESL, I’m earning four times what my previous employer paid me. I’ve tried my hand at writing articles for regional magazines and to my immense amazement, I’m being published! More subtly, my mode of thinking, along with the way I express myself, has changed. I have an increased sense of self-esteem generated not by the final result, but through accomplishing each of the components of the task of earning a degree. Making the choice and commitment to earn a college degree means you have acknowledged that you can be better and, to that end, you are willing to change. As an adult learner with a boatload of responsibilities and obligations, distance learning is an often rough lonely path. If, like me, you didn’t attend or finish college after you left high school--maybe because of a lack of money, maturity, family support--this is all irrelevant now. What does matter is the next book you read and the next word you type.
Suzanne Ryan is a recent graduate of Empire State College. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in International Studies. She lives with her husband in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she teaches English as a Second Language and writes articles for regional magazines. Her next educational goal is a Master’s Degree.
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Issue 1 / Spring 2006
About CDL Connection |
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