Goal #1!

1. CLEP 11-16 credits by May 15:

Possible Courses:
College Algebra & Trig (5 credits)
General Biology (4 credits)
General Chemistry (4 credits)
Humanities (3 credits)

What is CLEPing classes?
Basically taking a pass/fail test to get credit for a subject, instead of taking and passing a class to get the credit. More in-depth here.

Why?
Save Money. CLEP tests cost around $50-$75 to take. So 16 hours would be around $300 (4 subjects times $75 each, assuming I pass the 1^st time). To get 16 hours at my college with the scholarships I ‘had’ would cost around $2300, without those scholarships (which I don’t know if I still have them) would be around $4400. Umm….wasting $4000 on gen. ed’s when I don’t even know if I’m going to stay at this school or not is probably a bad idea for me (transferring could make my credits irrelevant, in which case, I’d have to take & pay for the same classes at the new college).

Get stuff done in less time. The classes that I will be CLEPing are basic gen. ed’s, so it’s not like this is stuff that will really help me out in my major (accounting/finance). I might as well not spend 15 hours in class a week, another 2-5 a week studying and probably 2 hours a week getting to and from class, when I could probably study 15 – 30 hours TOTAL for a CLEP test and pass it.

Maintaining my GPA: In classes that don’t really matter to me (gen. ed’s) I usually don’t pay attention/work very hard. This usually isn’t a big problem since they are entry level courses, but every once in a while you come across a teacher that wants to turn English Lit. into ‘How many papers can I make these kids write’. These are the types of classes that are my undoing. I don’t really care enough to devote the time to write multiple 10 page papers, so I get a C or low B automatically because all my papers end on page 6 or 7. On the CLEP tests you don’t get graded A-F, instead it’s a pass or fail test. Pass and you get your credits, fail and you waste your money.

HOW?
I currently have most of the CLEP study books that I need. The internet also has some learning opportunities concerning CLEP and of course, all types of stuff. Another solid resource I can use if I need something I can’t find/don’t have is the college and city libraries.

I plan on studying around 30 minutes to an hour a day on the weekdays, 2 hours a day on weekends. That’s 6.5 to 9 hours a week. I will work on one subject at a time and then take it’s CLEP test, then move onto another subject. If I had to guess I’d say it will take around 2-3 weeks to complete each subject.

If I start in February and average 3 weeks per subject(assuming 4 total subjects), I would finish at the very start of May, two weeks ahead of my goal: May 15^th.

Where I am & How I got there.

Coming out of high school, I felt like I was on top of the world. Good grades, solid athlete (wasn’t going to play in college, but it was something to feel good about), college pretty much paid for with scholarships, I was trading stocks for some small investors and friends (which I loved), and had an all around contentment with life. I was going somewhere and I was going to make something of my life, or so I thought.

I moved into an apartment freshmen year with a bunch of high school friends. What I didn’t realize is how different we really were. I had thought we’d end up spending most of our time coming up with plans to make money or getting good at various skills, general self-improvement. What ended up happening was A LOT of drinking. Something I wasn’t used to at all. In high school, I’d drink a bit, but nothing like the 4-5 days a week that sometimes happened at our apartment. This kind of lifestyle had no ability to support any of the stuff I was doing. I didn’t do as well in school as I wanted to. I lost all the money I had made in the stock market (broke-even). I ended up giving the money back to my investors, taking out a loan to pay for crap that I didn’t really need, and basically developing a general apathy for doing anything but having ‘fun’. After I while, I decided that my previous life was better, so I moved out. (I don’t blame the apartment for any of the things that happened, I should have had a stronger will and just moved out when I realized what was about to happen.)

The only problem is that I haven’t gotten back to my previous life. I pretty much have dropped out of college. I keep telling myself that it’s so I can make some money, so I can go back to college, but I think I’m just lying to myself. Even worse, I haven’t gotten back to the stock market (hard to get investors back when I haven’t traded in a year), or done anything to improve myself. What I’m getting at is I’ve become pretty mindless, drab, lazy, and apathetic. I’m worried that if I don’t do something soon, I’ll be stuck in this rut forever. NOW is the time for change!

I don’t know what exactly I’m going to do, but I have a general idea. I’ve always had things I wanted to learn, experiences I’ve wanted to go though first hand. I think that is where I’m going to start by trying out things I’ve always wanted to, and hopefully that will give me the motivation to keep on trying to learn new stuff.

My next post will be about what my goals are and what I’m going to do to achieve them.

Thanks for stopping by!