Well hello hello! Whether this is your first semester or 5th semester as a part-time student here at CCBC I just want to say I am proud of you. You are doing your own thing, but still getting your degree done which is ALL THAT MATTERS. It is no one’s business if you finish in 1 year or 4 years. You are yourself and no one else is living your personal life situation.
That’s the beautiful thing about life, you get to experience things that your peers and family sometimes don’t. I myself have been a part-time student here at CCBC since my first semester of fall 2018. I quickly learned that a good amount of people I had classes with during the daytime were full-time students taking 4-5 classes in one semester. At first, I felt like wow it’s gonna take me way longer than a lot of these people to walk across stage. I mean that’s obvious, but when you personally think about it you can kind of bum yourself out. When Spring semester came, I took night classes and a good amount of the people in my classes were part-time students! That made me feel less alone. Needless to say, it was a more diverse age group of people. It motivated me. I’m still young, I’m 20 and I’m putting myself through school. I have to remind myself of that sometimes.
As a part-time student, you must consider how you will get your homework done plus getting affective study sessions in. Many part-time students like me have jobs where you work 8 hour shifts 3 or more days out of the week. Cram studying the day before or the day of exams/quiz is not the wise thing to do. Being a college student you must prioritize understanding the concepts being taught to you. You must want that A or B so bad you take the extra time to watch videos, find readings, or attend tutoring just so you understand. This again does not mean the day before the exam, try embedding things into your brain the day they are taught to you and practice every day for at least like half an hour.
I myself enjoy taking one online class during the winter and summer semesters. I feel like this sort of evens me out with the full-time students. I am very grateful for all those professors who have taught me during what are supposed to be “breaks”. I mean I’ve only been in college long enough to have taken one winter class and one summer class. But they are fun interactive classes. Some people do not have the discipline to set aside time to treat the online class like a real class. A very close friend of mine took a math class online and he said he just hated it. It’s definitely a hit or miss situation depending on you and your learning style.
To conclude, YOU WILL GRADUATE my fellow part-time student. I should be ready to apply for my histotechnology program after fall 2020. I believe the program itself is about 1 year and a half meaning I will be walking across that stage in 2023 if my calculations are correct. I will be 23 and ready to work in a laboratory and the thought of that makes college worth it. Part-time student, I believe in you and I see your sacrifices, one day you will think back and say, “I’m glad I got it done at my pace”.
