The NDP is reversing the Liberals' decision to make remedial adult education cost money. I think that's good because it doesn't make sense that once you're no longer a teenager you also no longer have access to basic education. Making someone pay tuition to upgrade their highschool GPA or finish some credits just to get into community college is dumb, especially when most loans can't be applied to it.
I'm considering taking advantage of this but I don't really know if I can or have the courage to. I dropped out of high school midway through in a rural curriculum so I never did anything beyond basic algebra and vague science courses. I'm someone who participated in math competitions from the University of Waterloo when I was 12. These days I can't do basic math problems that only entail some dividing and multiplication. My understanding of basic scientific concepts is also lacking because I never had biology, chemistry, or any other related science course. My health put a serious damper on my intelligence and as time goes by I can feel it continue to slip away, and at this point I am somewhat desperate to stop it or recover some of it. No doubt the loss of knowledge is also tied to memory loss and isolation. Maybe going back to school would help. I don't know. I'm not excited about the idea of needing to start from the beginning, but I'm also not excited about avoiding simple problems because I know that my mind will stall and fail.
Putting this here because it is both a rave and a rant, combining into more of just a thought.
Adult education is never a bad thing. That's how I took my accounting course (at the local high school) and computers (at the local college).
Grade 10 chemistry is pretty easy, especially if you already know the metric system. Grade 10 biology... dunno about that. We had to do dissections, and back in the late '70s it wasn't possible to opt out of those assignments for reasons of conscience. It's been nearly 40 years, and I still feel guilty about that earthworm and frog I had to cut open. Thankfully there were no dissections in Grade 11, and in Grade 12 I opted to do a term paper rather than dissecting anything.
My best advice would be to talk to a counselor or advisor (whatever they're called these days) and tell them what you're interested in and what limitations you might have. Depending on the class, there might be some additional help available, such as tutoring or lab assistance if you opt to try chemistry and are concerned about physical safety - some stuff you absolutely do not want to risk spilling or breaking.
It's nice that the provincial government there is willing to give adult students a break. It would be nice if they'd do that here, as I've sometimes been curious about maybe trying at least Grade 10 physics. It's something that interests me, but the math and formulas kept getting messed up in a pretzel knot in my head in junior high science, so I never even considered it in high school.
The computer class at the college turned out to be a hoot. Turns out that one of my classmates was my psychology instructor from the previous year. During the break, he came over and said, "You look familiar" and I told him, "That's because I sat in the front row of your introductory psychology class for eight months last year."
So he asked how well I understood the stuff we were doing in the computer class and I told him I was doing okay so far, and he said, "Oh, good - then you can help me." And yeah, there were a few times when he'd wave frantically and call for help. The instructor encouraged us to help each other, since she couldn't be everywhere at once.
I had a dream this morning that I woke up to 17 pms on CFC
Depending on how active certain elements are, that's par for the course for OT moderators here. Or at least it was on a few occasions during my time on staff.
I wonder how many of us have had dreams that feature CFC.
The closest I ever came to that was dreaming that I was trapped inside a game of Test of Time, in the Lalande scenario. The aliens are much scarier when you're trying to dodge them in person, and their weapons could really kill you (or so my dream-self perceived).
It's also not really kosher to talk about people (past or present) who are not part of the discussion at hand.
If it's in a non-derogatory way and non-stalkerish, I don't see the problem. It would be a shame if we couldn't mention old or ex-members in passing. At the very least it shouldn't be forbidden to say something like "I miss _______".
'Cause there are some people I miss.
An opt-in list would be nice to have. At least this one would be updated, since some of the people who were part of the social group have left the forum.
