Hitting the books

Well, it's that time of year again. Classes start today at the local community college and, glutton for punishment that I am, I have once again registered to add another entry to my transcript.

I've been taking in-classroom courses (mostly so-called "hybrid" classes that meet every other week and you submit assignments online in the off weeks), like web server administration and ASP.NET, for the past few semesters. But I decided to take a break from that and sign up for a strictly online class this time – something I haven't done for at least a couple of years. It's not even a programming class; I opted for Systems Analysis and Design, partly because I've already been doing some rudimentary analysis and design in my job (which is supposed to be that of a technical writer) and figured I might want to get a bit of formal book-larnin' to back it up.

For the first time since I started my current job, I'll be eligible for tuition reimbursement from my employer (because I'll have been on the payroll for over a year by the time I complete the course). So that'll be nice, to have someone else pick up the tab for a change. Sadly, they won't pay for books; the text for this class was an outrageous $134, even with Amazon's textbook pricing. But at least that will be my only cost, assuming I get an A (a B gets only 50% reimbursement, anything less and they won't pay). Not that I'm worried about that, as I have a straight 4.0 in my community college courses so far.

And of course, with no actual classes to attend, I'll burn no gasoline getting there... and even more important, won't be getting into any expensive fender-benders on my way to class, like I did a year ago.