Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Textbooks are still too expensive / More free money!
I tried to find out what textbooks are required for the classes I am considering taking for the fall term. I want to try to find used textbooks again if I can. It saves a huge amount of money. Two years seems to be about how long you can expect a college textbook to be used. There are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. The only class I am 100% sure of for the fall term is MTH251 (Calculus I). All of the calculus textbooks for PCC have just been changed and there are no used copies anywhere that I've checked because the book is brand new. The books I need for this class could cost about the same as tuition for the class. The main book is $190.30 and a required course packet is another $13.40. If I end up needing the solutions manual it will be another $87.05. This is all for one class. Luckily, Calculus II will use these same books. So $150 per class per term is about average. I think the textbook for the digital photography class I'm considering is about $140. Who knows how much the astronomy class might be. Probably more like $200 or even more. I had been hesitating taking an online literature of science fiction class until I saw that even if I buy brand new for the required books it will only be about $25. The cost of textbooks and availability of used books could be a deciding factor in many of the classes that I take in the next year. I have a lot of elective credit requirements left and can pick almost anything I want for them.
I still haven't haven't had to take out any loans for school. But that could all change soon. I am now eligible (finally!) and have applied for for Pell grants and Oregon Opportunity grants now and may be able to get an additional $1000 per term if I can get a federal Work-Study position. I also qualified for a Perkins loan of up to $1050 over the next three terms. Using just these resources I can potentially get $6383 for school costs over the next three terms. This could completely pay for those terms, maybe even with a tiny bit left over for living expenses. If I get all of these awards I'm pretty sure I have at least enough money for living expenses for the next 6 to 8 months, maybe more if I'm careful. If I could get through my first 2+ years of college without being more than $1000 in debt I would be ecstatic. If I can continue to receive grants and work-study I might only have to come up with living expenses. But that's where the debt is really going to start to pile up. I think about $9000 a year is going to be my lower limit. Maybe I will surprise myself and do better than that. Realistically I think I can look forward to a minimum of $20,000 of school debt if I get a Bachelors degree. If I do graduate studies it could be double that. If I went to a private college like Reed, not that I want to, I could expect to pay about $41,000 per year just for tuition! I'm just glad that I will be able to go to a relatively cheap public university. And that they have some quality programs that I am interested in. Even if I graduate with a $40,000 debt, I believe that there is a good chance I could have it paid off within a few years.
I don't want to think about this anymore right now.
I still haven't haven't had to take out any loans for school. But that could all change soon. I am now eligible (finally!) and have applied for for Pell grants and Oregon Opportunity grants now and may be able to get an additional $1000 per term if I can get a federal Work-Study position. I also qualified for a Perkins loan of up to $1050 over the next three terms. Using just these resources I can potentially get $6383 for school costs over the next three terms. This could completely pay for those terms, maybe even with a tiny bit left over for living expenses. If I get all of these awards I'm pretty sure I have at least enough money for living expenses for the next 6 to 8 months, maybe more if I'm careful. If I could get through my first 2+ years of college without being more than $1000 in debt I would be ecstatic. If I can continue to receive grants and work-study I might only have to come up with living expenses. But that's where the debt is really going to start to pile up. I think about $9000 a year is going to be my lower limit. Maybe I will surprise myself and do better than that. Realistically I think I can look forward to a minimum of $20,000 of school debt if I get a Bachelors degree. If I do graduate studies it could be double that. If I went to a private college like Reed, not that I want to, I could expect to pay about $41,000 per year just for tuition! I'm just glad that I will be able to go to a relatively cheap public university. And that they have some quality programs that I am interested in. Even if I graduate with a $40,000 debt, I believe that there is a good chance I could have it paid off within a few years.
I don't want to think about this anymore right now.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Return of the Reading List
I never get to read as much as I want to. There are SO MANY books that I want to read. School and its required reading has been slowing me down. It's been 6 months since I last posted what I have been reading for fun and I am a little surprised at how little I've managed to read in that time. I've been trying to shake things up a little by reading a little more fiction, particularly "classic", meaning older and hopefully not crappy, fiction of various types, but nothing really heavy like War and Peace or Atlas Shrugged or Of Human Bondage. I'm sure these are great books, but they hold little appeal to me. I need to use reading as an escape more often, like I did when I was younger. Non-fiction is informational and interesting, but I need to try and use my recreational reading more as recreation rather than education. I was hooked on cheap Conan novels for several years and the guy at the nearby used bookstore was happy to assist in feeding my addiction. They knew me well there. Good times. More fiction seems to be good for me and my mental health. And its free. Hard to beat that combo. So, here they are, in chronological order:
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral - Barbara Kingsolver
Another "crunchy" book. A family moves to rural Appalachia and decides to go for a year eating only locally produced food. Apparently Kingsolver is famous for her earlier highly-acclaimed novel, The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family that moves to Africa and I suppose that I may eventually read it.
The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford
A mass media economics books. Its the kind of book about economics that you might read if you aren't all that interested in economics. I would have learned something if I had read this a few years ago.
The Lost City of Z : A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon - David Grann
I love (LOVE! LOVE!) reading books like this and was thrilled when I saw that the library had this book on order. I immediately put in on hold and waited patiently for it to arrive. It's real-life Indiana Jones stuff. Buried treasure, lost cities, the Amazon jungle in the 1920's, world-famous British explorer vanishes. Smashing good time, old boy! More! I want more! Bring me more! I demand it!
Voodoo Histories : The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History - David Aaronovitch
Interesting, but I didn't agree with some of his conclusions and was a bit confused about the conspiracy theories that the author chose to not address. Some of his arguments were poor and made little sense. I wanted to like this book and it sounded promising, but I wasn't impressed.
A bunch of books on medicine and doctors in the Middle Ages, like Daily Life During the Black Death by Joseph P. Byrne. This wasn't for fun (humanities class), but I learned a couple of interesting things.
Green, Inc. : An environmental insider reveals how a good cause has gone bad - Christine MacDonald
Another disturbing book that told me some things that I already suspected and some more things that I didn't. Kind of a bummer, but good to know.
The island at the center of the world : the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America - Russell Shorto
I ended up not finishing this book. I ran out of time and had to get it back because someone else had reserved it. I would like to finish this book. I do love history and this is a much deeper look at what has turned into one of the most important cities in the world. Very well written and researched.
Little house on a small planet : simple homes, cozy retreats, and energy efficient possibilities - Shay Salomon
More tiny house stuff. Always cool to see what's new and different ideas. Some day...
Free-range kids : giving our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry - Lenore Skenazy
Super awesome book! More people need to read this book. Not just people with kids either. It shows that the world really isn't such a scary place for kids and things aren't actually getting worse. We just talk about scary things more and are consequently more scared. Really. It helps that this book is fun to read.
There Was an Old Woman - Ellery Queen
I can remember reading and watching (Channel 55 was the shiznit!) a lot of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Ellery Queen mysteries when I was young. I hadn't read a mystery novel in a very, very long time and decided to give it another go. I really like 1920s and 1930s settings and language in books, I'm not sure why. I think it's far enough removed in time from my own personal experiences that it is somewhat of a curiosity yet still very familiar. It does help if it is fun and easy to read like this one. I had no real clue who the killer was even though all the evidence had been presented. I'll probably read some more Ellery Queen books. Eventually.
Q.E.D.: Queen's experiments in detection - Ellery Queen
I got this one after reading the prior book. It's a collection of short stories and they don't work nearly as well as a novel length book. I only read about half of it before returning it.
You can't eat GNP : economics as if ecology mattered - Eric A. Davidson
Very well done and fairly short book on the basics of ecological economics. I'm still reading this one.
And then there were none - Agatha Christie
The Ellery Queen novel got me excited about mysteries and I decided to expand a little within the genre. This book happened to be available at the branch library that is only a 10 minute walk from my house so I decided to get it. Set in the late 1930's, this is Christie's best selling novel ever. A fun and fast read that left me wanting more. I had a good idea who the murderer was before the end, but there were still some twists that I never saw coming. Excellent.
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I checked this book out about 4 or 5 months ago and never got enough time to read it. I just got it again yesterday and am several chapters into it right now. Fascinating story of triumph over adversity for a woman who grew up as a Muslim girl with few rights in several African and Middle Eastern countries, her eventual escape to the Netherlands, and her refusal to submit to a religion she never really believed in. After this book she wrote a screenplay which was made into a film titled Submission. This film ended up getting it's Dutch director/producer, Theo van Gogh, killed and has resulted in continuous death threats have been made against her ever since. It's a pretty interesting story so far and has been hard to put down.
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
I wanted to try a Christie novel that featured her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. I haven't started this one yet. I have high hopes.
There are probably a couple others that I'm forgetting. And I still haven't gotten around to reading Progress and Poverty or the Noam Chomsky book I've been trying to read for over a year now.
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral - Barbara Kingsolver
Another "crunchy" book. A family moves to rural Appalachia and decides to go for a year eating only locally produced food. Apparently Kingsolver is famous for her earlier highly-acclaimed novel, The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family that moves to Africa and I suppose that I may eventually read it.
The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford
A mass media economics books. Its the kind of book about economics that you might read if you aren't all that interested in economics. I would have learned something if I had read this a few years ago.
The Lost City of Z : A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon - David Grann
I love (LOVE! LOVE!) reading books like this and was thrilled when I saw that the library had this book on order. I immediately put in on hold and waited patiently for it to arrive. It's real-life Indiana Jones stuff. Buried treasure, lost cities, the Amazon jungle in the 1920's, world-famous British explorer vanishes. Smashing good time, old boy! More! I want more! Bring me more! I demand it!
Voodoo Histories : The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History - David Aaronovitch
Interesting, but I didn't agree with some of his conclusions and was a bit confused about the conspiracy theories that the author chose to not address. Some of his arguments were poor and made little sense. I wanted to like this book and it sounded promising, but I wasn't impressed.
A bunch of books on medicine and doctors in the Middle Ages, like Daily Life During the Black Death by Joseph P. Byrne. This wasn't for fun (humanities class), but I learned a couple of interesting things.
Green, Inc. : An environmental insider reveals how a good cause has gone bad - Christine MacDonald
Another disturbing book that told me some things that I already suspected and some more things that I didn't. Kind of a bummer, but good to know.
The island at the center of the world : the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America - Russell Shorto
I ended up not finishing this book. I ran out of time and had to get it back because someone else had reserved it. I would like to finish this book. I do love history and this is a much deeper look at what has turned into one of the most important cities in the world. Very well written and researched.
Little house on a small planet : simple homes, cozy retreats, and energy efficient possibilities - Shay Salomon
More tiny house stuff. Always cool to see what's new and different ideas. Some day...
Free-range kids : giving our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry - Lenore Skenazy
Super awesome book! More people need to read this book. Not just people with kids either. It shows that the world really isn't such a scary place for kids and things aren't actually getting worse. We just talk about scary things more and are consequently more scared. Really. It helps that this book is fun to read.
There Was an Old Woman - Ellery Queen
I can remember reading and watching (Channel 55 was the shiznit!) a lot of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Ellery Queen mysteries when I was young. I hadn't read a mystery novel in a very, very long time and decided to give it another go. I really like 1920s and 1930s settings and language in books, I'm not sure why. I think it's far enough removed in time from my own personal experiences that it is somewhat of a curiosity yet still very familiar. It does help if it is fun and easy to read like this one. I had no real clue who the killer was even though all the evidence had been presented. I'll probably read some more Ellery Queen books. Eventually.
Q.E.D.: Queen's experiments in detection - Ellery Queen
I got this one after reading the prior book. It's a collection of short stories and they don't work nearly as well as a novel length book. I only read about half of it before returning it.
You can't eat GNP : economics as if ecology mattered - Eric A. Davidson
Very well done and fairly short book on the basics of ecological economics. I'm still reading this one.
And then there were none - Agatha Christie
The Ellery Queen novel got me excited about mysteries and I decided to expand a little within the genre. This book happened to be available at the branch library that is only a 10 minute walk from my house so I decided to get it. Set in the late 1930's, this is Christie's best selling novel ever. A fun and fast read that left me wanting more. I had a good idea who the murderer was before the end, but there were still some twists that I never saw coming. Excellent.
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I checked this book out about 4 or 5 months ago and never got enough time to read it. I just got it again yesterday and am several chapters into it right now. Fascinating story of triumph over adversity for a woman who grew up as a Muslim girl with few rights in several African and Middle Eastern countries, her eventual escape to the Netherlands, and her refusal to submit to a religion she never really believed in. After this book she wrote a screenplay which was made into a film titled Submission. This film ended up getting it's Dutch director/producer, Theo van Gogh, killed and has resulted in continuous death threats have been made against her ever since. It's a pretty interesting story so far and has been hard to put down.
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
I wanted to try a Christie novel that featured her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. I haven't started this one yet. I have high hopes.
There are probably a couple others that I'm forgetting. And I still haven't gotten around to reading Progress and Poverty or the Noam Chomsky book I've been trying to read for over a year now.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Dog bites man...Man is not happy
So I made myself go for a walk this evening because I hadn't done it for several days. I have been doing pretty well otherwise. I'm walking for nearly twice as long as when I started and at a much quicker pace. It's definitely getting easier.
Anyways, as I was headed back towards my house I was trucking along minding my own business and out of nowhere, I got bit by a freakin' dog! I wasn't sure I was going to say anything about it here, but I couldn't help myself. The older teenaged kid didn't have control of his dog, a large terrier like an airedale, and it lunged at me as I walked by and it bit me on the arm. There was a puncture and blood. I stood there for a couple of minutes cussing and not really knowing what I should do. I asked him where he lived and I said let's go there. We went back to the kid's house and I washed my arm and got names and info from his mother. What a stupid pain in the ass. Or arm. I don't plan to do anything unless I need to go to a doctor or something. They were apologetic and promised to pay for any medical bills that I might incur. I'm pretty sure that I should have done something different, but I'm not sure what exactly. This has never happened to me before. I hope it's fine. I don't want to have to deal with hospitals and insurance that I don't have. I'm likely to get screwed over in some way.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Anyways, as I was headed back towards my house I was trucking along minding my own business and out of nowhere, I got bit by a freakin' dog! I wasn't sure I was going to say anything about it here, but I couldn't help myself. The older teenaged kid didn't have control of his dog, a large terrier like an airedale, and it lunged at me as I walked by and it bit me on the arm. There was a puncture and blood. I stood there for a couple of minutes cussing and not really knowing what I should do. I asked him where he lived and I said let's go there. We went back to the kid's house and I washed my arm and got names and info from his mother. What a stupid pain in the ass. Or arm. I don't plan to do anything unless I need to go to a doctor or something. They were apologetic and promised to pay for any medical bills that I might incur. I'm pretty sure that I should have done something different, but I'm not sure what exactly. This has never happened to me before. I hope it's fine. I don't want to have to deal with hospitals and insurance that I don't have. I'm likely to get screwed over in some way.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Next stop...Hollywood!
I forgot to mention that my picture was in the paper a couple of days ago. Well, sort of. This is an online article from the Oregonian, which is the big local paper here in Portland. You can enlarge the first picture of the article (with the "view full size" button) and there I am, second from the left with the orange backpack. This was our final environmental science field trip to the St. Johns Landfill.
The smell of the future
Maybe its time to get an agent. I smell movie offers, maybe even a special on Lifetime!
The smell of the future
Maybe its time to get an agent. I smell movie offers, maybe even a special on Lifetime!
Almost finished for the summer
I just finished my final paper for international economics. I learned a lot, especially about Germany's economy. And Iceland too, which was my partner's country for the final group report. I'm glad I took this class and it was a good introduction to the subject, but I really didn't like the online environment. It really makes a difference how things are set up and requirements. My online health class is going well and works fine. I think some subjects are better suited for online classes than others. I would have liked closer supervision and more interaction between classmates. I like in-person lectures for stuff like this so that makes a big difference to me. But if I wanted to take this class I had to do it online. From what I understand, there are a lot of classes like this one that are only offered online and/or during the summer term. You take what you can get. I do feel a lot more comfortable with my level of knowledge of international econ, but my new knowledge barely scratches the surface and only covered some of the basics. I'm pretty sure I will be taking at least one more class on this subject when I go to PSU. I didn't get to see a lot of the work done by my classmates, but I'm pretty sure I did much better than most, maybe even all, of the others. I got A's on all my exams and assignments and have no reason to think that my final grade will be any less.
Wednesday night I turned in my final take-home exam for environmental science. There were 6 short-essay questions and 2 long-essay questions that ended up being 11 pages long. The hardest part was being able to sum up big concepts that we learned throughout the (short!) term in a comprehensible and cohesive way. I already got my grade back and got 102%! There was an extra credit question that asked up to relate what we thought about our 7 field trips. This was a fun and pretty easy class, just like the last one, but only 8 weeks instead of 12. I'm pretty confident that I will get an "A" in this class. We had to do a literature report again, this time on the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I have been wanting to read this book for a while and was happy that it was assigned. Written in 1962, this book was instrumental in making people aware of the problems associated with chemical pesticides and herbicides like DDT, Aldrin, and other related compounds. This is another well-written book that I highly recommend to everyone. Our field trips were to Whittaker Ponds, which I think I wrote about in an earlier post, the Portland waste water treatment plant, a walking tour of alternative methods of storm water control, Metro natural pest control, a visit from a representative of the Oregon Environmental Council, the waste recycling center, and the reclaimed St. Johns landfill. The focus of this term was pollution and I learned a lot of good things. Just like before, this class is wide, but not really very deep. Even so, I will still try to take the last class in this series when its offered this winter.
My health class continues on. Nothing all that special. Some of my posts have probably upset and annoyed some of my classmates, but I try to be respectful and accurate. Some people don't like it when you question their weak and hyperbolic (this is my new favorite word and I have been using it a lot lately) statements. I'm still eating a little better than before I started this class and am getting more exercise, although I've been slacking for the last three days and haven't done anything and haven't lost any weight for over a week. I need to step it up and get a bicycle. Or something. A bicycle would probably be the smartest move. I know I can find something decent on Craigslist for under $150. And I still haven't made an attempt to quit smoking. Maybe the bicycle and the quitting smoking can go together. Do it lame-o. Don't just talk about doing it. Anyways, there are 3 more weeks of this class with 2 quizzes and one final exam (non-cumulative, its only on the last three class weeks). I should be able to get an "A" in this class.
Wednesday night I turned in my final take-home exam for environmental science. There were 6 short-essay questions and 2 long-essay questions that ended up being 11 pages long. The hardest part was being able to sum up big concepts that we learned throughout the (short!) term in a comprehensible and cohesive way. I already got my grade back and got 102%! There was an extra credit question that asked up to relate what we thought about our 7 field trips. This was a fun and pretty easy class, just like the last one, but only 8 weeks instead of 12. I'm pretty confident that I will get an "A" in this class. We had to do a literature report again, this time on the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I have been wanting to read this book for a while and was happy that it was assigned. Written in 1962, this book was instrumental in making people aware of the problems associated with chemical pesticides and herbicides like DDT, Aldrin, and other related compounds. This is another well-written book that I highly recommend to everyone. Our field trips were to Whittaker Ponds, which I think I wrote about in an earlier post, the Portland waste water treatment plant, a walking tour of alternative methods of storm water control, Metro natural pest control, a visit from a representative of the Oregon Environmental Council, the waste recycling center, and the reclaimed St. Johns landfill. The focus of this term was pollution and I learned a lot of good things. Just like before, this class is wide, but not really very deep. Even so, I will still try to take the last class in this series when its offered this winter.
My health class continues on. Nothing all that special. Some of my posts have probably upset and annoyed some of my classmates, but I try to be respectful and accurate. Some people don't like it when you question their weak and hyperbolic (this is my new favorite word and I have been using it a lot lately) statements. I'm still eating a little better than before I started this class and am getting more exercise, although I've been slacking for the last three days and haven't done anything and haven't lost any weight for over a week. I need to step it up and get a bicycle. Or something. A bicycle would probably be the smartest move. I know I can find something decent on Craigslist for under $150. And I still haven't made an attempt to quit smoking. Maybe the bicycle and the quitting smoking can go together. Do it lame-o. Don't just talk about doing it. Anyways, there are 3 more weeks of this class with 2 quizzes and one final exam (non-cumulative, its only on the last three class weeks). I should be able to get an "A" in this class.
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