Demon: Your mother’s in here, Karras. Would you like to leave a message? I’ll see that she gets it.

My sister lost her husband unexpectedly, my work did a fundraiser to help her and the kids, she’s in her last weeks of pregnancy (she’s expecting baby #4), she’s moving the end of this month to a bigger home closer to her work and sitter, I picked up new freelance work in the form of graphic design to compliment book tours, work’s been busy wrapping up the fiscal year in hopes that we’ve hit our goal, summer vacation for my 3 kids…oh the list just goes on and on!

And the latest? My oldest daughter is starting middle school tomorrow! Can I scream FREAK OUT?! My goodness! I feel that time is flying too fast. There were days I couldn’t wait for her to walk, talk, start school, and now? I’m crying and wanting her to slow down and remain innocent for as long as possible. The middle school years are the years when things soak in or not. She’ll be influenced by things she’s never been influenced by, there will be boys, there will be boys (yeah PURPOSELY typed that twice), and a heavier school load she’s never experienced before.

Her school day will start earlier  (bus at 6:30am…INSANE!) but that also means her day ends earlier than before. I wonder how it will work out now and when her younger siblings start school in a couple of weeks. Will I be able to manage 3 kids in school, their after school activities, their social schedule, my work, my other work, my reading, my writing, myself, and of course we can’t forget my marriage and the house! Ugh…so much, so much! (STILL trying to convince my husband to let me hire a maid 2x a month for heavy cleaning…)

But then the other side of me, the young girly side of me, is looking forward to chick-flick nights in front of the tube doing manis & pedis while munching on yummy snack foods. The fun shopping trips I look forward to (well the expenses for that I’m NOT looking forward to) and of course the clothes sharing (yes, she’s taller than me and minus the chest, pretty close to my size already).

Right now I need to breathe…we’re starting a new adventure. She is and we are. Together I’m hoping for the best.

BTW…I’ll be getting active again soon. So much will be happening around here, I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say. Now off to my next post writing! Organization & planning!

Q1: Who is the typical online student?

A1: Most online students are already taking face-to-face college courses. It was found that as many as 1 in 4 college students are taking at least one online course, a number that has probably increased today considering the substantial growth of online enrollments since 2008-2009, when that study was carried out. The seventh annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning demonstrated that of the 4.6 million students found to be learning online in the fall of 2008, a shocking 82% of these were studying at the undergraduate level. If you’re an online graduate student, don’t let this statistic make you feel like an outcast. This number mirrors that of the distribution of all students in higher education, with undergraduates representing about 86%. (Learning on Demand)

Q2: What is the typical online student looking for when he or she enrolls?

A2: There is a high demand today for college-educated workers, so many people are flocking to get those degrees, which will eventually get them higher paying and/or more flexible jobs. However, most of these people have pre-established lives, such as full-time jobs or families, so the idea of sitting in a classroom all day is just not practical. Online learning offers flexibility from the comfort of one’s home or favorite coffee shop. With an online education, you can attend a course anywhere, anytime and course material is accessible 24/7. Students enrolling in online courses are also looking to participate in class, but maybe not in the traditional sense. Online learning awards students anonymity, increasing their chances of participating actively and frequently. Most of us would be much more willing to state our opinion in a post on a wiki board than we would to speak out in a lecture hall in front of hundreds of other students.

Q3: What are the hottest online degrees today?

A3: The most popular online degrees today are business degrees, nursing programs, and criminal justice programs. (US News & World Report)

Q4: What new trends and innovations do you see in today’s online education from the student, teaching, and technology perspectives?

A4: Schools knows that their students lead very different lifestyles, so are subsequently providing different options that fit these lifestyles. Many schools offer a blended or hybrid course, for which online and face-to-face delivery is mixed together and about 30 to 79% of the course material is delivered online. For these hybrid courses, you may meet your teacher once or twice, but most of the discussions take place on online forums. (Learning on Demand) Instructors also realize that in the adult world, it is incredibly difficult to align schedules for group work outside of the classroom. Online learning circumnavigates this problem by providing chat rooms and newsgroups, on which students can meet and produce group work.

Q5: What is the best way to position an online degree when job searching and interviewing against candidates with offline degrees?

A5: Most employers know that if you earned a degree online, you did the same amount of work (or in some cases, maybe even more) as anyone else who earned that same degree face-to-face. However, there may be some employers, for which you will be held at a disadvantage for obtaining an online degree. Thankfully, most employers are beginning to realize the value of an online degree because it takes an incredible amount of determination and discipline to receive one. To make sure that you avoid discrimination, make sure your online degree comes from an accredited college or institution. If it does, you should tote your online degree as proudly as you would any other degree.

Compensation was provided in exchange for a guest post.

What Next?

My goodness…working full time, going to school, caring for the family, reading, reviewing, and blogging is insanely time consuming! I wonder now when there’s time just for me! I’ve not blogged and read as much as I’ve wanted (though I’m trying to get it back like before instead of “cramming” on the weekends).

At work I crunch numbers all day in spreadsheets and throwing them into pretty graphs and soon helping the team with presentations for the executives. My mom told me this morning she was happy I’m using my math again! I told her I’m like a computer in thought…if I can make it automate why not? So macros, formulas and more formulas in Excel are my new best friends! LOL Finally perfecting my formulas so work will go much smoother in the long run. So when someone needs a report, I pull the data, run the macro, tweak a bit, and zip all done!

At home, things have been on the weird side…DH has been home much of this week and working evenings and has been “re-organizing” things to the point I can’t find things I need without asking him! While I like the fact that he’s reorganizing things, it frustrates me too! LOL Now I’m trying to convince him to get the dinners ready since I get home between 6:30 and 7 most evenings after work and getting the kids. We’ll see…I might have to cook on weekends to freeze so he can easily throw something into the oven before everyone gets home!

Friday he was home with the 3 year old and I thought it was HILARIOUS listening to him “spaz out” trying to run errands and clean house with her! HILARIOUS! Something he is SOOO not accustomed to. I wanted to say…”I told you so…” but of course held that in with a huge grin on my face.

Tell me…does your significant other happen to be more of the “homemaker” as mine has been recently while work picks up for him? Or did it take him some time to get accustomed to the new role? I know mine’s proud and he’s not used to being home most of the time…

Tell me this too…if you’re working full time, when do you fit the blogging, reviewing, reading time in with family, work, and maybe even school like me? There was a time when this could all easily be done but I’m wondering if aging has given me less stamina!

Yesterday I finished up my upper back tattoo and am VERY pleased with the end result. The total piece took about 7 hrs broken into 3 sessions of course. I first started with a rose on my right back shoulder to represent my oldest daughter who’s middle name is Rose; this took an hour. Then I decided that since I had a thing with 3s I’d add 2 more roses to complete my “past, present, and future”. That took another 2 hours. THEN I decided I wanted to have it all connected together so yesterday I spent 4 more hours adding in the background. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!

Here it is…

My little man is now in the care of a pediatric neurologist and supposedly one of the best in the Raleigh area. I brought him to his regular pediatrician’s office a couple weeks ago after noticing severe head jerking every couple of minutes at home and his teacher’s were commenting on it as well. Not a typical neck stretch let me tell you. In fact it hurts my neck to mimic the movement. Trying to ask an 8 year old if he’s doing this on purpose or if it just happens, is not easy. I’m not sure he quite understands what we mean so it was time to take him to see a specialist.

We noticed the head movement had been going on for about a month after coincidentally getting knocked back on the football field. We were (and still hoping) it was a pinched nerve causing his need for relief in the form of neck cracking or neck muscle stretching. BUT when he’s doing it excessively and it’s so severe like, you can’t help but wonder if it’s something more.

In addition to that…he’s been eye blinking for about 2 years (but told it was likely allergies or dry eyes). This past summer they discovered he has no focus in his left eye. Pediatric Ophthalmologist said he was surprised it wasn’t caught before when he was in preschool or 1st grade because then it could have been corrected by covering his good eye to train his brain to focus. But now…his brain’s “not capable” of learning to focus. GREAT! Why wasn’t this discovered sooner? Now he has to wear the strongest prescription in his left eye (none in right) and even then he doesn’t have clear vision. So the doctor tells me we have to protect the other eye because if something happens to it, he won’t be able to see. EVEN BETTER!!

About a year ago he got a concussion after getting his head knocked into the bus window (boys will be boys, right?). After the concussion, he suffered severe headaches for a couple months (still gets them every once in awhile) and random sensitiveness to sound (we’re talking sometimes body rocking and crying from the noise…again still experiences this too).

In regards to school we noticed he’s been struggling this school year (I’ll go further into detail shortly).

As parents you don’t want to see your children struggle. Part of you thinks your kid is just being lazy and not applying them self hard enough so you push harder, then the guilty part of you starts to wonder if there really is a learning problem and you feel horrible for pushing so hard.

Back to the Neurologist…when I took Peanut (yes that’s his nickname…his sister gave it to him after seeing him wrapped up in a blanket like a peanut as a baby) to the Neurologist and told him everything I’ve ever mentioned to previous doctors, injuries, problems in school, what he’s doing, he tells me he thinks that they may all be related to a bigger picture. Right now he’s diagnosing it as a “tick” aka Tourrette syndrome which is just repetitive movement (but not the form we typically see on TV or the movies; in fact, 1 in 4 elementary kids have it). He wanted to do an MRI, EEG, start taking Topamax to prevent headaches and help with the seizure like movements, and also tells me he qualifies for a psych evaluation in regards to his school issue.

Two Saturdays ago he had an MRI done and last Tuesday an EEG to measure his brain activity. We’re still waiting on the radiology results and his follow up with the Neurologist is next week when he gets back into town. I’m hoping the results come back normal but of course as a parent I can’t help but be worried about the worst possible scenario.

Here’s my little man at his EEG appointment…

This morning I had a meeting with his teacher, his special reading teacher, and the school special education teacher to discuss what’s going on with Christopher and what we can do to help him achieve educational success. Something we’ve noticed is that he makes us read first and then he can either do it without problems or reads it smoothly. Tell him to read first and he cries that he can’t. It almost seems as if he’s trying to memorize everything. That kid has a super memory bank when it comes to details after hearing something but spacey other times. We spend a VERY LONG time doing homework (this is why I scream how much I hate homework time) most nights and in tears. Today his teacher said it’s probably because he truly cannot do it and is having a hard time trying to please us. That does make sense because he’s always wanting to do his absolute best to please us. In fact, the more I think about it, he’s always been the one to strive at being perfect at whatever it is he was doing whether it was a sport, game or some art project/drawing. If he doesn’t get it right he struggles with imperfection and continues to perfection (or I tell him to stop).

Today they told me he has regressed 1 year academically from the end of last school year. 1 YEAR! They spoke with his previous teacher and she was shocked because he was in advanced math, reading on the level of expectation (19/20) for a 1st grader and this year he came back on the 5/6 reading level and now only on 7/8. Basic frequency words he’s not remembering and I mean BASIC like “my”, “can”; words he should know. He’s struggling with making out the sounds to create the word, mixing up letters, omitting letters when reading a word, etc.. I’m baffled, they’re baffled, we’re all baffled…he didn’t do this last year…

So what’s the plan of action? The school says they need copy of his vision/hearing results, neurology results & recommendation after we see the Neurologist next week, as well as a letter from me asking for a psych evaluation to get him special help. Then the special help falls into 2 categories. Category 1 is what’s considered the typical “special ed” class to help him. This is mainly for those with medical issues (mental retardation for example). Category 2 is what they call 504. 504 is for those who don’t have what they deem as a major issue like Autism, Asperger’s, and those with different kinds of learning disabilities. In this category they would work with him one on one, do simple things like sit him closer to the front and teacher, give him oral exams instead of written, etc.. I’m thinking 504 being the more likely case for him. They told me just from speaking with me that he pretty much already qualifies for the 504 but we just have to get all the paperwork together to give the school psychologist who’ll evaluate him.

They also mentioned to me that the other kids are starting to notice his movements which makes him more aware of it. He’s also not being consistent with his glasses at school because he thinks the kids will make fun of him for having 1 more magnified eye. Socially he’s well liked in class, funny, typically chipper, and easy going. So it definitely has the school and I a bit baffled as to what is going on with him.

So as you can see, I’m worried about my little man. Perhaps the current reasoning behind another brain fart in my regular article department. I can’t seem to do my research and write-ups as quickly this past week or so because he’s just been on my mind…

TODAY’S MOOD…Worried & Weepy