Skip to main content

About

For traditional high school seniors planning to attend college, there's an established pipeline for getting into college and most likely your parents and high school faculty will manage a lot of the process, tell you when college entrance exams are available and what your application deadlines are.

Adults who didn't attend college right out of high school or didn't complete their degree often don't seem to know what they need to do or even that the rules are often different for nontraditional students.

I turned down a National Merit Scholarship to a prestigious university elsewhere, attended the local college for two years and then dropped out without any kind of degree. I later wrapped up my Associate of Arts because a two-year degree will allow me to transfer credits to a four-year program but with no degree, classes over twenty years old stop being accepted as transfer credits.

I then enrolled in a Bachelor's of Science via an online degree program, which I never quite finished, and completed a Certificate in GIS that was the equivalent of master's level work without requiring a bachelor's degree like most master's programs would require.

I was able to complete it because I found a two-month Summer Bootcamp version of what is usually a year-long certificate program. It was designed for working professionals who typically traveled there from elsewhere. A third of my class was working archeologists who took the summer off to enhance their resumes and they all knew each other.

Last, I also have a technical certificate from a technical college paid for by my employer. That brings me up to about six years worth of college, two-thirds of it acquired as a nontraditional or adult learner and absolutely no online survey has an answer for "how much education do you have?" that fits my situation.

Additionally, I took unaccredited classes offered once a week by my son's school to help me cope effectively with my special-needs sons, worked for several months for an education-focused voluntary health and welfare organization called The TAG Project and ran an online discussion group for families with members who were not neurotypical so we could discuss articles about research into neurological stuff and figure out how to deal more effectively with our quirky kids.

Education teaches you how to think. Training teaches you how to work. Credentialed classes can enhance your resume but unaccredited learning can help you resolve a personal problem or improve your business ventures if you are a freelancer or small business owner.

So this site will not just cover accredited college options. Depending on your circumstances and goals, that may not be the best option for you.


19 December 2025

Popular posts from this blog

Math is a Universal Language

The Romans, whose civilization is a great grandfather of most Western cultures, didn't have a concept for zero. Their numerical system looks to me like it probably arose from making tick marks for counting. For tick marks, you make a straight line to record "1." For every instance counted, you make another straight line up to four. For the fifth instance, you make a diagonal line through the first four to group them together and for 6, you start a new group of straight lines.  The Wikipedia article for tally marks has an illustration of what "5" looks like in tally marks. And here are what Roman numerals look like: Roman Numerals  1 = I 2 = II 3 = III 4 = IV 5 = V 6 = VI 7 = VII 8 = VIII 9 = IX 10 = X 11 = XI 20 = XX 50 = L 100 = C 500 = D 1000 = M It was primarily a system for COUNTING and writing DATES (and their calendar had issues: October, our 10th month, translates as "month 8" and November, our 11th month, translates as "month 9"). T...
Read more

California College Classes and Programs

To my surprise, California proved to be my ticket to wrapping up my Associate of Arts, pursuing an online Bachelor's of Science (unfinished) and completing a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from the world's foremost GIS program.  All I had heard was that California is expensive to live in and their universities have extremely expensive tuition.  But I was a military wife and most California colleges had agreements (called "SOFA" at the time) to charge in-state tuition to military members and their dependents and community colleges had extremely affordable tuition. My books typically cost as much or more than my tuition. My husband was active duty and getting 75 percent of his tuition reimbursed by the Army and tuition was something like $12 per credit hour, or $3 per credit hour for him after reimbursement.  Most California colleges are on a semester system and a full-time class under that system is typically three credit hours. So I was paying like $36 ...
Read more

Language Learning

As a teen, I wanted to be a simultaneous translator and had aspirations of becoming fluent in seven languages (counting English). That never happened but I know a smattering of multiple languages  and I know a bit about learning another language. I never learned Farsi AKA the Persian language, though I wanted to and went through a chapter or two of EasyPersian.com and still have the link years later. In my teens, I wanted to become fluent in multiple languages and had a list: German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek "and one more, probably something Asian or Middle Eastern." I've actually studied every single one of those languages though I've never achieved fluency.  When I lived in southern California, I sometimes watched the Spanish language channel with the English subtitles on because my German immigrant mother told me watching TV is how she learned English.  Link rot happens and I no longer have the list of German and Spanish resources I used to help fulfill the...
Read more