My Courses -
To complete the M.S.Ed. Degree in Higher Education Administration program at GSE, students are required to take 10 total courses, complete a 20-hour assistantship per week, and pass the Comprehensive Examination in the Spring semester. Most of my cohort are full-time students, so we are taking five courses with our 20-hour assistantship this semester. My five courses are:
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| Some of the books and articles I'm reading for this semester |
- Professional Development in Higher Ed. (required if having fewer than five years of professional work experience)
- Contemporary Issues in Higher Ed. (division course)
- Faculty & Academic Governance (division course)
- Ethics & Leadership in Higher Ed. (division course)
- Qualitative Modes of Inquiry (distribution course)
During this past week, we were expected to complete all of the following for each course:
- Professional Development: 20+ pages of reading + reflective post of Dr. Rich Milner's talk on "Centralizing Race in Teacher Education For Reform."
- Contemporary Issues: 100+ pages of reading
- Governance: 130+ pages of reading + 7-page of Policy Memo
- Ethics: 150+ pages of reading + two 2-page papers + 1-page Annotated Bibliography
- QMI: 120+ pages of reading + 3-page of Researcher Identity Memo
... and that was why I didn't get much sleep at all! I am loving every one of the courses and am so honored to be a student of all these world-renowned and yet very approachable professors. ( I will share my stories in my future blogs.) However, just having the love and passion for my courses is not enough. What's more important is to transform my motivation and enthusiasm into my actual hard work for the courses, and this takes wisdom in effective time management, which I have finally been able to do. Noticed how I wrote "we were expected to complete" instead of "what I completed" earlier? Well, I was definitely guilty of not being able to complete all the readings for some courses. I wish I could, and I really did enjoy all the readings that I completed. However, not having the effective time management for graduate school really got me to struggle in completing all the readings that were expected, which was out of my desire to do as well. It wasn't because I didn't plan, but because I planned in a way that worked well for me when I was an undergraduate student without realizing that mastering the graduate program was a completely different thing.
What I have learned and done by this point is to have a study plan instead of just a detailed plan outlining all the due dates. I have started to read a bit for each course every day to break down the big tasks and make sure to complete all the required readings at least two days before the actual class. What I have learned from the workshop on "Academic Reading and Critical Thinking" at Penn's Weingarten Learning Resource Center is to take good notes of the readings and review them the day before class in order to refresh my memory and get ready for class discussion. This might sound easy, but it is NOT. Getting the readings done is just part of the academic preparation. Many times, we need to incorporate the readings into our papers or other projects, which takes a LOT of time as well. I have set a new deadline for each project for myself, all due at least one day before the actual one assigned by my professors, to leave enough time for me to review and revise. I am big into planning and I love getting things done earlier than expected. So the first few weeks when I failed to do it all the time, I was very frustrated with myself. The more frustrated and stressed I felt, the less effective I was in completing everything. So now, I am determined to follow this new study plan and welcoming another start. Things have been going well so far as I follow my new guideline, and I am feeling much more relaxed and confident.
One important lesson I learn is to find our own rhythm, especially when we are in a new chapter of life.
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