Reaching Lifelong Goals as a Nontraditional Student

Perhaps the economy is the blame, but I spent all morning in line at my community college bookstore.   This was the first day that books were on sale and everyone was out to get the used (cheaper) books.   I didn’t think for a minute that there would be a crazy long line.   I spent too much time in the morning surfing the net, (looking at all the non traditional student sites….) and went over to campus about 9:30am.   The line to get into the LBCC bookstore snaked around the commons three deep!    I should have just bagged it for the day and shopped online, but I wanted to experience the queue for blogging purposes.   Yes, dear readers, I sacrificed my entire morning just so you would have a feel for what non traditionals are up against. I finally made it into the bookstore after being in line for 2 1/2 hours.   All of my books were available, and I was able to get the majority of them as used books.   My total book bill this term was $128.00……woo hooo!!!    This will be about the cheapest I’ll get away with for the rest of my college experience.

In my community college in Oregon, they have a record number of new students this fall term.   Unemployment in the Albany, Oregon area is up to 16% and I think this is reflective of the increase in college enrollment.   I have not done any research about other areas in the country, but my suspicion is that Oregon is not alone.   The class schedules are full across the catalog.   I was looking to pick up an extra 3 credit class in Research Writing and was amazed at the full classes.   I am on a waiting list for this class.   If I do not get into it, oh well…   I was smart and did my registrations for fall term back in July when they first opened.   I plan on doing some digging to find out how the statistics rack up as far as the number of Non Traditional Students in Linn Benton Community College this term.   I realize that community colleges would have a tendency toward more non trads due to vocational and retraining type curriculums.   Other institutions of higher learning  will have different statistics.   Quick!!……to google and away!!