Verbisaurus Blogicus

And now here’s a listing of my favorite and least favorite courses while at Hamline. I was just going to write about two courses (the best and the worst), but then I realized that there are a few different criteria for those two poles. So, instead of awarding any course a “Best” or a “Worst,” I’m gonna provide a few categories.

There are really four things to take into consideration: the course which presented the most enjoyable information, the course that afforded me the most enjoyable time in class, the class that was the easiest for me to ace, and the course in which I ended up with the highest grade. …And their opposites.

Most Enjoyable Information
The most enjoyable information was in my Horror Film course, which I took in the fall of 2014. Though I’m a big film buff, I’d often shied away from horror films. I’ve been interested in them, but always kind of nervous (scared?) to watch them. This course gave me some great exposure to a lot of great horror films, and the books were very interesting, too.

Most Enjoyable Time in Class
This had to be the Reform Movements course I took for my minor in History (Fall 2016). The students were a varied bunch, but we sat in a square, facing each other, and different students had to lead the class each day, so we got to know each other well. The camaraderie was better than in other courses, and I even made friends with one student, with whom I later roomed with during our time at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research in April of this year.

Easiest Course
During the summer of 2012, I interned as an associate editor for Freethought House, thus fulfilling the degree requirement of being an intern. I was already volunteering with Freethought House anyway, so nothing really change for me that summer except for two in-person meetings with my advisor and three brief questionnaires I had to fax in. Piece of cake.

Highest Grade
If my best class is the one in which I obtained the highest grade, then my best class was Music in the World’s Cultures, which I took in the summer of 2016. I accrued 995 of the course’s 1,000 points, but I also participated in the course’s extra credit assignment, which garnered me another 99 points. All told, I scored 109% in the class.

Least Enjoyable Information
…But that one music class also came with the least enjoyable information. Hardly any of the information was even interesting; it was a lot of “well, there’s no good way to sum up all the music of central Asia in just one class period, so we won’t even try. Just know it’s really diverse. Here’s an example of one piece of their music, which is sure to not give you a good sampling. Now take this quiz which asks excruciatingly exacting questions about what you just learned, even though some of it has nothing to do with music.”
Here’s a sample question from the class: Which central Asian country lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea?
A) Armenia
B) Iran
C) Tajikistan
D) Turkmenistan
Give up? The correct answer is:
E) Since this isn’t a geography class, who cares?

Least Enjoyable Time in Class
My least favorite time in class was Women in Literature, which I took in the summer of 2011. The professor was great, and the information was interesting, but the class was squeezed into one month (instead of the normal three), so it was intense! Also, I had hand, foot, and mouth disease and sat in the class shivering with a fever on a couple occasions. I even showed up for the first class about 15 minutes late, since I was driving there but then turned around and went home when Jennifer told me Owen’s fever was spiking. Once I got home, I told Jennifer I either had to go to class or go and drop the class (either way, I had to get to campus pronto!), so that made for a crappy start. That June was very hot and humid, too, so the classroom was terribly uncomfortable. Night classes were always the hardest, anyway.

Hardest Course
Senior Seminar, which I just completed last month, was the hardest course. Even before the first day of class, I had to read 250 pages out of a novel in preparation, and the coursework never let up. I had to give two presentations and turn in, among other things, a 20+ page research paper.

Lowest Grade
Unfortunately, every instructor did not keep an exact point tally of grades. For example, in the Reform Movements course, the professor simply said she was grading us on attendance, participation, and on our final paper and presentation. I had perfect attendance in that class, so I assume I got 100% on that, but she never gave me any grade information on the presentation. Did I get 100%? Or 90%? Or something lower? I have no clue. I know I got an A in the class, but that could mean anything above a 93%. And, actually, I got an A in every class, even though I know I didn’t get a perfect 100% in every class, I don’t know which one came out on the bottom. If I had to guess, I’d say I probably “only” got a 95% in Textual Studies and Criticism (Spring 2010), since I got an A- on a couple papers.

And now here’s an overview of my homework. Specifically, it’s just half of my homework: I’m not listing all of the work I produced – the papers I wrote, the tests I took, or the online ‘discussions’ I was involved in. Instead, I’m only going to list the half I consumed.

First, the books. Here’s every book assigned in my classes, along with notes, where applicable:

As you can see, I didn’t read everything that was assigned. But I read most of the books and, even those I didn’t finish, I still read large swaths of them. Every class assigned critical essays, articles, or short stories, too, and I usually read those. All together, my readings represented around 15,000 pages.

And here are the films – including a couple TV miniseries – that I was assigned to watch for class:

A few were viewed in class, there was one I saw at the theater (The Lovely Bones), two of them I had to show up on campus at special times to watch an out-of-class viewing, and the rest I watched at home. Of the four films on the list here that were assigned and that I had seen before, but that I didn’t watch again, two of them I had seen so recently that I felt I didn’t need to take time out for a second viewing (Twelve Years a Slave and This Film is Not Yet Rated), and two I didn’t like enough to want to sit through again (There Will be Blood and Beasts of the Southern Wild).

So now that the old college career is officially in the can, I am going to give an overview of the three biggest factors in my education: money, homework, and classes.

First, money: How much did it cost to get a Bachelor’s Degree from Hamline University?

I was a transfer student. Specifically, I attended Century College from 2000-2002, where I earned an Associate’s Degree. So when I walked into class at Hamline on that first day in September 2009, I was, essentially, already half done. I was more or less a Junior. Thus, the numbers that follow are really only half the story.

Back in 2009, Hamline charged $869.71 per credit. Since I was in a four-credit class, the bill for the class alone was $3,478.85. But as a new student, there were additional fees, such as the cost of transferring in my credits and other filing fees. These totaled over $250. Also, since my employer would be reimbursing me for the course, I delayed payment until the end of the semester, though this generated a monthly fee of around $15 a month. And once I finally did pay, there was an additional “convenience” fee that cost me around $40.

Most classes also required the purchase of books. As an English major/History minor, I was lucky to be involved in two disciplines with relatively cheap books. The most any class cost me for books was $116.95. In fact, the books for my first class at Hamline, which was a History class, only cost me $32.95. In contrast, the books for one Chemistry class back at Century were over $240…and that was nearly a decade earlier.

All told, that first course at Hamline cost $3,860.95. My employer paid for the tuition and the books, so I was only on the hook for the fees and interest. I thus received a check from my employer for $3,511.80, and I paid $349.15 out-of-pocket.

That was almost the most I ever paid for a class. Subsequent classes were less pricey. They did not have all those “new student” fees. I also took a couple summer courses, which didn’t accrue as much interest (since they were shorter), and were only half the cost of fall/winter/spring courses. When I could, I paid for the courses using my savings account, which didn’t extort a “convenience” fee. And for ten of my eighteen courses, I was able to use Federal and/or State grants. All of this reduced my costs. For example, a summer course I took in 2014 only cost me $45.61 total.

But Hamline increased the cost of their credits every single year I was there. What cost $869.71 in 2009, was up to $1,040.00 by 2012, and $1,190.00 by 2016. Generous as my employer was, they only reimburse up to $8,000 per year – a benefit that did not increased a single cent during my eight years of using it. Thus, during my last three years at Hamline, my costs exceeded the reimbursement cap. I was able to mitigate these increasing costs for a while, thanks to government grants, but those decreased every year.

By my final school year, my last two courses were $4,760 each. The first one was, of course, reimbursed, but the one was not, leaving $1,664.48 (including interest and books). A government grant brought my total down to $373.48, making it the most expensive class I took while at Hamline. It’s a good thing I finished when I did: a class this fall would have cost me over $4,100 out-of-pocket.

All told, the 69 credits I accrued at Hamline cost $65,394.85.  Then there were $1,034.80 for books and $1,728.83 for interest and various fees. This brought the grand total to $68,158.48. The Federal and Minnesota governments footed the bill to the tune of $12,424.00. My employer reimbursed me $53,676.74, meaning that my total cost was $2,057.74, an average of $29.82 per credit, or $257.22 for every year I attended.

Not a bad price, really. Especially in America.

There was a time when what stood in between me and a Bachelor’s Degree were 65 credits, nearly $70,000, and eight years.

After dropping a class that didn’t fit in with my budget, then another class that didn’t fit in with my schedule, taking off one semester after my daughter was born, then taking off another semester when we moved into a new house, then taking off another semester when Emmett was due to be born, then showing up for class even though I had hand, foot, and mouth disease, showing up for class about 12 hours after I was discharged from the ER, finding out I had to take four more credits than I thought because I needed another Fine Arts credit, finagling with my professor to have her teach me a course independently of the rest of the class so that it fit my work schedule, showing up in the morning for early classes before work – while wondering how I’d get in my 40 hours of work that week – and showing up late in the evening, after dinner, because that was the only time I could fit in a class, and not being able to say goodnight to my kids that night, worrying that my dying Chevy Cavalier wouldn’t get me from my job to my class, answering my phone during class because my wife was worried about our sick child, or because a coworker had a question, studying late at night, on vacations, and during breaks at work, strategically arranging my course schedule to maximize my tuition reimbursement from my employer, and going through the annoyance of having to submit just the precise documentation on a user-unfriendly site needed to get said reimbursement, I slowly chiseled away at everything that stood in between me and a 4-year degree.

Now all that stands in between me and my degree is clicking this submit button, which will upload my final paper for my final course to my final professor, and which I plan to do promptly…

The graduation ceremony is Saturday.