Let’s study Physical Geology
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
I survived the class last night. I got home from work, did my usual stuff but had my dinner 45 minutes earlier than my usual time of 5:30 p.m. I left the house at 5:20 and drove to my company in heavy traffic. Crazy, but at least I got a front door parking, sorta. I’m so glad this class is held at my company instead of some other big corporations in St Paul or, Woodbury coz they will be a long, long drive for me.
Very frankly, this class has kept my interest. The instructor, Mr Hickey teaches Geography and Geology, and he does have a great sense of humor. I like teachers with good sense of humor, they crack us up, and keep the class alive. What we learned on the first day? Plate tectonic, the rock cycle and topographic maps. There were all kinds of terminology that we had never heard of; what are the earth materials – rocks and minerals; and the major groups of rocks – igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. I read the first part of the introduction which didn’t really makes sense until the instructor put on a video for us in class and it better illustrated the rock formation, cycle, how the earth’s lithosphere (the solid part of the earth) is divided into rigid plates of various sizes that move over the asthenosphere (the part of the earth). It took me a while to get these few terminology phrases into my old rusty brain, and watching the video defnitely helps. Yeah, I’m more of a visual kinda person when it comes to learning.
There are 28 students in our class, four from my company and the rest are “outsiders”. The four of us coworkers taking this class are students of Inver Hill Community College ASAP students. ASAP stands for Adult Success through Accelerated Program. The first thing when we ASAP students hang around is “how far out are you?” or “did you take any of the competency tests?” Competencies are earning credits from prior learning or experiences instead of enrolling for that course. I quite like the accelerated 8-week courses but they can be very tedious and stressful, but that way I can get my credits in sooner.
