Ask for help...

Don't be afraid to ask for help. From your spouse, from your family and friends and especially from the resources at the institution you attend. I wish I had asked much earlier in my endeavor for a degree, and much more frequently. Domestically speaking, I thought I had to do it all. I worked full-time (and still do), I cooked most of the meals, did all the laundry and cleaned my own house. I didn't want my "selfish" desire for an education to effect my family. I took my general ed at a wide variety of community colleges, taking classes on weekends and in the evenings in order to convenience my bosses and take less time away from my job. And to make up for the time I was "stealing" from my family I bit off more than I could chew by volunteering as team mom for my kid's soccer teams and by hosting family holiday meals when my siblings could easily have done them. I finally reached my breaking point domestically and began to ask for help. I hired my niece to clean my house...she too was working her way through college. I asked my husband for more help with cooking and shopping. I cut back to 35 hours a week at my job. But I still tried to navigate my way through college catalogues and decode all the requirements for transfer without help from a councelor. After all, those meetings were just one more demand on my limited time. When I finally did see a councelor at Chaffey College, she left me waiting for almost an hour and then hurriedly glanced at my transcripts and told me that I was good to go. WRONG! I had taken a practical art class, not an art history class, and after transfer found that I lacked that one class for an IGETSE certificate. I was forced to retake breadth requirements at UCI. I had to take three Linguistics classes when the IGETSE certificate would have satisfied the math requirement. Moral of this story....confirm that you are on the right path at many points during the journey toward transfer. Touching base with transfer councelors throughout the process is the best way to assure that you don't needlessly retake requirements. I sweated through Algebra and Statistics on weekends, taking time away from my family, and then had to use 12 valuable units to take those Ling classes. I would have much rather taken some interesting electives for my education dollar. Don't make my mistake...ASK FOR HELP!!!