Excited About Math...What?!?

Man oh man, I hate waiting.

As everyone knows, I’m in China, which means I’m NOT going to college like I want to. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job here, China is currently in the Golden Age of ESL, where English teachers get treated like Gods and make upper class salaries for 18 hours a week of “teaching”, which consists of talking to students in English and helping them improve it. But that won’t last, and it’s not what I want for my career.

Ever since working at First Legal, I’ve known that I had to go to college. I can’t do this crap.

I want to study engineering or physics (I don’t want to be a computer programmer, but if I change my mind, many currently working programmers have engineering or mathematics degrees, so I figure I can find something…as for writing….I figure having an english degree has next to nothing to do with being a good writer, and is practically worthless outside of teaching and journalism). This means mathematics out the wazzoo. I’ve discovered something of a passion for math in the past year and a half after reading an excellent book entitled ‘Mathematics for the NonMathematician’…if you want to know how poorly executed your primary school math education was, read this book. It’s honestly that good and if there is any part of you that has even the potential to enjoy math, it will unleash it.

I have a algebra, calculus, physics, applied mechanics, quantum physics, and trigonometry text books here in China and I study form them regularly.

But, of course, I’m not getting credit for it.

There are online colleges, but even the most credible ones are designed for businessmen, and math rarely goes above high school level algebra and some statistics.

But now, I found one! The University of Illinois sponsors an online, for credit mathematics program that gives you about 25 credit hours in college level math that is transferable to other universities! I can study that, and study other general studies at one of the other online universities, and transfer them all when I come home to finish my studies.

This is exciting to me.

I’ve sent them an email asking questions about the program, and now I am waiting for answers. They said they can ussually answer within a business day of getting the email…and now its been a whole business day, and no response!

GRR!

I hate waiting!!