Crooked Kitchen

I’d like to take a minute out of your time for a somewhat off-topic post. I’d like opinions on what I should do.

I need to go back to school this fall. If I don’t, my insurance will lapse and I’ll be in big trouble. It’s too late now to apply to any nearby universities – not only did most deadlines pass way back in March before I knew I would need to change schools, but every university I’ve looked at requires good standing at the last institution attended. When I left UCSB, I was on academic probation (technically, getting kicked out was my probation). That means I’ll most likely have to attend a community college for a semester before I can go back to a university to finish my degree.

The big problem is that I’ve been in and out of school for so long, I’ve completed pretty much all requirements I could have in the lower division. There’s nothing I can see to take at a community college that could help my degree along, so going to a community college for a semester seems like a big waste of time.

As far as getting into a university later, I can probably still apply for admission in the spring. The most convenient choice, it seems, is Cal State Northridge. They seem to have an okay computer science program, but I might not be able to get in for spring semester. Another option I’m looking into is finding a good online degree program. I figure I might be able to find a better computer science program online than what’s at CSUN.

Another kink is that what I took at UCSB might not match up perfectly with what the new university requires, and I might be lacking some general ed classes. In that case, if I can decide on a university, get accepted, and talk to an advisor about all the idiosyncracies of credit transfer, maybe I can take (or re-take) those missing requirements in my semester at a community college.

Otherwise, I’ll try to find a community college with a good selection of computer science or engineering classes, and fill my schedule with things that would be interesting and could help me in the long run, but not apply to my degree, for instance, Python Programming, Database Programming/SQL, or Website Development.

So I turn to you for comments. Do online degree programs have a sort of stigma about them? Is there anything I can do to avoid wasting my time at a community college? Where should I go for my degree?

When I write blog posts, I like to include time-sensitive information. Blogs are inherently temporal. When I write more permanent pages, I tend to hold back what I really want to say for fear of including things that will be irrelevant, obsolete, or flat-out wrong in the future. Permanent pages aren’t dated – blog posts are, and readers take those dates into account.

That’s why I’m writing a post about my current situation, and not posting this information on the About page.

My name is Matt. I’m 23; I currently live in Santa Barbara, CA, but I’ll be moving back home to Los Angeles in the next month. I was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but my academic career was rather choppy. No, I haven’t graduated. I’ve yet again been asked to remove myself from studies at UCSB until I can “provide convincing evidence” that I can do better than I have been.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with end stage renal disease (ESRD). I currently have very little kidney function, and I wouldn’t last 3 weeks without dialysis. Over the last two months, I struggled with inadequate dialysis and resulting systemic problems, particularly lung issues. This caused me to miss a lot of class toward the end of the winter quarter, and I was unable to live up to the academic contract I was on (due to past poor performance because of similar complications).

So now I’m moving back home to LA to figure out what to do with my life. Getting back into school is in my plans, possibly at CSU Northridge. In the meantime, I intend to try to stay active and find ways to earn and save money, and stay healthy. One of those will be to cook for the household (I’ll be living with my mother and brother), which will be an improvement over their current diet. I’m also working on selling off some of my junk, most of all my collection of Magic the Gathering cards, on eBay.

I’ll be using this blog to document things as I go. I hope to show ways that I’ve saved or earned money, and I’ll be posting recipes and meal reports. If I get down to it, I’ll even make weekly meal menus and post those. I draw my inspiration from a few other blogs I’ve been looking at recently: The Frugal Girl, Mental Experiment, and Lunch in a Box.

For now, that’s it. I’m going to try to keep up my writing. Once I get started it’s not really too bad – of course, it’s always the starting that hurts the most.