Statistics - Been There, Barely Survived That

I took an online statistics class through UCLA Extension. When I signed up for the class in late 2007, I had it in my head that I was going to go back to school for a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. I must have been smoking crack without knowing I was smoking crack, because just looking at the phrase "computational linguistics" makes my eyes cross.

After plowing through a beginning programming book, I realized that I don't think I have the right temperament (read: mental capacity) for programming. It's so tedious. My brother, who is a software programmer, would talk about programs with thousands and thousands of lines of code, and having to go through them and trying to find what's buggy. That would make me tear out my eyeballs.

But after realizing that computational anything may not be my cup of tea, I decided to take the class anyways because most likely, any Ph.D. program would require statistics. And it's one of those subjects that I've always wanted to learn, but never got around to.

So I understood the first half of the class. The rest is just a blur of really long formulas that I have no idea how to use. And somehow I got a B.

I don't plan on taking anymore online courses. I didn't feel like I was taking a class. It felt really weird to never meet my professor or classmates. And, frankly, if I'd had to take that final exam in a classroom, I would have b-o-m-b-e-d it. There doesn't seem to be as much academic integrity. My laziness got the better of me.

Whither now, Ph.D.? I'm not entirely sure I want to go back to school. I really enjoy teaching adult ed, and I don't think a doctorate would make much of a difference in that field. I don't think teacher training in adult ed requires a Ph.D., either. I haven't ruled it out - entirely - but right now a doctorate is pretty low on my scale of priorities.