Telling tales out of school...about school

* We had our second of three tests in the Intro to Word 2003 class last Thursday. It's all computerized and the test is throught the publisher's website so as soon as you hit 'send', you get the results. On the first test, I got a 75 out of 100. Because my employer is paying my tuition, if I get anything under a certain grade for a class, I have to reimburse them so there's now a bit of pressure to do better on the following two exams. Once I knew that it would be heavy on knowing keyboard shortcuts, I began typing up a study guide so I wouldn't need to use the heavy, picture-ladened book. I guess it worked better. I got 87 out of 100 on this last test. As I was waiting near the front of the room for the instructor to confirm that she had received the score on her end, a couple of my fellow students asked how I did. I just gave them the univeral sign for 'not bad' - thumbs up. One then asked, "So, you didn't fail?" I cringe to think about their scores.

* I like to get to class a bit early so I'm usually there 30 minutes before it starts and on Thursday, I did something I usually don't do - initiate conversation. I asked Apple Girl and Crazy Old Woman Trying To Learn Word if they were going to take the advanced Word class in the fall. Apple Girl (whose a bit of a loud, know-it-all but she helps the Crazy Old Woman Trying To Learn Word a lot which is nice) said in her usual loud, know-it-all voice, "You know, they are switching to Word 2007 so you're better off just repeating this class." First, I feared this would happen when I purchased an $82 book. Secondly, I'm glad we're upgrading because the CD that came with the book that has all the exercises on it broke in half. Thankfully, the teacher had put the data files on her website so in a moment of brilliance, I saved all the exercises from the book again on to my cute, portable USB drive. As with incidents like carrying around a heavy book with a CD in it rather than putting it safely in a jewel case, I sometimes question my intelligence level but I'm pretty sure that Word 2007 still has exactly the same options and features as Word 2003 but just laid out different. The fact that I'm learning the basics for software that has been upgraded doesn't make me fear for my fall semester. I doubt I will be the only one coming into the class with only Word 2003 knowledge. When Apple Girl made that comment, I just shrugged and made a mental point to not engage her in conversation during these last two weeks of class.