I’m back on course to being the Doctor. This is part of that majestic tale of a mad man.

In light of my return to my master’s program with Walden University next month after nearly three years away, I thought that I would re-publish this post from 02 July 2011 that I previously shared on my old blog. It was a simpler time of life back then. Jackson was still very new, and we had not yet moved to the Woodlands, where many of our tribulations began. However, the things I learned about myself then are still applicable today. Of course, I have learned much more in the four years since then, and I have touched on those from time to time. I’m rather proud of what I wrote back then, and I thought I would share it with a new audience, as many of you have not yet seen it.

As a researcher and a scholar at heart, I included citations following the original post, and I included them here as well. Although all from the same author, the citations reference numerous papers she wrote over the years on the topics of achievement, accomplishment, and mastery orientation.
As many of you know, I earned my bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Phoenix last year [2010]. I took online courses beginning in July of 2008 worked almost straight through to completion last June. After all the set-backs I had encountered with attending classes in traditional schools, the online format helped me overcome a lot of the hurdles I had been facing. Aside from confidence-building and the ability to set my own attendance schedule, I found that the online format fit my needs as a working individual as well.

• Confidence building: One of the biggest hurdles I encountered in traditional school was a lack of confidence in my own abilities. Dr. Carol S. Dweck (2007; 2008; 2010) established the theory of mastery orientation, suggesting that individuals who receive praise for accomplishments because of intelligence or skills – factors viewed as inherent – face tremendous hardship overcoming difficult challenges. These individuals see intelligence or skill as the key to success and accomplishment and view anyone who must struggle to achieve as stupid or lacking the ability to accomplish tasks. As such, when an individual with this “entity theory” of intelligence and the self finds that he or she must struggle to achieve something, the individual often gives up on the task and suffers an identity crisis. On the other hand, those who possess an “incremental theory” of self and intelligence – the idea that accomplishment comes not through raw skill or inherent intelligence but through the application of hard work – find a much easier time when encountering difficult situations. The incremental theory individuals tend to be far more adaptable than the entity theory individuals and more successful.I was an entity theory individual for many years.That changed over time, however, as I was forced to work very hard to overcome my setbacks. One of the things that helped me learn how to do that was when I started classes through the University of Phoenix. The compressed schedule (5 weeks per course), the heavy workload (weekly individual and team projects), and the self-directed learning (heavy reading and discussion-participation) forced me to manage my time between work, school, and socialization and caused me to push myself harder than ever before so that I would not end up like I had in the past – brilliant but unaccomplished. If I wanted to achieve my goal, I would have to work for it.
• Setting my own schedule: With the online format, I could choose when I attended classes as opposed to following the strict schedule of a traditional classroom-based university. Certainly the University has attendance and participation guidelines, but students are allowed a significant amount of flexibility within those guidelines. As such, students in an online setting have a better opportunity to work while earning a degree. A student may work regular hours – or even irregular hours – and not have to worry about what time he or she must be in class because the classroom discussion is accessible 24 hours a day. I was able to get back to school without losing my job or even stepping down from my management position. This brings me to my final point.
• Applying what I learned at work: In October of last year I resumed classes, this time to earn both my master of science and my Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. The classes are focused on elements that are interesting and useful to me. Similarly, my bachelor’s degree classes also tended to focus on real-world applications that I could turn around and apply to my job. In a traditional classroom setting, a person may wait as long as four years to apply the lessons learned in the course of a degree. By that time, the knowledge is no longer fresh; and the information that is recalled may no longer be relevant. With the online format, a student – particularly one in a leadership role at his or her job – can immediately apply relevant and useful lessons while that information is still fresh. Better still, the online format constantly updates curriculum with the latest articles and readings at a rate that few traditional universities could manage and maintain.

For me, the online learning experience was what I needed to learn how to succeed. While the online format may not be for everyone, traditional schools interested in recruiting and graduating bright, hard-working individuals who can contribute to the school and to society would do well to invest heavily in online learning programs. Many of the biggest and best traditional universities still lack cohesive online degree programs. Such programs may be costly but could provide added revenue for those schools and increase the overall reputation of the schools.

References
Dweck, C.S. (2010). Even geniuses work hard. Educational Leadership, 68(1), 16 – 20.

Dweck, C.S. (2008). The secret to raising smart kids. Scientific American Mind, 18(6), 36 – 43.

Dweck, C.S. (2007). The perils and promises of praise. Educational Leadership, 65(2), 34 – 39.