Jennifer DeRosa
In pursuing her B.A. at Thomas Edison State College, it may seem as if Jennifer DeRosa, 37, is working backwards.
After all, she's been teaching in a traditional college setting for fifteen years; and in fact, it was only after making plans to go after a Masters in Education at Penn State that she began to think about how to get her bachelor's in place first.
"I looked at the bachelors only as a means to earning my masters," she says, noting how much an MEd would mean to her future in teaching.
"Once I decided where I wanted to end up, I started building a plan on how to get there."
Shortly after graduating from The Culinary Institute of America in the early 90s, Jennifer was hired to help initiate an Associates degree program in the culinary arts at a local community college.
The job required she obtain a teaching credential, which she did at the University of Iowa, and she has been teaching in the program ever since.
And it's not just in the classroom that Jennifer is a teacher, but at home too: she homeschools her four sons, so her hours at home are especially precious.
"Through raising 4 kids and being a wife, I've always given them 100% …I always had time for breastfeeding, and we never used daycare or a baby sitter," she continues. "I point that out because I think that as an adult, my 'time' for earning my degree was back when I was 18. I can't pretend that I'm a 20-something student."
As a mother, Jennifer feels, the degree is "extra," while the health and welfare of her children remain her and her husband's primary responsibilities.
While her dedication is admirable, it leaves her with little flexibility by way of a daily schedule. But Jennifer seems to have it down to a science.
"I know everything gets time, so I don't have guilt about not being able to do everything at the same time," she says.
"I homeschool my kids from 9-3, do housework from 3-5 when I am not teaching at the college, we have dinner and kids' activities until 8, I exercise at 8, put the kids to bed and start my school work at 10. I'm in bed by 2 A.M. most nights."
She points out that time management is key in balancing school, work, and family, and that one must be a "self-learner type person" to thrive on the challenge of distance learning.
"There isn't much hand-holding," she adds. "You should be motivated by the challenge of doing a lot of this on your own."
In fact, she says, it may be all too easy for the distance learner to feel that she is too much on her own. "In one situation, I posted a question about the mid-term exam on the forum (that's the proper procedure)," she recalls.
After emailing the instructor a week later, he referred Jennifer back to the syllabus, which she had already combed through to no avail. With so little face-to-face interaction, Jennifer felt ignored as her simple question went unanswered.
Even so, says Jennifer, though instructors can be valuable to the learning process of theory courses, "I don't think that seeing them in person is a requirement to the process—I know it isn't!"
She thinks the best thing about distance learning is that she can sit in the privacy of her living room at 2 A.M. working on lessons.
As a regionally accredited school, a degree from TESC will allow Jennifer to apply to her grad school of choice without barriers.
She also found that although the cost of tuition there does not run much less than that of a traditional program, she saved money by using CLEP exams to test out of a total of 30 credits, which she is applying directly to her degree.
Combined with a Pell grant and a student loan, TESC thus ended up being her best choice dollar for dollar for a total cost of about $6000.
"The student loan exceeds my cost slightly, and that is refunded to me and used to pay for my CLEP/DSST exams and books," says Jennifer, who buys her books through eBay. Jennifer is actually surprised that she's had to buy so many print textbooks.
"I would expect to see much more mixed media," she says.
Like many distance learners, she's had to navigate through course listings to find classes which utilize technologies agreeable to her. For instance, many TESC classes use videotaped lectures, and Jennifer hasn't had a TV in her house for ten years, much less a VCR.
After this semester, she decided, Jennifer is only going to enroll in courses that require one text book. As she puts it herself, "There are excellent resources available beyond a few text books. Even MIT has open course ware on iTunes. As a homeschool teacher, I have used audio and pdf books for years—for free!"
With her dream MEd program with Pennsylvania State on the horizon, Jennifer hopes to go even further in the field she first chose as a teenager.
"With good grades and a great GRE score, I hope to be accepted and start Spring 2009," she says. She knows that her eventual MEd, which will also be online, will be of good use at her community college and for her future in teaching.
"For someone who enjoys teaching and culinary arts, it provides a nice quality of life with good hours." And if there's anything to say about Jennifer, it's that she's not the type to waste an hour.
