Miami Dade College

Date: Feb 25 2008
Major: Mechanical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Well, to be honest, I am different than most students. I actually wanted to go straight into a four year university, but unforunatey due to my being deployed to Iraq (Active Military), I had to go to college on-line. Miami-Dade offered me the chance to earn some credits on-line and I figured it was a nice thing to do while deployed. I was stationed in North Carolina when I first started classes, but took a break that set me back at least a year.

Once I returned, I decided I invested too much time in MDC to just "up and go" to a real college. I decided to start learning a little about college and this school is great in terms of transferring to other colleges and is helping me adjust. The classes are hard at times, but overall it's too easy. Extra credit is given by most teachers thus allowing proactive students a chance to get a better grade—my Chemistry professor gave me extra credit just for signing into WebCT (online aid) before a set date!

As for the people, a lot of them are stuck up and are sheltered. Many of the students are kids who are there on mommy's and daddy's money and still living at home. The problem with these kids is that many of them have never been outside of Miami and to them, the world revolves around Miami (and around America to a lesser extent). They forget what the world is like and are stunned to find out I am a combat veteran. The woman almost always have boyfriends and the guys (most of them) are clones of one another, each one trying to look "tougher" than the last one. Military presence is strong, Marine and Army recruiters walk around trying to hit on the girls and trying to recruit (sometimes both at the same time).

The teachers are a mixed bunch. I had people that dropped out of classes the first two weeks because of bad teachers! Also, the problem with learning is that some teachers have so many classes that half the time they are lost and the other half of the time the teachers are not very good at teaching. I had a teacher giving a demonstration on Atoms and he went off on a tangent involving advanced quantum mechanics (I read a lot) and gave us a formula we should NEVER encounter unless we are engineering (I wrote it down) or physics majors, by the way, we're Intro to Chemistry.

The campus is great! I am in the Kendall campus and have been to the Wolfson campus (it's convenient in terms of going from class to class, but not from parking lot to class), the InterAmerican campus (it's inconvenient for some classes and small, and I have been to the North Campus (it's depressing and the racial demographics are far from equal and favor one group over all others), not to mention the campus is in an area that I would HATE to leave at night without a weapon.

In short, if you want to be a firefighter or a nurse as well as a teacher and do it for cheap, this is the place to go! If you want a transfer degree, come and get it! I don't go too much into departments because they are difficult to negotiate campus to campus, but my department is amazing and defnitely wants you to succeed! Also, I am part of the FES (Florida Engineering Society) and I constantly get emails about opportunities for engineering scholarships, internships, and co-ops. I am aware there are other clubs such as the SGA (Student Government Association) and the Salsa Club (pretty popular in InterAmerican), but in the Kendall Campus, it seems the only major ones are the SGA and the engineering club (FES).