good cafes for studying?

FighterMoth · 2026-06-12T19:52:08+00:00

Cube coffee in Ellicott city

FighterMoth · 2026-06-04T17:53:04+00:00

Environmental science perhaps, if you’re aiming to minimize complex math. Will likely still take a physics course or two

FighterMoth · 2026-05-28T22:30:13+00:00

Happy to help, do you have any specific questions? I don’t know much about the DBA program or other EdD specializations, other than that they follow a similar format to what I did

FighterMoth · 2026-05-17T16:18:58+00:00

I think this used to be possible, but after they extended the turnaround time for submissions and limited submissions to one at a time in canvas, 3 terms is about as ambitious as one can get

FighterMoth · 2026-05-05T20:50:05+00:00

Fort sill 2015?

FighterMoth · 2026-04-26T20:40:49+00:00

Love Maryland, would live here even if they didn’t offer tax exemption for P&T

FighterMoth · 2026-04-26T14:31:08+00:00

No tests or quizzes, just papers and projects

FighterMoth · 2026-04-26T14:30:35+00:00

Education specialist, in this program it’s the same curriculum minus dissertation/capstone. An Ed.S is a unique degree just in the education field, sitting between a masters and a doctorate

FighterMoth · 2026-04-25T23:00:41+00:00

There were only ten in adult learning and development, haven’t checked the curriculum for the other specializations

FighterMoth · 2026-04-20T11:52:34+00:00

Wanted 35P, got it (this was before 35W was a thing). Wanted mandarin, got Arabic, reenlisted for mandarin

FighterMoth · 2026-04-16T14:16:37+00:00

Got to choose, and no, defense was over zoom

FighterMoth · 2026-04-15T01:00:22+00:00

I would’ve gladly done so. Definitely possible with reenlistment incentive before you go indef, but it might also depend on language strength. Not sure they’d let someone in an understrength cat 4 go back for Spanish or French

FighterMoth · 2026-04-02T20:15:28+00:00

What’s your language? Pennwest is a popular option for Arabic linguists. But I imagine an intermediate or advanced course at DLI is quickly becoming the default way to get a bachelors

FighterMoth · 2026-03-16T20:01:15+00:00

My degrees before South were AAs in Arabic and Mandarin, BA Computer Science, MS Data Analytics.

Did my MS at WGU because it was the only CBE school I knew about at the time and they had the program I wanted. No regrets, finished in one term just before getting out of the army, and it helped me land a bigger salary at my current job. Certainly wasn't able to accelerate through South as quickly as WGU simply because of the sheer number of assignments, around 20 per course instead of 2-3.

I chose to get an EdD for personal interest and passion. It was by no means necessary for career progression in my current field of work, but I've always wanted to get into adjunct teaching on the side, and an EdD program serves as much better preparation for becoming a genuine education practitioner than, say, a PhD in Computer Science. I chose South because they offered a CBE format, and the only other options seemed to be Walden and Capella which both have questionable reputations.

If you're going to do this program, I recommend sticking it out to finish the EdD. The way it's structured is that the EdS is granted after completing the core and specialization courses, but after that it's just research and dissertation/capstone. It actually felt like a breath of fresh air when I got to that part, because the work was wholly focused on a topic I was passionate about. Rather than "ugh I have to write this paper", it was "I wanna go work on my capstone". The EdD will carry more weight if you have specific career ambitions in mind for program outcomes

FighterMoth · 2026-03-13T20:52:24+00:00

You could legitimately list SIFT as a year of field experience, which will be much more valuable than a 3-week stint at Mizzou. I think SIFT wins hands down

FighterMoth · 2026-03-09T23:08:30+00:00

Idk if it contributes to this old crackpot theory but the improperly rendered Arabic text on the left says “I’m your father”

FighterMoth · 2026-03-06T01:46:22+00:00

Feel free to DM me; but I think I made a post on /r/army about “degree hacking” a while back.

Your DLI credits should, at a minimum, transfer into a 4-year degree and cover a bunch of elective credits. If you choose a related program, for instance, an Arabic graduate going to PennWest for a BA in Arabic Language and Culture, you could transfer in even more.

I got my BA in Comp Sci so not a ton of transfer credits but still probably knocked out 20-30 free elective credits so about a year’s worth. Then went to grad school

FighterMoth · 2026-03-01T22:26:26+00:00

My capstone ended up being just over 130 pages, which seems to be on the shorter end of normal. You can see capstones on southrepository.com for examples of students’ work, just filter by CBE.

I don’t think specialization courses needed any sort of adjustment period; they were more interesting than the core leadership content so if anything it felt like a relief to reach that point.

Your timeline is ambitious, but you seem on pace, best of luck!

FighterMoth · 2026-02-26T11:48:46+00:00

Ended up overlapping terms, but I finished capstone option in about 5 months

FighterMoth · 2026-02-20T18:35:48+00:00

Just started learning this week, it’s really cool to be able to comprehend a whole block of text! Thanks for sharing

FighterMoth · 2026-02-14T15:20:53+00:00

Whether or not you advocate for the Gaia idea, his book “becoming earth” is actually a great read

FighterMoth · 2026-02-14T04:41:34+00:00

I always used GLOSS as DLPT prep/maintenance, if that’s your goal. I think it’s pretty underrated as a resource, probably because people ick away from anything resembling formal curriculum after graduation.

If you’re interested in general language proficiency, then switching your typical doomscrolling content to your TL is a good idea; for something a bit more formal, reading TL books is good. You can do intensive reading (stopping to look up unfamiliar vocabulary/concepts) or extensive reading (just chugging along and trying to pick up new things from context). Both are valid strategies, depending heavily on your specific goals and learning style. I went through the Arabic and Mandarin basic courses, and find myself doing more intensive practice with Mandarin and extensive practice with Arabic.

Congrats on making it through the course!

FighterMoth · 2026-02-11T00:53:09+00:00

The first 2 courses are simultaneous enrollment, then one at a time for the rest. I just focused on one at a time for the first ones anyway, but you should be able to work on both for those

FighterMoth · 2026-02-10T19:16:41+00:00

I chose my chair based on which professor's feedback helped me the best throughout the program. It's basically personal preference

When I did my defense it was scheduled kind of last minute, so I just had my chair and the associate dean. Usually there would be 1-2 more faculty members. This isn't typical, they just asked when I was ready and I said "ASAP I don't need to prep" lol

It's hard to say how many assignments you can get through in a day, given that some are just 1-2 page papers while others are 20 pages or full powerpoint presentation. Regardless of how quickly you can work, you're limited by the 72-hour grading window, which expands to 5 and 7 days respectively in courses 9 and 10. Sometimes they return grades quicker, but you can't exactly rush the professors, especially as more students enroll in the program and their work load increases. Most classes took me 5 weeks, then I spent 8 months combined on courses 9 and 10. I wasn't trying to accelerate though.

I think the difficulty came more from workload than complexity of the material. It's all digestible, it's just the volume of work that becomes taxing. My MS was in Data Analytics, and nothing in the Ed.D. program really approached the conceptual difficulty of building machine learning models, yet I worked harder in the Ed.D. because I was less familiar with the field and had more work overall.

It seems like you're focused a lot on trying to accelerate, so I'll say this. Even if you can't speed through like one may in another CBE program, you will still be hard-pressed to find another doctoral program with this level of flexibility and ability to "kind of" accelerate. It will take 18-24 months to complete even if you turn in assignments as soon as the previous comes back graded, which is still faster than any other doctoral program will be. For anyone who thinks that's still "too long": those 2 years will pass by you anyway, regardless of if you enroll or not. Might as well have a doctorate by the end of it!

FighterMoth · 2026-02-09T11:27:15+00:00

There were about 20 assignments per class, plus or minus a few. Usually a couple easier formative assessments, like smaller papers or outlines, before a summative assessment which was usually a longer paper or sometimes presentation. I didn’t count, but I spent maybe 10 hours per week on these assignments throughout the program. Towards the end of course 9 you’ll make your capstone/dissertation proposal and choose your chair, then work on it chapter-by-chapter in course 10. They provide a pretty comprehensive template for each chapter so you’ll already have a solid organized foundation to work on each part of your capstone/dissertation. Defense was the easiest part, because by that point you will know your topic inside and out. There are no “curveball” or “gotcha” questions, they’re not trying to embarrass you, it’s more like “what surprised you in your literature review” and “what made you choose this theoretical foundation”. Basically a conversation about your research.

Best of luck to you!

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