3 day vs 4 day tech courses

I've finally decided to stop futzing around and choose a tech course to go to... I have extra vacation time and it's something I really want to do, so, I'm going to. I found a few options, none of them ideal, but all of them workable. There are three courses that are about two hours each from me; of course the one that's closer is the only week of the next four months I can't take off, lol. The one I was originally going to take is a M/T/M/T, and is 2.5hrs from me but 1.5 from my parents, so I was going to drive the 2 hrs to them on the weekend, to the course & back to them Mon, then to the course and home on Tues, two weeks in a row. Craziness! However, two more courses have since popped up that are just under two hours from me each, which is less overall driving.

My question is this. One course is a W-Th-F, 9-5 each day, and the other is T-F, 8-5 the first three days then 9-2 the last day. Obviously, from my point of view, it's better to only have to take three days of work off than four -- but am I losing out on something by having one less day of course time?

Hoping to get input from those who teach the courses, and/or from anyone who's taken courses to know how long theirs was and how they feel the pace was. TIA!

I took a 4 day class and it was a decent pace. I did have down time. I would say since you have been hanging around here you will probably be fine with a 3 day class. I wouldn't recommend a three day class for someone without a lot of knowledge about CPS going in.

Mine was 3 days, and we blew through it. Left early every day, very early the last day. I didn't feel like I missed anything, but I went in knowing the entire course anyway. But people who were clueless at the outset still seemed to do okay.

Splash said:

Mine was 3 days, and we blew through it. Left early every day, very early the last day. I didn't feel like I missed anything, but I went in knowing the entire course anyway. But people who were clueless at the outset still seemed to do okay.

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How many people were in your class? I wonder if that might make an impact? Or maybe it's go more to do with personality of instructors and students. :shrug-shoulders:

Mine was 4 days. I do think it would have been ok in 3 days if we had pushed; as it was, there were several people who seemed to struggle a bit. The class was decent sized, but not exactly enormous, er... I mean, rather small, with 8 students, 2 instructors and one IC (part time).

If I had the choice I'd probably see how many people are registered for each class before deciding (though that could change after you register I guess... ). I think I'd probably really prefer a short, intense, class with fewer other students. But if both classes are large, I'd rather have extra time.

How much have you been hanging out upstairs? Other than the LATCH manual lookup stuff, do you feel that you could answer most of the questions that are asked, or at least take a decent stab at it? If so, then the 3 day course should be fine.

I took a 4 day course. Other than me, I think there was 1-2 other parents, 1-2 grandparents, and the rest were there for their jobs. All seemed like they really wanted to be there, but they had little to no previous experience. It seemed like the 4 day course was the right pace for most of them. A couple of people really struggled.

Thanks for the input, ladies.

I think the 3-day class has a cap of ten people. So, it should be a pretty small class and that will help.

And I do hang out upstairs a lot, have been here almost a year and I read tons, and answer quite a bit (probably more than I should.) I'm a quick study and have my seats in and out all of the time, plus I've become "seat advisor" for my dcks' parents and apparently now my friends. Incidentally, that's exactly why I really feel like I need to take the class, if I'm going to be doing that I'm thinkin' I should probably have a credential behind it, lol.

I'm not worried about not being able to learn it all in the pace of the 3-day, necessarily, just wanted to make sure that short tech course didn't equal me automatically becoming a sucky tech, lol.

So I guess 3-day it is! Thanks again!

Mine had over 30 people. It was enormous, and had a few bigwig instructors. I swear we have the most heavily funded SK in the world, so it was a fancy dancy party... swank catered lunches every day, loads of seats (LOADS, many not even on the market yet), free LATCH manuals for everyone, tech kids with noodles/shades/liner, etc. Oh yeah, I completely lucked out in that class.

Nice. Somehow I don't think I'll be getting that. I had to use mapquest to figure out where the course even is. I keep having this vision that we'll be mining my vehicle for all of the "cool" seats lol.

As long as I get a decent education and end up certified, it's all good with me lol. I wish I could find a course here in Columbus, but I'd rather get it done when I can than wait for the "perfect" time.

My course was only a two-day weekend course. I feel like a had a big head-start from hanging around here, so it seemed fine. The only part that seemed rushed was the amount of time we actually spent installing seats. Some people just seemed to do the minimum they were asked and that's it. Since we worked in pairs that means some people may not have really done a whole lot. I think I was the only one that stuck around late one day to try to get a seat in that I was struggling with. I actually feel that you have to participate in a lot of clinics to really become competent with the installing part in terms of seeing all different kinds of seats in different vehicles and being able to problem solve the tough cases. It scares me a little bit that some people in these parts take the weekend course, don't participate in clinics, and try to pass themselves off as experts. :twocents:

Splash said:

Mine had over 30 people. It was enormous, and had a few bigwig instructors. I swear we have the most heavily funded SK in the world, so it was a fancy dancy party... swank catered lunches every day, loads of seats (LOADS, many not even on the market yet), free LATCH manuals for everyone, tech kids with noodles/shades/liner, etc. Oh yeah, I completely lucked out in that class.

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:jaw: Wow! You sure did luck out! :2thumbsup:

I've never seen a class offered (I looked pretty regularly for classes near me for well over 3 years) that didn't have a cut off of 15 people. My instructors said my class was one of the biggest they'd had in a long time, lol! Lunch was local fast food so I ended up bringing my own most of the days (vegetarian).

I took my class barely 2 weeks ago. It was a 4 day class (W TH F S), with a seat check event on the last day. We had 25 people in our class. I would have done fine with a 3 day class but most of the other people really needed the 4 days. Of course, they were there for their jobs and didn't have an experience before. A couple of people didn't pass and left the class early. Although it was scheduled 7:30-5, it ran late almost every day by nearly an hour. Although we could work in pairs for the actual installation segments, I chose to work by myself as did a number of other people. That's probably what took the time. . making sure there was enough time for all 25 of us to install a variety of seats in a variety of vehicles.

No catered lunches for us, though. Lunch was DIY, which meant going to a fast food place down the street or in my case, going home (I live less than 10 min away, which was doable for an hour lunch). They did have coffee/juice/carby-stuff for breakfast, though.