Hi folks, I'm resurrecting this ancient (well, six-month-old) thread because I wanted to give a progress report and offer my impressions for the benefit of anyone considering correspondence courses who may stumble across this thread now or in the future.
I'm halfway through the six-module course (the extra two modules I bought, solar returns and horary, are not part of the major six-module course). I've been working pretty steadily on it. Each module consists of five- or six-hour-long cassette tapes and a workbook. The three modules I've done are Introduction to Astrology, Chart Calculation, and Preparing for Interpretation. The next three will be Interpretation, Advanced Interpretation, and Transits/Progressions.
On the positive side, I've certainly learned a lot more than I would have by doing desultory reading. I now have a general idea of the meanings of the houses, signs and planets, which is a real step forward for me because I could never quite get a handle on them before. From the chart calculation module I have a general idea of what's going on three-dimensionally-wise in a horoscope and how time is calculated. I also have the beginnings of a good general understanding of the structure of a chart. Joanne really emphasizes rulerships, in fact she spends a great deal of time discussing house cusps and rulerships before she even gets to aspects.
Joanne seems very thorough, and goes into subjects with, it seems to me, a good amount of depth. Her approach is very psychologically oriented. Even in the first three modules I've had the opportunity to learn about things not usually covered in beginner's astrology books, like decanates.
However, I have a lot to say on the negative side. First of all, as mentioned in an earlier post, I was careful to e-mail Joanne before I bought the course and ask her if she was available to answer questions via e-mail as I studied, and she answered yes. Since then, I've sent her four e-mails (that's over a time period of six months, so I could hardly be thought of as pestering her), and she only ever answered the first one. I have to assume my e-mails are getting through to her; they're not bouncing back, and the address is the same as is still listed on her website.
My homework assignments are indeed being corrected and returned as promised, but they are corrected by an assistant who merely marks the answers right or wrong, and for the wrong answers provides a one- or two-word explanation of why it's wrong. Now, technically there's nothing wrong with it being done by an assistant, I suppose, but in combination with the fact that Joanne ignores my e-mails, it does seem like I'm not getting the personal attention that she led me to believe I would get. I'm not expecting her to spend hours and hours chatting with me, but it would have been nice if she could have written a few sentences in response to my friendly and politely-worded questions. If I wanted to be really snarky, I would wonder if one had to spend $20,000 a year to be enrolled in her Kepler school in order to receive some personal attention from her. But I'm not that snarky, so I won't wonder that.
Secondly, there are many discrepencies between the page numbers of the workbooks and those which she references on the tape, obviously stemming from the fact that she's reworked the workbooks over the years but not bothered to re-record the tapes. This doesn't really present a problem most of the time, but there were real problems with the chart construction module, because the editions of the reference texts (house tables, ephemeris, American Atlas) are different than the editions available 20 years ago, when the tapes were originally recorded, often containing different values for the same entries. Thus, when discussing a specific chart, almost all the numbers she references on the tape are different than the ones in the books, forcing me to constantly have to make adjustments and figure out whether I've made a mistake in calculating or if this is just another example of her reading an obsolete reference.
She's also inconsistent in her rounding. On one tape, she at one point rounds the number 27.5 up to 28, and then ten minutes later she rounds
the same number down to 27. Very frustrating. At one point I got a homework question wrong, and I questioned it, and Joanne's assistant wrote me back a nice note saying that I was right, the question in the workbook was wrong, and that I should feel free to tell them about mistakes that I see. Since then I've noticed several other homework questions where the question is just plain wrong. I appreciated her note but I also feel that it shouldn't be my job to do that. Joanne really needs to sit down and listen to the entire set of tapes with the workbooks and reference texts in front of her, and see for herself that in lots of places they just don't match.
Finally, although at the beginning I enjoyed the taped-lesson approach, and found it helpful to take notes from the tapes as a way of organizing and internalizing what I was learning, I found that this became old real fast. It becomes quite tedious when one has to write down *everything*, rewinding and listening to the same sentence five or six times (Joanne tends to speak in long, convoluted sentences), and I often found myself wishing I could simply read it as text rather than having to listen to it all.
So, at this point, if someone was considering taking a correspondence course, I wouldn't recommend Joanne's. My friends have suggested (in fact they're suggesting quite insistently) that I demand my money back. But I'm reluctant to do this, because the website does say all sales are final, and also the remaining courses do have value to me, and if I decide to finish them, I would rather not be having a war with the teacher while doing so, that would just make the whole thing too unpleasant (as a Libra sun-sign, I like to have things be pleasant!).
So what would I recommend to others, or what would I do if I had the opportunity to start over? I think of all the options, I would say the Canopus Academy, Linda Reid's school, sounds the most promising. For a low-cost option, I think the American Federation of Astrologers course at astrologers.com sounds good. It's all written-out lessons, not tapes, and at this point that sounds much more attractive to me.
For now, having worked steadily and gone through 18 tapes in six months, I'm going to celebrate by taking a break from astrology for a while. I'm a little burned out on it, plus frustrated with the course, and going through the course has become a grind and not fun anymore. I expect after a few months' break, I'll be more motivated and can come back to it refreshed. Meanwhile, I've decided to delve a little bit into the I Ching, which I'm sure will refresh my learning batteries. But I won't be taking an I Ching correspondence course! I don't feel as if I'm jumping around (Gemini-like) between disciplines, because six months of steady work is much more than I usually manage to do when learning things.
Well, anyway, as usual I've written an epic, and I hope I haven't bored everybody to tears. Thanks for putting up with me!!
-- Lee
edited to fix typo