Monday, July 12, 2010

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. - Daniel J. Boorstin


I've been getting my bachelors degree for just about eternity now. Looking back at things I don't know why I didn't think a degree was important, ok well actually do know why I thought a degree wasn't important. It was because when I was around 20 or so I was making a lot more money than most 20 year olds and my job was way cooler and had more responsibility than most 20 yr old jobs. I was under the impression that a degree was nothing more than an expensive piece of paper. I thought I was so cool because while all my buddies were wasting their parents money on college I was already making my own money. I thought I had beaten the system. Isn't that a funny story?


Unfortunately after about a year or so of having that really awesome job I got really tired of it, it wasn't challenging me and I got transferred and my boss was a crazy women from Switzerland who constantly commented on how lazy Americans were and how stupid I was. She never actually called me stupid but I was reprimanded almost daily for the most mundane things. It truly sucked. So I started looking for jobs elsewhere only to find that I wasn't really qualified for much else, I had gone as high as I could go without a degree so I started attending college at a local community college and I really loved it. Then the Marine Corps stationed us here in 29 Palms and we all know how I feel about 29 Palms. I tried to continue attending the community college via online courses but I knew I couldn't get very far that way because most of the courses were taught at the school. I decided then to transfer to Copper Mountain Community College out here and I enrolled in one class and quickly decided that CMCC was not the school for me, I felt like it was a joke, like I knew more about the subject from watching the discovery channel. Plus, even though I had from 8:30am until 3pm to attend school not a single class fit my schedule; they all either began before Haley was at school or ended after she got out.


I didn't know what to do, I felt very hopeless, I didn't want to go to an all online school because I was worried that my future potential employers wouldn't like it. I took a really long break, about a year or so. And then I decided that I needed to just suck it up and go to school online because a degree from an online school is better than no degree at all. So I enrolled in American Military University and I really loved it. I felt challenged which was great and I truly felt like I was gaining knowledge. But it still really bothered me that it was an online school so after about a year at AMU I decided to look into the University of Texas and low and behold they offer an online program. So in April or May I applied to University of Texas at El Paso and after months of waiting I finally got accepted today! I am officially a UTEP Miner!!

Yes, it's still an online program but it's from a school that my potential employers will recognize, they won't have to google it to make sure it exists and is accredited. I'm so happy, it's hard to explain why this is such a big deal to me but it is. Maybe it's because lately I have felt in limbo with everything and now something has finally happened to thrust me closer to where I want to be in life. Now if only the Marine Corps would follow suit and give us orders to Hawaii or something, that would be great :)

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