In about three weeks, I will be completing a second bachelor’s degree. The reasons behind going back for a second bachelor’s degree have been mentioned before, but for those who may not have read that (and I don’t feel like looking for it), I went back for a couple if different reasons. To begin, after I graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2005, I was kind of unsure what I wanted to do. I had a decent job already, but from a young age, I had always thought that my formal education would not end with a bachelor’s degree. However, due to my unimpressive performance during my undergrad degree, I didn’t feel like I could get into a decent graduate program. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. A history buff, I would love to study history, but not on an academic level. I considered an MBA, but the online program that I started in wasn’t really doing it for me. After trying a couple of different things, I decided to put graduate school on the back burner and focus on other things.
As I reached the end of my employment with the Army, both as a civilian and the end of my enlistment contract, I started to really evaluate what I wanted to do for my next career. I had always enjoyed doing taxes, which sounds kind of goofy, and I had originally started out as a accounting major back in the day at Weber State. While I don’t necessarily want to be an accountant in the traditional sense, I decided to go back to school for accounting, if only to increase the chances of landing my next job. I attempted to go back to UConn, but they told me I would have had to start completely over. I was able to find a school, Post University, that would give me plenty of credits for my already earned degree, as well as be accelerated and online. I pretty much had to only take the accounting classes required for the degree. It really was the best solution.
The other reason I wanted to get a second degree instead of moving onto a graduate degree was to increase my GPA a bit so that when I decide on a graduate program, I would be a bit more competitive. My GPA at Post is a lot higher, so hopefully when the time comes, it will help me get into a brick and mortar school for a better degree. While I have enjoyed my experience online, I do long to return back to a regular school in order to better interact with fellow students and expand my network.
To answer the question posed in the title, I do think that I learned something. I had taken some accounting courses back in my early days of college, but I did learn something from the classes that I took. Would it be enough for me to be an accountant? Probably. But ultimately, especially with the Writer’s Development Program opportunity and potential freelance writing, I think I may go away from accounting, which never was the plan anyway. I would like to continue to do taxes, though now it may be on a smaller scale. We’ll see what the future holds. For now, however, the return for school was a good idea and I am glad that I did it.
Until next time…
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