If you guys been following along, you would know that I had about a year and half of college right after high school before I inevitably joined the Navy, in what would be one of the best decisions I have made in my life. I would say that going to college right after high school would be considered the “normal” path that a lot of people take. I had chosen a different path that lead me to 4 years in the Navy, 2 kids, a wife, 3 full time jobs, and 10 years later, a degree in Computer Science. Here is a quick summary of my pursuit in achieving my degree, and hopefully it helps you decide, if you are on the fence, if you want to actually pursue a degree in Computer Science or whatever it may be.
If I can do it, so can you!
Like I mentioned above, it had taken me about 10 years to finally get my degree, and initially I had no intention of finishing when I joined the Navy back in 2015. Towards the end of my 4 years in the Navy though, I realized a couple of things that made me want to go back in 2019. First off, with a degree, you are simply allotted more recognition when it comes to finding potential jobs and even respected a little more. People see you as an educated and more mature person when you have a degree. This should go without saying but I am going to mention this anyways. Not all people see you this way and not all employers care about a degree as much, but in a corporate setting, hiring people with a degree only makes the company and the team look more qualified in the work, and frankly just looks better on paper when you hire someone with a degree. Secondly, after the Navy, I figured if the military was going to pay 100% of my tuition if I went back to school plus basic housing allowance, I thought, why the heck not.
Overall Thoughts On A Computer Science Degree
If I am being completely honest, I thought that just a hand full of my courses actually pertain to real world scenarios. Classes like “Mobile Development” and “Database Management”, to name a few, were really helpful in my day to day work at my company since I used the tools and resources constantly. Those classes helped fill in gaps that I needed to perform my job better and useful in some cases. I do understand that these college courses were only meant to give you basic understanding of the topics and help build a foundation of computer software skills but there were some classes that I really did not need to take, like “Sex, Drugs, and Music”. But hey, that’s what college is. If I learned anything from college and obtaining my degree, it’s that if you do pursue a degree in something, do it because you want to achieve something, and not because someone said that you can only have a good job if you have a degree. If you are pursuing a degree to learn about a certain field, I feel like there are better options for some people. There is no substitute for hard work and if you really want to get somewhere in life, the only one in your way is you and not a degree.
Full Time Everything
The hardest part of it all was trying to be a full time everything. Full-time husband, full-time dad, full-time student, and full-time employee. I would say the one thing I had going for me was learning how to grind, which I toke away from being in the military. Being able to keep my head down and push through the late night studying and projects to finally get to the finish line was all worth it to graduate in the end. If you take away from anything from my experience, it that you need to learn how to love the grind and push through it all because there is light at the end of tunnel. Short term pain equals long term gains.
In The End
I truly believe that college is not for everyone and people can have great careers without one. I also think that its okay to not go to school right away and follow the “norm” because, if you were anything like me, I was frankly not ready for college at that time in my life and needed to mature a little bit. So there you have it, you want to know more about my journey or just wanted to say hi and chat, you can find my information in the contact section of this site.
Thanks for reading and catch you the next one!