I just joined CC, and this is my first time to post here! As my screen name suggests, I'm thinking about getting a second degree.
A little background on me:
I have a bachelor's in General Business. I graduated about two and a half years ago. I initially started college as a nursing major and got accepted into nursing school. However, I quickly realized nursing was not a good fit for me and decided to drop out of nursing school and change majors. I stayed at the same university and decided to get some kind of business degree. I never ended up choosing a specific concentration and ended up just doing general business. Looking back on it, that was probably a mistake, but hind sight is always 20/20. I did take several Risk Management courses and did have some interest in that area, but never selected RMI as a concentration. I considered majoring in accounting, but didn't enjoy Principles of Accounting 1 and 2 at all. I ended up just taking them online to get them out of the way. I also didn't care for finance. However, I aced Business Calculus and also enjoyed business law, marketing, and a lot of my other business classes.
This brings me to my main point: I have had a very difficult time finding a decent, full time job that pays enough to live out on my own. As I've looked for jobs, many of the jobs that are available to someone with a general business degree are management and sales jobs. Unfortunately, neither one of those areas are where my greatest strengths lie. I have had several jobs since I graduated from college. I won't go into all of the details here, but most of them were not good fits for me and didn't really pay too well. I did take the Property and Casualty exam, which did open some doors for me in terms of some insurance jobs. I did land one job at a district insurance office as an admin. assistant that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, the office closed down after I'd only been there five months, because the insurance company made some major changes. I'm now working part time for an insurance agent with that company. It's the quickest thing I could find to keep a job once I found out the district office was closing. However, I'm making a pretty low salary and only working three days a week.
I am seriously considering going back to school. After two and a half years out in the workforce, I have struggled to find a stable, decent paying job with the degree I have. I can't get on at a major company, and no one seems interested in investing in training less experienced workers. I've been living at home the whole time, and have saved most of the money I've made, with the exception of paying some bills and personal expenses. So I do have some money that could be put toward a second degree. I also have no student loans from my first degree. My parents covered my tuition, and I lived at home. I covered other smaller costs like textbooks. If I do go back to school, I want to get a degree that is more employable; I also want to make sure I get some relevant work experience as I complete the degree. One degree I have considered is Industrial and Systems Engineering. My parents are engineers and encouraged me to look at engineering the first time, but I was scared to take the advanced math classes that were needed. I have done some research on IE, and there are some parallels with business. It looks like the most business oriented engineering major. I have a general understanding of what IEs do. I know that IEs focus on efficiency and improving processes and can work in a variety of settings. This seems interesting to me and I really need to do something to increase my job prospects and find better paying, more stable jobs. I am considering taking a Trig course this coming semester to prepare to go into Calculus in case I want to go this route. My biggest reservation is I'm already 26 and would be 29 or 30 by the time I graduated with the degree.
I'm wondering if any one has any experience in getting a second bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline? Was it worth it? What were your experiences?
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