Ever since I graduated, I’ve felt… underqualified. I guess most of the industry would call this "imposter syndrome". I’ve had a handful of jobs after earning my associate degree, starting in the Help Desk and working my way up to a Systems / DevOps Engineer, and then a Systems / Network Operations Engineer after transitioning to another company - but I’ve still never been able to shake the feeling.

After 5 years of being in the workforce, I’ve decided to go back to school and earn my bachelor's degree. Thinking back to when I was in high school, I was hesitant to go for a four-year degree for a few reasons:

1. Money. I was worried about running up debt I may have trouble paying off.
2. Distance. I wasn’t going to be able to afford to commute or move to a far-away school.
3. Incompetence? I was never the best student. What if I failed? My work would be for nothing.

In retrospect, I am glad I went the route I did. I saved a load of money on tuition and ended up landing a decent job after graduation, which allowed me to pay my $12,000 of remaining debt off in a couple of years. At this point, I had married my wife, we had bought a home together, and life was chugging along smoothly for the both of us. I had job hopped a few times and found myself working in my field of choice. After a few years though, I began to feel stagnant in my level of knowledge. I didn’t want to coast along for the rest of my life without trying to improve my skillset further. I want to feel like I actually know what I'm talking about.

The thought of having to quit or drastically reduce my working hours was my main reason for kicking the can down the road for as long as I had been. I didn’t want to spend hours of my day sitting in class – either virtually or physically. There just wasn't enough time in the day for me to do that and maintain what little sanity I had left.

I had seen advertisements for Western Governor’s University online in a few places – Reddit, Facebook, YouTube. The claims were foreign to me – flexible schedules? Go at my own pace? That can't possibly be real, right? Is it a diploma mill? I spent a few weeks pondering it and doing my due diligence - reading testimonials, checking their accreditation, and familiarizing myself with their model. I finally bit the bullet and applied in October of 2021. We were also in the process of selling our first house to take advantage of the “hot” market. (As hot as the market can get in rural Minnesota, anyway!) Thankfully my family was understanding and let us rent out half of their duplex (aka mom’s basement) while my wife and I were in-between houses.

Along with cutting out about half of our housing expenses, joining the workforce early put me in the privileged position of being able to cash-flow my schooling. After we crunched the numbers, cut our spending, and pooled our income together, we were able to set aside enough of money to cover my monthly tuition expenses out of pocket. I began school on November 1st of 2021 and am planning to accelerate as much as my two jobs will let me. I will continue to write about my experience here. I’m pretty new to the writing / journaling / blogging thing so if my writing style makes your eyes bleed – my deepest condolences. 😊

We haven’t had to sell the Tesla yet, so stay tuned for my very own bankwupt post likely coming soon. I know that selling our home and keeping a flashy car sounds stupid - and it is - but with the money we've been saving on gas it was a no brainer. Combine that with the fact that it was almost impossible to break even on the sale despite the crazy housing market. We only walked away with $99 after closing. Not being stuck underwater in the mortgage was our primary reason for selling - the college was just a happy accident. 😊

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