Newbie...I think I am overthinking this and its paralyzing

[mrs.b]

Hello, and welcome! First, nothing is out of reach. Period. You've already demonstrated you have self-starter potential, and one of the main criteria for that is the ability to stare at a would-be problem and find a solution. In this case, the easiest start point is to work backwards. Take a look at the admission requirements of your short-list of graduate schools and see how many of them absolutely require a GPA. Of those, how many define how many credit hours they'll calculate into their GPA.

You may need to take some courses, but the nice aspect about earning a degree in the manner most on this forum do is that even courses do not require you to put your backside in a physical classroom seat. The majority of the people here are working adults, like you, that do not have room in our schedules for that kind of option. There are online courses for virtually any requirement now, and many are available in self-paced (i.e., you complete as fast or as slow as your schedule demands) options.

So to start, dig into the admission requirements of the graduate schools you want to attend, then use those to select your undergraduate option. The Big 3 (Thomas Edison State College, Excelsior, and Charter Oak) are the most commonly selected here, and people have gone on to very competitive grad schools with degrees from these. One new option that was not available to a lot of us at the time is the North Arizona University "Personalized Learning" degrees which are entirely self-paced, offered direct from the school, ad could be fast-tracked just like Big3 degrees.

If you require a GPA, it just means planning that into your degree plan. It doesn't mean you must go the old-fashioned, traditional route.