Documenting My Journey: WGU BSIT-Security

[Thorne]

Obvious as it may be, I was officially admitted to WGU with a start date of 8/1/17. I started with 9 classes, 35CUs remaining, having transferred in 88 credits from a mix of my IT certifications, my CC credits, and my work with StraighterLine. The course list and my thoughts or plans are listed below.

• IT Foundations (A+ 220-901) -- DONE: Like I thought, this was a breeze. Due to scheduling issues and long drives, took me four days.
  
• IT Applications (A+ 220-902) -- DONE: Also a breeze. Finished this early in the second week due to more scheduling issues and long drives. Four days total.
  
• Business of IT – Project Management (Project+ PK0-004) -- DONE: Ended up taking the new test (PK0-004). Not hard, just a pain in the backside. Wrapped this up in 14 days.
  
• Principles of Management -- DONE: Extremely easy. Took me four days, including my post-Project+ day off. I watched the 6 review videos on double speed (hour and a half total), took the PreA, then scheduled the OA the next night.
  
• Spreadsheets -- DONE: Not really hard, not really easy. I also didn't learn much functional information about Excel. 6 days on this one, due to the time it took to get it approved and scheduled after my mentor went MIA from Harvey (he's back and kicking, thank God).
  
• Database Management - Applications -- DONE: Everything I heard about this class was true. Absolutely horrendous material with no good alternatives, badly formatted coursework, and a lot of ambiguity. To top it off, the Pre Assessment was rather different from the OA, as the PreA focused on theory and the OA focused on SQL. I've got an abbreviated version of the course material in my Drive folder that I'll pass on to whomever has to take it. I still wouldn't call the class hard, just really tedious. 22 days total.
  
• Operating Systems I (Linux+ LX0-103) -- DONE: This was a much easier test than I thought, due to it being very technical rather than theoretical. 17 days.
  
• Operating Systems II  (Linux+ LX0-104) -- DONE: Again, very technical and fairly easy. Just used the CBT Nuggets course + the uCertify practice exams. 5 days.
  
• IT Capstone Written Project -- IN PROGRESS: I've got until 1.31.18 to finish, but I don't see any reason why I shouldn't plan to be done by the end of November.
  

I'm much farther ahead of schedule than I had initially planned. It looks like I'll finish the last course by the end of November, which puts me at about 3.5 months from enrollment to graduation, and about 5 months of studying after community college. I do need to figure out exactly what comes next education-wise. I'm deciding between the WGU MS Cybersecurity and Information Assurance degree, a BSBA with a long-term goal of an MBA, or jumping straight into an MBA.