New Goal: BS IT-Security at WGU.

[jsd]

After just completing my BA Psych in August (and having it conferred in December), I was trying to figure out what to do next. I was thinking maybe a WGU MBA, but I'm not really interested in the business world and it would't help me out too much career-wise in my current field. And I figured after having a BA for checkbox purposes only, I should now go for something that will have higher utility for me.

So a BS in IT Security directly relates to my field, but more importantly it will let me get some industry certificates under my belt along the way, which at this point is more interesting to me than the second degree. But my job won't pay for taking cert exams, though they will pay for tuition! Loophole So I'll pick up some certs, and probably have the added benefit of picking up another degree along the way if I finish the program beyond the cert courses (I plan on it!).

I don't think I'll necessarily speed through this program, at least not at the pace I sped through my Pysch stuff. I have a background in this field, but it's pretty surface level since my job is all proprietary system stuff. Especially with the bigger cert exams like CCNA, I'll need to really hunker down to learn the material well enough to pass a cert exam as opposed to just breezing through a course.

Anyway, my BA cleared out about 40% of the WGU program, 47 out of 123 CUs. That's not too much, but obviously there's not a lot of overlap between Psych and IT The BA automatically cleared all of the Gen Ed requirements, even some of the ones that there was no direct equivalent for -- sort of like a block transfer. That was 36 CUs. My A+ certification cleared up another two courses, a total of 8 CUs. And the free course that Study.com gave me last month, Organizational Behavior, cleared up another 3 CU course. The TEEX cybersecurity courses, as I suspected, were not accepted for this program (and really shouldn't be, tbh -- they're fine as some electives for an unrelated field, but shouldn't really be taken seriously for a degree program in the direct area of study).

If I like the program enough, I'll probably go on to tackle the MS in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I've gone through the WGU enrollment process and am officially admitted for a 2/1 start. I'll probably be dropping by this thread occasionally as a sort of accountability thread, since those seem popular these days