For those who don’t know, I received my A.A. from Orange Coast College in 2000, my B.A. in Russian Studies from UC Berkeley in 2003, and I did one year of grad school at University of Virginia before leaving and moving to Russia.
I’m currently enrolled in 2 separate programs: the Project Management certificate program through UC Berkeley, and the A.S. degree in Web Development program at College of the Canyons. The PM cert should be completed by December, and the WebDev degree about 6 months later. I was hoping to do all of the WebDev degree online and finish it in one year, but I was so far back in the registration line that I only got 1 of the 3 classes I wanted, and the class is on-campus instead of online (the online section filled up several days before my registration date).
The first PM class started January 9 and is an 8-week class. The second PM class starts 2 days after the first one ends and is also an 8-week class. The first WebDev class starts on Tuesday, Feb 7 and will run until May 31. I’m on the waitlist for the online PHP class that starts in April. I’m 6th on the list, so I’m hoping a bunch of people drop the class before it starts.
This all started in November when a friend asked me if I had a Project Management certificate. I hadn’t even known there was such a thing, but he said that it was pretty much mandatory for PM jobs. I didn’t think much about it until mid-December when I had a 4-hour ride home on the motorcycle to think about life. It was then that the PM cert popped back into my head. I thought about it for a few days (did I really want to start school again?), did a day of research to find good programs, and within 4 days of that bike ride I was enrolled in the program at Cal.
After a couple of weeks in the PM program, I looked at PM jobs and realized that most of them required some sort of specialization (PM with engineering, PM with IT, etc). I thought about what I like to do …. create web sites. I started creating web sites in 1998 and loved it. But I had my sites set on eventually getting a doctorate in History and teaching at a university, and I didn’t seriously think about pursuing web development as a career. I made the wrong decision back then, so now I’m following the path I should have 15 years ago. I took about a week and looked at all the programs that I could do online but were close enough that I could take classes on-campus if needed. College of the Canyons had the best program for my needs. I’ve been in an email conversation with one of the professors, and he’s been extremely helpful.
It’s going to be a busy year, and I won’t have much of a social life, but it’s going to be worth it.
Back to homework….
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