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Education can be a lifelong Endeavor


The Long Road to a Masters Degree



I remember thinking how hard it would be to enroll in Graduate school. This occurs to me in late December, 2001, a month short of my fifty fifth birthday. I dreamed of securing a second career due to my upcoming retirement. My work schedule is hectic. I am a data entry clerk. I work third shift, ten hours a day, six days a week.

I graduated from Northwood University with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration on May 11, 1996. Sometime in January, 2002, I decided to pursue my Master’s degree in Organizational Management.. Several of my supervisors, who were pursuing an advanced degree, recommended I enroll with the University of Phoenix on-line, since attending a brick and mortar school would be impossible with to my work schedule. No one told me the difficulty that I would encounter working full time and taking master’s degree courses simultaneously.

The first obstacle that I encountered is self doubt. I realized that my academic future depended upon the results of research. As I start to take courses, I quickly realized that time spent on homework (a prerequisite to graduation) is time spent away form research. And it is research that defines a person as an expert in a certain field of knowledge.

There is so much reading involved in both preparing for your class discussions and the preparation of class papers. This is over and above the research that I noted above. It is not unusual to read ten peer-reviewed papers in any given week. It is also the comprehension of the material being read that is of outmost importance, because if you do not understand the material, it becomes obvious to your peers and your professor.

The actual writing of my class assignments is relatively easy for me to do. My previous experience as a procedures writer proves to be invaluable. Prior to enrolling in this endeavor, I had the good fortune of two fantastic mentors who influenced me greatly. For example, I am able to provide real job experience vignettes as an anecdotal portion to my papers to introduce readers to the research that I had conducted, or to further clarify a point made

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to stop taking classes in 2004. I resume classes in 2007, but this time I pursue a degree in Psychology. I am not sure why it never occurred to me that this subject would be of interest; yet, it proved to be a wonderful field to study. My favorite part was finding that my favorite statistics class that I enjoyed so much during my undergraduate studies proved to be a real asset as a psychologist. The realization that statistics is used to validate studies conducted by my cohorts was a wonderful realization.

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