I am slowly working on my associates but it will be a few more years before I get it. If you have the time to devote to school, get the 4 year degree.
Accept that you are going to be broke and eating Hot Pockets for a while, get your loans, go for the 4 year degree and bust your ass for internships. Internships = experience = jobs. People who complain about getting nowhere with their 4 year degree got nowhere because they usually had no real experience and the market is competitive enough that firms don’t have to take a risk on someone without any track record of performance. These days anyone can go to class for 4 years, if you maintain grades while getting relevant experience you are well ahead of the people graduating beside you.
I am at a dead end and need to get motivated to stay with the IT field, so I’m going to bump this up. Reading this thread has helped.
How is the progress going for you Noah?
I have been thinking about working towards some more certs. I’ve got an Associates and right now all I do is proprietary stuff (for the most part) at a department where I’m basically at my ceiling. I interviewed for the NOC position at Expedient but I felt so underqualified that it wasn’t funny.
I really don’t want to get into more school loans, so I’m weighing which will be worth more.
Def. some good advice Sonny and everyone else has given. I’ve gotta look back and remember why I’m here.
certs are good for consulting, degrees are good for huge organizations and most internal it jobs, and experience is the best thing you can have.
Certs are great for internal IT jobs…everytime I’ve gotten a major cert, I’ve gotten a corresponding significant raise. I also got a promotion as the direction result of a cert.
4 yr. degree is the new (hotness?) High-School Diploma for '09
Get that and certs and live nicely if you can find a job.
x2
I have a job consulting right now and certs are the way to go.
IMO Certs sucks. I would rather hire someone with real world experience any day. When people tell me they have certs I quiz them, majority of the time they have no idea about the product because they never used it every day. My advice to you is buy a server and start to learn. Set up AD, Exchange, IIS, and SQL Server and then start playing around. Learn how group policies work, learn the quirks of IIS. And the most important thing you can do for yourself is research. Stay up on new technology that could come up in a conversation.