Hello and welcome to the return of the Casual Chat!

With the return of the Casual Chat, I wanted to talk about something that I mentioned in the update post and that was that I had started going back to university for accounting.

I wanted to talk about why I did that and how the whole experience has made me feel, especially considering I have not been in a college setting for at least eight years.

Why Go Back?

This whole thing started back around December, when I was working two jobs and was trying to make everything work and not go crazy. I had a coworker who decided that they were going to go back to school and that had put the thought in my head.

I already had an associate’s degree in culinary arts and while it was a great experience to have, having worked in the food industry for almost a decade at this point I have learned that being in the food industry is a double edged sword.

I love cooking, more particularly I love baking and desserts which is where my specialty lies, but the food industry is notoriously underpaid and undervalued. There can be money in the industry, but it is incredibly difficult and is only getting harder as time goes on.

While I do love cooking, I do want to leave the kitchen at some point and when I was thinking about what I could pivot to, accounting was in the back of my mind.

Here’s a little fun fact about me: I enjoy working with spreadsheets and have done so for years. When I was in culinary school, one of my favorite tasks was working on recipe cards in Excel and learning what can and can’t be done.

Hell, even for Magic Super Cube I use Excel to keep track of cards, and this was well before I went back to school.

I love collating data, understanding data, and finding patterns within data, which is why I think accounting spoke to me in that regard.

So combine the thoughts of going back to school, having a major in mind, along with a mind set of switching careers, I was having lunch with my mother one day and brought it up. Of course she was up for me wanting to better myself, and the more we talked, the more I was getting interested in the idea of going back to school.

Then I did a bunch of research to see how I wanted to approach this.

Back in the Saddle

Seeing as I wanted to go back to university as an adult that works a full time schedule, I had to figure out how I could do that in the first place.

First thing was that I had to do my classes online, there really wasn’t much room for debate on that aspect because I am working full time and can’t really attend classes in person. Which then brings up the bigger question: how can I afford to go back to school?

One thing that came up in the conversation I had with the coworker about going back to school was that the university I live near has a program where if a student or the family of a student makes less than a certain threshold of money per year, meets a minimum GPA, and is a full time student pursuing an undergraduate degree, then they can have their tuition waived, essentially going to school for free (barring some fees and supplies and books in some cases).

I was fascinated with that, especially since I don’t make enough money to fully sustain a full time school schedule and would like to have less student loan debt.

I researched and found that there were several universities in my state that had similar programs, which while similar in intent, had different qualifications for those programs and whether or not online degrees were applicable to those programs.

It took some time and research, but as it so happens I was able to find a university that was online, had a program I was looking for, and accommodated an online accounting degree within that program.

After that it was the usual rigmarole of getting all the documents where they needed to be and to register for classes.

The Journey So Far

Since I have an associate’s degree, I was able to get most of my basic classes done, barring three classes, of which I am finishing the last of those basics this upcoming fall semester.

I started in January of this year with four classes in the spring semester, with a total of twelve credit hours. When it came to register my classes for the summer and winter semesters however, I realized something important.

I don’t want to stay in school forever, as is the case with most students, and the maximum number of classes I can take cannot exceed nineteen credit hours per semester, barring some special exceptions I’m sure. The university also happens to have half semester long courses for a lot of classes along with the full semester classes.

I thought that since my classes were online and I was able to manage twelve credit hours fairly easily, and with there being half semesters, how many classes could I do?

For the summer I decided to take it to the extreme, and I took eighteen credit hours for the semester, with two classes taking place during the entire semester, two in the first half of the semester and two in the second half of the semester.

Not only was I able to do that quite well, but I am also enjoying it more than I would have expected.

The upcoming fall semester is also going to be eighteen credit hours, though it is going to be structured through three classes in the first half of the semester and three classes in the second half of the semester.

At the current rate I am taking classes and provided I can get the classes scheduled when I want to, I should be able to finish school by either the end of next year at the earliest or end of 2028 at the latest.

I am hoping for at least the middle ground of either spring or summer of 2028, but the sooner the better for me.

The Future

I am happy that I have decided to go back to university. I am learning a lot, and more importantly to me I am enjoying what I am learning.

I can only hope that I can feel the same as I move on through the courses, but I have been lucky in that I have had no major issues with my classes or my professors.

I have also considered going through my university’s online master’s program so I can get a master’s degree in accounting and work to get a CPA, though that one I need to either finance on my own or get some more student loans.

As far as what I want to do with the degree, I have several ideas.

I can go through the educator route and pursue all the way to my doctorate in accounting so I can become a professor of accounting and have a solid paying job.

Another is taking what I learned in my accounting and combine that with my associate’s in culinary arts and start my own restaurant. I can take a back seat and either be the owner of the business or go all in and be the kitchen manager and owner, which is tempting but slim margins.

I can go all in on accounting and work my through there, maybe getting a decently paying accountant job that I can do well in.

However, pie in the sky, hopes and dreams is that one day I would like to open my own business in Japan. Broad, expensive, and a LOT of hurdles in the current climate to be sure, but if I could I would definitely want to open a business in Japan.

There is still some time for me to decide what I want to do for my future, but at the very least I am doing something. For a very long time I was kind of coasting and just doing the bare minimum.

Now, I am more active and energized in bettering myself and working to improve myself and my situation. It’s not easy, and I have made plenty of mistakes to get to where I’m at, but I am working to improve and I am seeing tangible results.

Even if nothing comes of this and I don’t see a major improvement within a few years of getting my degree, at the very least I can say that I did the work to improve myself and I can take that to my next endeavor.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual