My name is Sean Grady, and this is my final course in the post-bacc program. Since I don’t have a specific project and team yet (at least at the time of drafting this), I thought I’d start the blog posts with a bit of introduction and discuss how this program will impact my life and my career. Prior to doing this program, I already had a bachelor’s and master’s in Accounting. I did both at Notre Dame and finished in 2007 and 2008, respectively. It feels a little bizarre that I have been back in school 15 years later. There have been times I’ve loved being a student again, and times that I am really frustrated and wonder what I was thinking putting myself through this.
Since leaving school the first time, I have worked in the public accounting industry in various tax consulting roles. I have some time with two separate Big 4 firms, a smaller regional firm, and I am a currently with a large tax services firm, Andersen Tax. I have had a lot of success in my 15-year career, and was recently promoted to Director. So I have gotten some confused reactions when I’ve told people I was going back to school and working on a second bachelor’s degree. And, really, that is a fair response. This program has been a huge time commitment, a lot of work, and a very real expense considering I am pretty far into my career. Am I trying to start over in a new career? Do I need this to advance in my current job? What am I actually going to do with this new degree? Why would I do this now? All very fair questions, that I’ll address in this blog post.
I’ll start with the last question. Why do this now? What actually prompted me to start this program was my COVID isolation. I am currently married, but don’t have kids yet. And as of 2020, I was not used to being stuck at home. As someone interested in technology, I had been peripherally aware of this program, and had always enjoyed learning new things. So after spending almost all of 2020 sitting at home, watching Netflix, and playing way too many video games for a 35-year-old, I decided to do something productive. So I applied, got in, and signed up for my first classes. And that definitely has gotten rid of the problem of having too much time on my hands.
Am I trying to start over in a new career? Not a chance. I occasionally follow some of the hiring discussion and interviewing topics on the reddit page, and am very thankful that I am not in a position to have to spam job postings. I am fortunate that my wife and I both have great fulltime jobs (we just moved to Charlotte for her new job), and I honestly can’t imagine starting over as a new staff in software development. And while I can never be sure where my career will go next, I don’t see myself dropping accounting and starting over.
Do I need this to advance in my current job? I am actually in a tax technology role at my firm, so there is some synergy between the degree and my current job, but this degree is complete overkill for my role. So while it won’t hurt, this is not necessary. I have always been good with working with technology. I’ve been making VBA macros, building access/SQL databases, and creating crazy complex spreadsheets for years. I spent 5 years in a tax technology role with the knowledge from 1 VBA course, a lot of self-taught methods, repurposing other code, and googling problems. But even after 2 years of school, I don’t feel that much more knowledgeable when working on day to day tasks. My coding has gotten more organized and efficient, and I now know how to write API’s rather than just use them, but I will never need to know how to traverse an AVL tree, use the 0/1 knapsack algorithm, or build my own shell program in my day job. And even as I say I don’t need any of that, I am very glad I’ve learned it, because I think it is really interesting.
What am I actually going to do with this new degree? I am honestly not sure how I use this degree going forward. I have some vague ideas about maybe self-developing an app, maybe making a mod for a video game, or building some web based business. Once I wrap up this program and reclaim some of my free time, maybe I’ll put some of it toward those ideas. But one thing I am sure that I will do is to continue to learn. I doubt I’d go on for more formal training like the Georgia Tech online master’s program. But I do think I am in a way better position to learn new topics on my own now. I had read up on some things in the past, but without this foundational knowledge from the degree it was really hard to see how things are actually done or how they would fit into the bigger picture. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But I have a lot more confidence in my ability to learn and finally understand a lot of new topics.
I am honestly in a bit of disbelief that I am now starting my last course in this program. The last two years have been a ton of work, but in other ways these two years have flown by. And I feel proud that I have accomplished what I have and learned what I have, and excited to keep to keep learning.
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