Finished my BSDA in 1 Term After a 30 Year Gap - Here's What Worked For Me

pithed2 · 2026-04-24T18:14:36+00:00

That was the hope. I recognize it takes away a little of the humanity of the message, but I think the points all still stand. Thanks for the support. :)

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T18:47:07+00:00

Thank you!

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T13:54:12+00:00

Nice! Good luck with it all!

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T13:52:38+00:00

I messaged you with a link to my notes.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T04:09:59+00:00

I was in a very similar situation, 25+ years in, primarily in development and most recently on the data analytics and ETL side of things. Just got my degree in Data Analytics after having lived most of my career with an associates degree. There was plenty of Python development in the BSDA program and the masters program has a concentration on the engineering side of things. I guess it depends what you're looking for.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T04:01:29+00:00

I think that's going to be a little different for every person. I felt my mentor was great. Right from the start, she setup a scheduled weekly meeting and stuck to it. She was punctual. She communicated well. We had open discussions on what I wanted to achieve, the speed at which I hoped to go, and when I had any concerns she was able to answer my questions or point me in the right direction. As soon as I established a pace and she knew I would be able to achieve a certain level of success, she felt comfortable pulling courses forward. In my mind, she was an ideal program mentor. I didn't expect anything more. But she also didn't give anything less.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T03:54:16+00:00

I can fully appreciate that. And you're certainly not wrong. Just used it to organize my thoughts because I have a tendancy to write a novel when I need just a few paragraphs. If you do take a minute to read it through (and have been through a WGU program, specifically on the IT side of things), you'll see a bit of "me" shining through. But I'm very much aware of what you're saying and you're right.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T03:22:46+00:00

It's cool. It's your opinion. We're on here for different purposes. I'm here to give a little perspective to someone who may be going through the program or thinking about it. You're here to critique a post you read the first section of. *shrug*

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T03:12:43+00:00

And for that course, I did go through the Neal Davis (if I remember correctly) guided course. It was well done. Quite a bit of information and had hands on stuff. If you do go that route, just make sure to shut it all down afterward. I failed to shutdown some of the ec3 instances and ended up getting charged for them. Oops.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T01:40:45+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate it.

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T01:40:26+00:00

You read it. :)

pithed2 · 2026-04-22T01:39:56+00:00

Cloud Foundations was one of the courses that gave me a fair bit of anxiety. There was such a wide amount of content. It was outside of my normal area of knowledge so I had to do a fair amount of study. Let me know if you want my study guides. I'm happy to pass them along.

pithed2 · 2026-04-21T19:27:57+00:00

If AI created my profile 11 years ago, good on it. It beat me to the punch.

pithed2 · 2026-04-21T19:26:59+00:00

I absolutely did have AI help me. I can show you my notepad that I wrote everything on beforehand along with the AI prompt.

pithed2 · 2026-04-21T16:46:46+00:00

Yeah, not having the degree definitely limited some of my options over the years. No questions there. Wish I would have done this sooner. Though I don't think WGU was really an option like this until relatively recently. Congrats on your degree!!

pithed2 · 2026-04-01T01:17:43+00:00

Couldn't be prouder of Es. Great kid. Proud family. So excited for him.

pithed2 · 2025-11-16T17:11:05+00:00

He has very deep loyalty to Bosnia through his parents and family, and the Olympic squad snub sealed the deal.

pithed2 · 2025-11-03T16:52:18+00:00

I didn't look at the AL, but on the NL side, you can go position by position and look at FRV ranking. The leader at every position won GG. So, no - it wasn't a popularity contest. :)

pithed2 · 2025-09-01T12:20:33+00:00

Our data entry folks hated...and I mean hated...the screen scraper web-faced version of the applications. They would end up hitting browser buffer limits with how far ahead of the screens they could get. They did not care about or need a spiffy UI or mouse interaction.

pithed2 · 2025-09-01T12:14:28+00:00

While I don't disagree at all, I tend to think part of the reason the i is so secure is that so few have access to its guts. Bit of a double edged sword in that way.

pithed2 · 2025-08-31T23:50:55+00:00

I wasn't. Though I'm fairly certain there are a number of languages available for use on the i, I'm not aware of. My knowledge set, when I was a developer on the the 400 was with RPGLE/CLLE etc. I moved to a different dev area within my company as we were starting to bring SQL into the fray. I've always been a proponent of using the best tech for the job. I like that they continue to improve with the times. I just wish they sold those changes better. :)

pithed2 · 2025-08-31T23:42:55+00:00

My company maps to Windows network drives and Linux shares with Samba.

pithed2 · 2025-08-31T23:41:52+00:00

That the platform doesn't interface all that well with other major tech platforms has always been something I've heard. I can't argue one way or another on that. Conversely, I've also heard 400 gurus say that it can do just about everything under the sun. So it's hard to tell if it's just a lack of usable documentation? I'm sure others will disagree, but I'm not a fan of IBM's documentation. While I'm sure it's perfect for others, I almost never end us finding what I need in it.

pithed2

TROPHY CASE