I'm dead excited, and I just wanted to share somewhere!
Since graduating from my Bachelor's I've been working in IT support, and it's slowly killing me. Progression is slow, the work is boring, and at the end of the day all I have to show for my efforts is (hopefully) a slightly lower number of open tickets than at the start. It all feels incredibly pointless, and like I'm not making a difference in peoples' lives.

I decided earlier this year to start looking into possible Master's degree programs, to help me enter a different field, and I'm happy to say that from next September I'll be returning to my alma mater to study Linguistics and English Language Teaching. From there, I'm hoping to go into teaching English as a foreign language, first abroad, and then to immigrants and refugees back here in the UK.

I'm super excited, and also a little nervous. I coasted through my Bachelor's and the past few years of my working life, so it'll be a shock to the system to have a proper workload again. I've got to get through the next 8 months or so first, but that will be easier knowing that I have something different and exciting waiting for me at the end of this particular career path. I'm desperately saving up as much money as I can to cover my living expenses for the year (I don't intend to work during my degree), which is another thing to feel nervous about.

But right now, I'm mostly just ecstatic, and wanted to share! In the interest of discussion, I'd love to hear about your experiences studying a Master's degree, and whether or not it helped you in your life after graduation.

This question is inspired by the university of Michigan's grad student union's announcement that it will strike this week. As noted in the university's response Michigan state law prohibits state employees from striking and GEO's contract with UofM (signed in April) has a clause that prohibits work stoppages.

Are strikes performed in violation of the law (state or otherwise) or a contract justified? Why or why not?

i'm currently on the path to receive a BS in business administration management information systems concentration from a four year state school. i was accepted to my major near the end of this spring. my university also has a data analytics minor that i am heavily considering.

once i am done with summer classes i plan to really dive deeper into excel and ease into learning sql b/c that will help in lots of MIS contexts it seems.

i read online that MIS is a great degree that can lead into system admin, database admin, network admin, or business/it/system analyst roles. id find any of these careers interesting so at this point in time i feel on the right path. most importantly i just want to a job that will allow me to live a comfortable life, ya know?

i have never really met anyone that has an MIS degree before so i have no idea what the job market is actually like for degree holders beyond clickbait articles that say how great it is. if you have an mis degree, what is your experience with it and what kind of role are you working? would you recommend this degree to someone else? what skills do you recommend most for hire-ability? id assume this is area specific, but i live in the PNW and live near an area with a strong biz/tech scene and lots of govt opportunities.

i was recently speaking with some CS majors and they were talking about how MIS is a garbage non-technical degree that isnt good for much. obviously CS is a harder more technical degree that can result in higher salary but i feel they were just trying to put my down for pursuing what they saw as a lesser degree, but nonetheless it put a sense of fear into me about my potential career opportunities.

i just need some guidance and would like to hear your experience.

thank you

I'm throwing myself a little party here -- digital drinks on me!

Yes, I know my loans weren't accruing interest on account of COVID-19, but long before that all started I'd been aggressively paying them down because I wanted them GONE. And now they ARE! (Or, they will be once the payment clears, which for some unknown reason takes my loan servicer like two full weeks).

The quarantine actually helped me accelerate payments. I rolled over what I was saving in gas money and not eating out into my loan payments. Also, as a teacher I only get paid during the school year, but I have the option to reduce my regular paychecks and roll the difference into a lump sum that gets paid out at the beginning of the summer. I choose this option so that my budgeting is consistent year-round (rather than me having to squirrel away my own nest egg for the summer from my other paychecks). The payoff amount on my loan would have been done around August had I kept with my regular schedule of payments, so I went ahead and treated myself to making the final payment in full, now, as I had the money for it upfront.

I cannot tell you how good it feels to finally be free of them. I paid off my undergrad loans in under 10 years and felt super proud of myself, only to immediately have to turn around and start the process all over again for grad school. Months after I finished my undergrad loan payments I was again accepting tens of thousands of dollars in debt so that I could get a master's degree to qualify myself for a job that I'd already been doing for years. It was not a great feeling, nor something I was very happy about, but you do what you have to do, right?

BUT NOW IT'S OVER. NO MORE STUDENT LOANS. I'VE WON THAT AMERICAN MILLENNIAL BOSS FIGHT.

It honestly feels like I just got a big raise, as, come August, once my timeline for paying the loans is done, all the money that I was putting towards them is now mine to do whatever I want with. I'm not saying this to gloat (and I know that I'm financially very privileged even in light of my debt), but simply because I'm reveling in the feeling of being out from under the suffocating thumb of a difficult financial pressure, and it feels wonderful.

EDIT: If anyone's wanting to join in my festivities remotely, participating is easy! All you need to do is pour yourself a tasty drink of your choosing, grab a delicious snack you love, and throw Carly Rae Jepsen's discography on shuffle.