I am a perpetual student. At 34 years of age, I have been in school more than I have not over the span of my lifetime.

I quit high school when I had my daughter and went back to get my GED a few years later. After that, I heard that Certified Nurse’s Assistants made a good salary so I went to the now defunct Connecticut Business Institute in New Haven, CT to become certified. A one-year program ended up lasting a year and a half because I didn’t have anyone to sit with my children while I was in school.

When I went back they told me that they lost all of my grades for the four out of six sections that I took. So in one day I sat down and took all the exams over again and aced them all.

I did that for a few years then realized that $7.50 per hour wasn’t all that great money, not to mention the fact that it was back breaking work but worst of all, it seemed as if all the other nurse’s aides hated their profession. They frequently complained about their jobs and regularly refused to do the duties that were part of their employment and left me to flip or lift a 250 lb. resident on my own.

At this juncture, I decided that I would go into the line of work that I wanted to be in when I was a child: a lawyer. Being that I am a very impatient person, I decided that I would go to school to become a paralegal so that I could make some good money while I went back to night school to become an attorney.

I then signed up for a Paralegal certification program at Branford Hall Career Institute in Branford, CT. Despite the fact that I found that school to be a very Mickey Mouse organization, I obtained my certification and have been working as a paralegal ever since.

Once I met some attorneys, I realized that I didn’t ever want to be one. On top of them having to work horrible hours for the first several years of practice, many of them are not the kinds of people I would want to be associated with. So after several years of doing paralegal work I realized that my truest passion was post-production film work.

I returned to school at Gibbs College, in Norwalk to take their brutally scheduled associate’s degree program in Digital Filmmaking and Multimedia and graduated in June of 2006. But since I do not have any equipment at home or the luxury of being out of work to pursue a film career, I decided to work towards my bachelor’s degree to teach social studies at the middle school or high school level.

My rationale was that I could teach students during the school year and in the summers or vacation weeks I could work on my films. Therefore I would have my salary to support me during my filmmaking efforts. In addition, I get along great with teens and pre-teens and could become a mentor through the schools as well. Win-win.

My problem was I did not want to be confined to yet another classroom. While I was finishing up my degree at Gibbs I found out about the University of Bridgeport’s IDEAL program. This program was not only completely online but also accelerated and ran in 8 week stints. Perfect for me.

I had taken some online courses before through the University of Maryland and enjoyed the format. I could log in from anywhere, email my professors, discuss topics with other students in the online discussion forum and still work full time or overtime whenever I wanted without fear of being late or missing class. The fact that all exams were open book also didn’t hurt.

I absolutely adore the online format of education. While I don’t recommend taking technical classes like programming online, I think that the fact that most colleges are either offering online courses or are entertaining the idea, is proof positive that it is a wildly popular format. I think that the more technical classes are difficult to take online because it can be very visual and this can be difficult to accomplish in this forum.

I would highly recommend online learning to anyone who is considering going back to school. I find it the least painful way to get a much needed education and to follow your dreams without compromising your current life’s responsibilities.