[background]Well, I attended OSU(Ohio State Uni) for a couple years but that unfortunatly hasn't worked out.. For some reason if it's a topic I don't care for, I have no will to learn it and I get bored and un-modivated to go to that class.. it's a pretty bad habbit and I've had it through high-school.. bottom line, if Im not interested in it, I dont give a ****.[/background]

So after a while of being a complete bum I got a fulltime job that I hate (I enjoy the work though..) being tech support for a major ISP and being well underpaid (atleast I think).. 5 months later I'm still working here, but I'm pissed that I didn't finish school because I just realized that if you don't have that college paper, your not going anywhere.. and I'm scared of living paycheck to paycheck.

I hear a commercial for a microsoft certifed training school on the radio at lunch, they say go to their website, take the test.. so I figured, got nothing to lose. Apparently I do well because I received a call from admissions the next day, saying that I did well on the test, they want to meet me.

Few days later I go in a check it out. It's all for LAN and WAN networking (like what I do now just on a bigger scale!) I got to sit through 15minutes of one of their classes, seems like fun stuff! It's a 6 month class to become Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. 2 Classes a week, 4 hours a peice. Only 10-15 hours of home study a week recommended. That would fit in well with my full time job.

After you graduate the class, 70% of students must have a job within 90days or Microsoft will yank their license from the school. So the school does alot of help with getting students jobs right out the gate. Usually they are entry level but without experience (degree or not) you gotta start somewhere. But hey, I'm already in the field so maybe I have a step up on everyone else.. the price of the school is $24,500. Including books, lab manuals and even a computer voucher (free pc!) its a 12month deffered payment loan so it would start a year after I received the loan (and 6 months after I finished school), and no penatlies for pre-pay.

I did some searching on Monster.com just to see some jobs avaliable in the field and people with 2-5 years experience can really make a nice salary sum a year. It's alot of money, it's something I'm interested in, is being certified really worth it? Or should I suck up my balls and go get an associates degree for the same ammount of money at Devry.. no plans on going back to any major university.

My advice is to actually call some of those companies on monster.com, and see what they would be more interested in hiring. That should definitely help you in the direction you want to go.

This is probably the best advice anyone could have given you.... I think.

When you go into a program like that, just keep in mind that you or your job may be obsoleted within a decade because the programs are so focused. It just means that you have to be willing to keep up with training and education over the years.

Ummm.. that's quite literally no different from any tech job.

Hey, Zan is in the same situation as me!

cept he has a job.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Being in tech support for any company seems like a bad experience. It's good you took the steps to get out of that. Don't they out-source alot of those positions?

But can you still the chance to go back to any major university?

Gettleburger, yeah that's a good idea I will have to try that..

Echoman, yes they do outsource alot (if not all) the positions, my company just happens to be outsourced in america.. they have a few call centers outside the states though..

WTF is with all these ohio people? i never knew half of you lived here.

Ford, aren't we both on the Massassi map.. in ohio..

I was in almost the exact same situation.

I elected not to go to college right out of highschool and instead got a job and eventually I ended up doing tech support for a video card company for two years. The job sucked (As most Tech support jobs do), and I started looking for alternatives.

Back in Highschool I had taken the A+ certification test cold turkey and passed with flying colors, and so I started looking at MCSE as a possible way to get off the phones.

In the end I decided NOT to go for another certification and ended up going to college full time, a decision I do not regret at all. I just finished up my sophomore year and I already have two part time jobs, one as windows system administrator for a consulting firm, and the other as a developer in a startup company.

One of the things I have learned is that certifications like the MCSE mean almost nothing to a good company. Getting beyond the dogma of paper-certs (people who get MCSE certifications without actually knowing squat about computers), the problem is ALL of the material covered in the MCSE curriculum, and almost all of the other low level certifications, is stuff that you SHOULD be able to teach yourself with the help of the Internet. The only certifications that really mean anything anymore are the very high level ones, such as Cisco’s CCIE certs’ (which will pretty much guarantee you a three figure salary in the company of your choice).

Keep in mind that the majority of company’s out there are NOT good companies and usually have really stupid hiring practices, so an MCSE might get you a job. But ultimately your still stuck with a sucky company, and as fun as IT work may seem at first, it really does lose it’s glamour very quickly.

I should also note that if you only get an MCSE you will be qualified for a very limited range of IT jobs (you might even end up right back on the phones at a help desk!). Almost all of the higher level IT jobs will require at least some, if not significant experience with *nix, something you just wont get in an MCSE program.

******* If your too lazy to read my entire post, just read this! *******

My honest recommendation is to go back to college and get a degree. If Computer Science or Computer Engineering aren’t what you want, then most decent tech schools offer four-year degrees in Information Technology which will give you much more of a leg up into IT than a MCSE will, and will actually be useful once you get out into the real world. Even with a CS digree you might end up doing IT work, but in the long run CS gives you the ability to branch out into other jobs and is well worth it.

lmfao

Thanks for the input West Wind, I will consider what you have said and keep my options open for now..

yeah I hate my tech support job.. it's horrible, not the work, but the people who call in are complete ****ing morons..

Today some chick couldn't find the Tools button at the top of IE, I told her something was wrong with her computer and to contact her computer manufacture..

[QUOTE=West Wind]four-year degrees in Information Technology which will give you much more of a leg up into IT than a MCSE will, and will actually be useful once you get out into the real world.[/QUOTE]
This is a gross understatement. There is no measure of how much more useful and knowledgable real IT majors from a decent school are. And if you go to a really good tech school like RIT (lol, plug) it's even better.

I don't know much about technical schools like ITT Tech, but they may be more along the lines of what you want. Associates are never a real substitute for a bachelor's, though, so expect to be obsoleted in the future unless you take more classes to keep up.

the real trick to decide a path is to have contractors build a skyway around all the work and directly to the pot of money and women.

In my experience the certs don't mean sqwat to companies. I know of one place that wants you to have a cert (local hospital), but they pay half what everyone else does. I'm the only guy in my whole company that doesn't have a degree (actually, most of them are phds). W/out a degree, getting and keeping a job in tech seems to be a bit more difficult. You either have to be VERY GOOD and be able to prove it or you end up taking crappy positions. If you can stomach it, I would recommend going back to school. Plus, it can be fun there, think of the chicks.