A First Step

Warning: This Is A Totally Non-Knitting Post

Today I took the first step in hopefully educating myself into a more secure job, or at least one that can not be easily outsourced to India.

I have mentioned before that my company has gone through some downsizing at the site I work at. At the end of September the number was downsized by 5. At the end of October it was downsized by 13 more. Now we are quickly approaching the end of November and talks of another round of downsizing have begun.

Currently we offer assistance to bankers on 3 floors inside one building (it was 4 floors up until a couple of weeks ago when we closed one floor down). We have been told that by December 1st we will able occupying 1 floor. With this moving of bodies into 1 center, it is inevitable more people will no longer call our site home.

While I would like to think that my 10 years of service with my company would guarantee me a position, one never knows anymore. I've been running the numbers through my head of how many people we have on first shift and know that those who hold my job title on the shift will be downsized. The question is who.

So what did I do today? I enrolled myself into a course through an online school that will hopefully lead me to obtaining a Paralegal Certificate. For a few months now I have been contemplating this. Yes I graduated in May 2007 with a BA in Graphic Communication, but unfortunately the competition for graphic jobs is too great for me when I am going up against the 20 somethings with absolutely fantastic portfolios. So I asked myself what else interests me. The answer was the law.

There was lots and lots (months and months) of research into finding the right online school for myself. I needed to find one that was good (accredited), had a payment plan and would work with my time frame. So today, I bit the bullet and signed up for 1 course at a reduced rate to see if it was truly the right fit for me. If it is, I will then sign up for the certificate program and, because I could take 2 courses at a time, will hopefully have completed the certificate in 7 months.

You should have seen me hovering over the submit button today wondering if I was making the right choice (and because I was handing out a chunk of money for testing things out). I was definitely feeling more at ease when one of the counselors from the school called me within 2 hours of signing up for the course. She was a delight to speak with and answered all of my questions. Now let's just see how the course goes. It's an intensive 4 week course that starts December 8th.