Advice for Career Change: Going Back to School

[Poker-face]

Hello all, I am 31 years old, and am going through a career change. I would appreciate some advice. I have a B.A. in Political Science that I have never used. I have owned and operated my own Construction Company in New Jersey for the last 7 years. Due to the collapse of the new home industry I find myself out of business and pondering what I want to do with the next 30 years of my life. I feel as though I have a blank page, and can write what ever story I want. I am definitely not interested in staying in the construction industry.

I enterntained furthering the degree I already have, but find myself fascinated by Technology, and Math and Science. The school I graduated from offers a Masters Program in Computational Science. For those of you that are like me and have never heard of this degree before, you use math and computers to create models. The director of the program said that I would need at most 2 years of Pre-req's to be ommited into the program. (Maybe less)

My questions are:
1. Does anyone have this degree and if so how is the jon market?


2. Do you think I am crazy for make such a drastic career, and academic change?

3. What other degrees do you recomened in my situation?

Note. I am pretty strong in Math, I took Pre- Calculus this summer and got the highest grade in the class.

Thanks,

Ernest G

 

[lisab]

I really don't know how the job market will be for those skills in 3, 4, or 5 years. But that's true no matter what you do, even if you were to stay in the construction industry. It seems like it's not a bad field to go into.

No, you aren't crazy at all for wanting to change directions! You should see your state of being a "blank slate" as a wonderful opportunity to do explore new paths, IMO.

If you don't totally hate construction yet, you could look to leverage your value in the job market place by going into an engineering field that uses those skills. For example, structural engineering.