This is my first post and I want to start by saying “thank you” for providing such a useful forum. The amount of information available from all of your posts is wonderful and I appreciate all of you sharing so generously of your time and knowledge.

Quick background summary: I am a 49-year old father and husband in MN who never completed his degree out of high school. Instead, I graduated from a technical school. I have been in the Information Technology field for almost 30 years. I started as a programmer but have been doing mostly project/staff management for the past 15 years.

I have also been involved in coaching youth basketball for the past 5 years and truly love it. So much so that I want to do it on an ongoing basis. I’ve attempted to get one of the few coaching positions (9th grade level) in my area the last couple of years but they usually go to teachers who want to earn a little extra money. (By the way, my long-term goal is be a high school coach.)

I decided the best way to get one of these positions is by getting a degree and a teaching certificate. As a result, I had my transcripts sent to Excelsior and subsequently enrolled. I have a total of 38 credits from my previous college experience.

I thought a BS in Technology or MIS would be the best way to go since that’s my background. However, I’m not really interested in furthering my IT career. I’m more interested in getting a degree as quickly as possible. I don’t really care what it’s in. So I recently started thinking that a Liberal Arts degree might be the way to go.

One last thing – The coaching positions are typically filled in the September – October timeframe so I’ve set a personal goal of completing my degree by then.

So, based on all this information, here are the questions I’m hoping I can get some feedback and advice on:

- Is my plan of getting a degree and a teaching certificate even realistic?

- Is the Liberal Arts (LA) degree the best way to go if I want to get a degree as quickly as possible?

- Will an LA degree hinder my efforts of getting a teaching certificate?

- Would I be better served by going after some type of physical education degree?

- Is the 6-month timeframe for degree completion realistic for a father with a full-time job?

I apologize for the long post but I’ve really been struggling with these issues and I think it must be holding me back from taking the first step beyond enrolling.

Thank you in advance for the feedback and advice. I appreciate it.

Randal