[DoreenMichele]

One part accident, one part research. I took a college class that cast a lot of light on things that I had thought were "normal" for people like me, but weren't. Then I researched what my options were for doing something with X that met Y parameters.

[asr1191]

Could you elaborate on this?

[DoreenMichele]

I was a homemaker, military wife and homeschooling mom. I returned to college and took two classes and CLEPed some others to lock in my old college credits so I wouldn't have to start over from scratch if I ever got around to going to school again. If your classes are too old and you didn't complete a degree of some kind, they won't take them as transfer credits.

One of the classes I took was an online Environmental Biology class (possibly not the correct name of it). The big project for the class was to plan a residence in the middle of nowhere that didn't have existing infrastructure, like electricity and sewer, and how you would support yourself in the middle of nowhere. I immediately knew that half of my answer was "Build an Earthship."* This clued me that, no, not all homemakers are fascinated with alternative energy, passive solar design, etc as some means to save money and so forth.

I decided that quarter that I wanted to do something career-wise with the built environment. I pulled out a big book of college info on various universities in the US and scoured it for majors having to do with the built environment.

Architecture was on the list, but architecture programs generally are self-contained and do not take transfer credits of general ed classes. I would have to start completely from scratch.

Civil Engineering was on the list, but required multiple Calculus classes. Although I had a strong math background, I had dropped out of calculus my first quarter in college and never wanted to see it again.

I think there were about six or seven majors on the list. After going through all of them, I settled on Urban Planning as the degree program and career that interested me. Most Urban Planning degrees are Masters programs, not Bachelors. That fall, I enrolled in an online BS in Environmental Resource Management.

At some point, my life was derailed by a serious health crisis and divorce. I never completed my BS degree, though I did later get a Certificate in GIS (equivalent of Masters level work) and I moderated a planning sub-forum for a time that I founded on what was, at that time, the world's foremost planning forum. I currently do some volunteer work at a non-profit that is pertinent to this interest and I have a very part-time job with the same non-profit.

I don't know if this will result in a planning job (unlikely, since I have no driver's license) or exactly where I am going with this, so I didn't really want to get into the details because, in some sense, it is currently a failed dream. But I felt the basic model of "have epiphany, then do some research to flesh it out" might be a useful thought for some people.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship