I originally graduated with an Associates in Computer Networking back around 2010. I never pursued further education as I got a job pretty quickly making more than i thought I could at the time, my first job was at $17 an hour, full time, with no experience back in 2011. Since then my salary has grown without the needs for certs or additional degrees. Though I have taken some vendor specific training along the way.

Fast forward a little over a decade, my current employer is willing to pay up to $5k a year towards a degree - without any sort of payback requirements & I need a healthy way keep myself busy and out of trouble (video games, media, weed, being anti-social etc), I thought about enrolling in a single course right now to test the waters and see if it's something i could get back into. So I looked at my new local community college and they have an associates degree in Cybersecurity with a pathway to a university for both a Bachelors and masters, though that's a ways off though...

I've already applied and saw that almost none of my tech classes from 14 years ago transfer over and it doesn't look like i can test out of them. Though I might be able to take (& hopefully pass) 2 industry certs to gain credit for a couple classes, but those are areas I'm not strong in and probably would struggle to pass.

It seems like IT Security is the new hot thing - It's not something I'm particularly passionate about but my primary focus has been networking (firewalls, switches, wireless...) and it helps further my knowledge and would likely help me land a better job in the future if I were to look.

Has anyone else been in a similar place and have any tips or advice?