Researching a Return to College

Last week for Family Home Evening, Mitchell and I read our Patriarchal Blessings to the family. During that FHE, we were both impressed with the importance of the continuation of my education. My blessing strongly emphasizes the need for me to attend "universities" and to extend my education as far as possible. I mostly share this so you can understand more of why I'm picking such "lofty" areas of study.

So, I applied to return to BYU. My application went through a couple days ago, but it could be around three months until I find out if I'm accepted. And, since then, I've been researching majors. My major was previously Family Life, but that never really felt right to me. I've mostly only looked at the majors at BYU, but sometimes at other colleges.

On Sunday night, I suddenly decided to look up career interest tests and came up with the O*NET Interest Profiler at MyNextMove.org. I took the test and they gave me a list of dozens of careers in different job zones, which entitle different amounts of education. I went through and kept only the ones that seemed interesting to me, plus added a few that I've always been interested in. Then I went through again and took out any that didn't have programs anywhere I was considering living. Then, Mitchell and I went through and crossed off all the ones that didn't really fit my personality  (while the profiler thinks I'd make a great CEO, can anyone really see me as the great, powerful, boss-lady?). Right now, the list is at 6 different majors/careers of interest, and all are in Job Zones 4 or 5, which means they all require at least a Bachelor's Degree.

1) Art History & Curatorial Studies; I could go two ways with this, either Conservation & Restoration, with an architecture emphasis, Museum Curating, or Archiving; BYU offers a great program, SCAD in Savannah has a specific Historic Preservation & Restoration program; the website lists the job outlook as Average and the average salary around $50,000.

2) Anthropology with a Sociocultural emphasis; I would prefer to do research and analysis with this, I took part of an Anthro course back in 2007 and I found it so fascinating, but I like the aspect of studying and analyzing cultures and patterns the most; BYU offers a great program; the website lists the job outlook as Average, but looking online mostly turned up teaching jobs, and the average salary around $58,000.

3) Applied Statistics & Analytics; this I would want to take in the direction of analyzing surveys and data for patterns, and such. Most jobs are with the government. I took a Statistics class at BYU before and it was really interesting; BYU offers a great program for this as well; the website lists the job outlook as Average and the average salary around $48,000.

4) English with a Minor in Editing; I want to take this in the specific direction of becoming a Proofreader or Copy Editor because I have always enjoyed doing that. It's super weird, but I love reading things to check for punctuation and such; I could take this at BYU, but probably also at many other schools; the website lists the job outlook as Below Average and the average salary around $33,000.

5) Interior Design; I have been interested in studying this for many years. It's actually almost second-nature for me to analyze a room for it's faults and to think of ways to improve it. There are many times that I've been thinking about redoing a house as I lay in bed and getting so wound up that I can't sleep; BYU doesn't offer this, but several other places do including TCC in Virginia Beach, LDS Business College, BYU-I, and SCAD, which is also in Atlanta, has the #1 program in the country; the website lists the job outlook as Average and the average salary around $48,000

6) Architecture; this is another thing that has always interested me, probably because I just love designing every part of a house; BYU doesn't offer this, but a school just down the road from us does, it's called Southern Polytechnic State University; the website lists the job outlook as Average and the average salary as $74,000.

If this were just about what my "dream job" is, then I want to become a House Flipper, but of historic homes. I'd want to go around buying historic homes, redoing them inside and out, then selling them. I wouldn't even care if I had a TV show about it. I just love the beauty and majesty of old homes, and it makes me sad to see them in ruins or turned into ugly duplexes.

So what do you guys think?