I am just a few courses away from finishing my bachelor’s degree. I will finish it this year! It has been pretty crazy to realize that I am so close to done. It has been a long journey, but I am so happy that I am so close to being finished! Now, regular readers may be thinking by now that it’s kind of crazy for me to be working on a degree right now. I am homeschooling.I have two children with special needs, which require five therapy sessions between them each week. And I work at home doing something I love that doesn’t require a degree.

So why in the world do I even worry about school? Why waste all that money paying for an education that I’ll “never use”? Why spend late nights studying and typing papers when I don’t really have to?

Why Get a Degree as a Work at Home Mom?

Why a work at home mom is finishing her degree, even though she never plans to hold an office job again!

I Started, I Will Finish

First and foremost, I really hate failing at things. I’ve never been one to quit and give up halfway through something. When I started my college, I had every intention on finishing my degree, finding a great job and working full time for the rest of my life. Or until I retired. Whatever. I started my degree in business management, because that’s the easiest degree to change based on many different career paths. Back then I wasn’t homeschooling. Back then words like “autism” and “global developmental delay” and “sensory processing disorder” were things that happened to other people, not me. Now things are very different. I will not be getting any sort of corporate job in the foreseeable future. I will continue to find work at home options that fit around my family and my schedule. I will write my blog and connect with other mothers dealing with a similar season of life. But I will still finish my degree. I teach my kids that when you start something, you finish. You don’t just give up when it gets hard or we don’t feel like it anymore. So I will finish.

It Will Help Advance My Career

When I decided to look for work at home opportunities, there were a few that I tried out that just weren’t for me. Either I worked for $1/hour or less, or they wanted me to follow their set schedule. Neither of those really work for me! Once I found freelance writing, it was like everything fell into place, finally. I can write on my schedule, and make sure that I have time for what’s really important, my family. The type of freelancing that I do involves writing website content, blog posts, and managing social media accounts for brands. Essentially I am helping them with their marketing, so I have switched my degree to marketing management. Luckily with my school the process is extremely simple, and it only adds two more courses to my degree plan! While I can do this job without a degree in marketing, having that educational background allows me to give my clients confidence that I know what I’m doing and I can help take their business to the next level.

My Boys Will Have No Excuse

This is the reason that I keep going when I’m tired, and I never want to see another note card again, and I really want to give up school. I’ve held onto this reason since I was 16 and pregnant with Mr. C. I had to finish high school because I never wanted him to say he didn’t have to because I didn’t. I never wanted him to use my quitting or failing as an excuse to not live up to his full potential. So I continued to take AP courses, and I graduated high school on time with my class. For that same reason I started college when it would have been much easier not to. I had kids, and work, and a million other excuses not to go. But I never wanted my kids to tell me “I don’t have to go to college, you didn’t and you’re fine!”. And I will stay in and finish what I started. I will graduate because when my kids are in college and they have a rough time, I do not want them to quit and tell me that it’s okay because I quit. That said, I don’t think that college is for everyone, and I won’t force my boys to go. I just don’t want me to be their excuse.