Saabir Martinez is an online bachelors degree student at DeVry University. He is studying business administration with a concentration in accounting.
Saabir relies on self-discipline and strict time management to stay focused in his online classes. After graduation, Saabir plans to return to his home town of New York to apply to law school.
I chose to complete the majority of my bachelors degree in business administration online because I have easy access to course materials and can work at my own pace. Unlike a traditional school, I don’t have to rely on my teacher’s schedule to move forward with class assignments.
The biggest tip I would give potential online business administration students is to make a serious commitment to online education. Online school requires hard work and a dedication, even though people assume that online school is easier than traditional education.
Though there are many online schools that offer business administration degrees, I chose to get my education from DeVry University because the school has a physical campus. I attend on-campus classes so that I am able to access in-person tutors for subjects that I find more challenging, like mathematics. Overall, I am confident that completing the majority of my coursework online will provide me with the tools necessary to be successful in business administration.
A business administration degree trains students to manage every aspect of a business. This requires a broad range of coursework, including marketing, accounting, management and finances.
In addition to teaching students about the different components of business management, most business administration programs require students to develop a specialty within business. For instance, my specialty is accounting. In simple terms, accounting is the way people organize and interpret financial data in order to make monetary decisions. Accountants make financial data readable and meaningful.
Typically, a bachelors degree in business administration at DeVry University takes students 4 years to complete, which is the amount of time that I expect that it will take me. In terms of coursework, my program includes a combination of general education classes like English as well as classes in accounting, finance, Excel and mathematics. Since my specialty is accounting, I will eventually take several in-depth classes about taxes and budgeting as well.
My coursework culminates in a semester-long internship during my senior year. The internship is an opportunity to see what an accountant actually does and conduct some auditing work on my own. DeVry will place me near my home in California.
My online classroom experience has met most of my expectations. Initially, I expected to have some trouble comprehending the material since almost all of our class material is presented in e-books, which I never used before attending DeVry. Using the e-books has taken some adjustment, but I feel comfortable with them now.
I also anticipated the other drawback of online schooling, which is the lack of a social life. Students have moments of connection with each other in a physical classroom which isn’t really possible in an online setting. Online students have to balance education and socializing because those generally do not intersect at school.
However, studying online is not a completely solitary experience. I interact with my peers several times a week through online discussions and e-mail. In a way, online classes are like communities because there are often students from a wide variety of cultures and lifestyles.
I am only in my second year of the program, so I think the most useful classes are yet to come. So far, I have enjoyed the opportunity to unite topics that have interested me since high school including finance, business, accounting and law. All of these classes have been useful and interesting to me.
Students in the business administration program at DeVry interact with professors using e-mail, online chat rooms and discussion boards. We can also call our teachers on the phone or set up a video conference. We have plenty of contact with our instructors for classes like Excel, for example, because these kinds of modules provide training and the instructor doesn’t need to be a constant presence.
However, in my opinion we need more contact with instructors for other kinds of classes. I don’t enjoy the feeling of being disconnected from my online teacher, especially for important classes like accounting. Holding a video conference is an option, but it is a complicated feature that lacks a set of user-friendly instructions.
Since I am still in the early stages of my bachelors degree in business administration, I don’t have any regrets about my academic performance or the choices I have made so far. But if I could go back to high school, I would participate in as many activities as I could in order to gain more social exposure. I think it is important to have an active social life in high school. The more people you know and have connections with, the easier it will be to gain recommendations and build contacts for your future education and career.
In addition to putting more effort into networking, I wish I would have stayed in my parents’ house while studying online instead of getting my own apartment. Right now, I am very busy because I am paying for college by working part-time. Between work and school, my free time is very slim. Staying with my family would have lessened my financial strain and eased my schedule a little bit.
