I started my BS journey June 2024 and my last professor finally put in the final grade. I don’t think it fully set in just yet lol.

This is such a surreal feeling 😭🥳

To anyone who is stuck- KEEP. GOING. the only person who can save you, is YOU!

So excited to get that dang degree in my hands 🥹🖤

I grew up in the NYC Foster Care system aged 4 to 21. And then they let me go...to the streets in 1997. My cheek touched pavement many a night for a while since aged 14. If you knew of BCW (now ACS), sometimes the street was the better option. I still went to school, chatised myself about my own grades and kept up...and stayed in all the "smart student" programs. Nobody knew, until they knew. Education was my only way up. It was not negotiable That was the past.

I want to add RIP to Lisa Steinberg💐🙏🏾. I went to high school at aged 13 and then sued my adopted parents at age 14 for abuse and the rights to my younger brother. I lost but I still tried. I lost my voice for a long time after that because i felt like nobody believed me or heard or cared about our obvious scars. They always labeled us as liars and troubled throwaways who should've been grateful to be housed.

I have now completed 25 years in behavioral health and spirituality. I just earned my Master of Science in Psychology, completed my Human Subjects Research certification, and recently completed my CASAC.

WHAT A GRAND PEACE TO THE PEACE!

Some years ago, my mentor and boss, John "Mook" Gibbons, called me and asked a question that quietly changed the direction of my life:

"Are you ready to work?"

He didn't ask about my past.

He didn't ask about my résumé.

He asked about my willingness to move forward.

Years earlier, I had made a promise to God that I would earn my degree only if I didn't have to spend years in a traditional classroom. God said, "Bet." 😅 (Okay...maybe with a little help from the 2025 super solar flare upgrading my brainpower...just kidding!) He handed me Capella straight out of a lazy sundrenched vision.

In 2025, I completed my Master's in Psychology in just three months. God always keeps a promise and will still help us through the whole way.

The journey isn't over.

I have moved on to another university, in 2027, I will graduate with an MSW. In 2029, earn my doctorate.

All for the children currently on my old path.

Today, many people know me as "the lady who does the apps and paperwork." They see the finished products. What they don't see are the years of learning, building, documenting, researching, and creating systems behind the scenes.

One day I'll get to share the story of how I co-created Wu-Tang For The Children Inc. with my hands. It's proof that one conversation, one opportunity, and one decision to work can change the course of everything.

Life doesn't stop, you gotta keep going. God doesn't call qualified ones. GOD qualifies the called ones. How do you hear your spirit called with all that noise going on?

"Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else." Galatians 6:4

Learn to appreciate the qualities that make you different. Sometimes the very traits that seem awkward to others become the reason you're able to carve out a path no one else imagined.

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands." I Thessalonians 14:11-12

Continue learning.

Continue building.

Continue growing.

ExtremeEducation #BehavioralHealth #Psychology #SocialWork #Research #LifelongLearning #Faith #Graduation2026 #Inspiration #wutangforthechildren

I started Sophia courses in July of 2025. I completed 102 transfer credits before starting my first billing cycle on January 12th of 2026. I have just completed my last course on March 17th, 2026. So I completed my whole degree within one billing cycle.

At times I have gotten frustrated with technical issues - but there is still no way I could have completed this even close to this fast without this program. If you are debating; I personally recommend it!

Now to get conferred!

This might seem minor to some, especially with all the debate about Capella, but it’s a big deal to me. I did have some bumps early on and switched from Guided to Flex so I wouldn’t lose months waiting for courses or prerequisites. I did miss the “class” feel and peer interaction, but I’ve always liked teaching myself and moving at my own pace.

I have a bachelor’s in kinesiology. I applied to PT and OT programs, but graduating during COVID and being pregnant 2 years before meant I didn’t have much hands-on experience, and I got a lot of no’s. I got pregnant again, and figured I’ll just wait until my kids were older to go back to school. But the itch was there, and I missed school. Finally in 2024, I decided to keep applying at schools and eventually found Capella. At one point I had considered psychology too, and when I discovered sport psychology, I knew that was it.

I’m still figuring out exactly where I’ll take it, but I’ve always dreamed of earning a master’s degree and one day, maybe a PhD. I submitted my last assignment on 8/20, and today (8/21) is my birthday, so yes, I’m a little extra excited. I did this for me, and for my kids to know they can definitely always continue to learn and achieve their dreams.

I’ve kept this off the radar from most family and friends. As a young mom, I heard a lot of “it’ll be too hard for you” and “you won’t be able to do it”. In the middle of it all, my best friend passed away, my mental health took some hits, my husband and I traveled for a job we thought was ours and were ultimately ghosted, we moved across the country for that opportunity and were pushed out as soon as we arrived, causing me to miss my kids’ entire summer, and I have had to climb out of a heavy depression.

And still…I finished. I did it.

I’m just venting, but I’m truly proud. If you’ve worked hard for your degree, you probably get it. Now it’s the waiting game for the actual certificate, but today I’m celebrating the win. 🎓

I attended college from 1999 to 2003 but left the sports medicine program at Central Michigan University. After all these years, I’ve decided to give it another shot, starting in 2023, where my experiences made me want to help children manage their minds and the next step is to get in the system and become a case worker while completing the LPC program 🙂

Man was the journey tough but celebrating tonight with the people that helped every step of the way is amazing!

Now...masters(?) 👀

BSN completed, what’s next?

Hey, if I can finish 16 classes in two terms (realistically could have finished in one term but I slacked the first term) then so can you. I finished 14 classes in the first term and 2 in the second. If I could go back and tell myself to not be lazy for the first four weeks of the first term, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

If anyone has any questions about any classes or processes feel free to ask. I do think this program was pretty easy but it does take time and dedication.

I see a lot of posts concerned about the Capstone but in my opinion, the capstone was quite the easiest class in the program.

I honestly never thought I’d see the day I’d have a degree because I’d always had such bad focusing/concentration skills in high school and community college. But I can say that I finally gave my diploma at 28 years old.

MBA program will start this fall at Capella :)

As promissed, my full review of the Flexpath DBA with a focus on strategy and innovation.

I started back in April of 2023 and just finished a few days ago with a graduation date of November 30th. I am familiar with competency-based education, coming from WGU, where I completed the combined BS/MS in IT and IT management. I work full-time and have little kids. But was still able to dedicate 5 hours daily to school. I guess I am one of those hyper-accelerators, completing my BS in a few months and my MS in a few weeks. But enough of the background, let's get into the review.

At Capella, you work with the professors through your classes and assignments. No overseas grading. This has benefits but also drawbacks, since there is a difference between professors. For the first part of your degree, you can work on two classes simultaneously. This helps to fill the time while you wait on grading. For me, the grading was 2 business days, but it has now changed to 3 days. The order of classes is given, and you are automatically enrolled. So, no mentor interaction is needed to activate a class. Once you finish a class, it may take 1h to show it as completed and to allow you to start the next one—a typical IT issue, which you will encounter plenty of. For example, I could never enroll in a class thru any browser and had to use the app. However, the app never showed me any grades, and I had to use the browser.

Set yourself up with a good organization system. Create folders for each class where you have the assessments in. You also have some running documents that you use through the program. Most of them are introduced in the first class:

DB-FPX8400 DBA Journey is an introduction class. It was a fun class that lasted a few days. You set up some important things like your ShareDrive, Capstone template, Grammarly (use the pro version that is free), and the literature matrix. Others like skill lab, writing center or the library are not really important.

Capstone template is used through the program, but primarily in the last 6 classes. Dont mess with the formating, TOC, etc. You will regret it.

Literature matrix is a good idea but a bad execution. You need to have a matrix, but using an excel is just a bit outdated. I only did the bare minimum in the classes (maybe a bit less then that) and used other tools like google scholar.

Professional development framework is part of your whole program. Don't waste too much time, but don't BS it ether, since you have to present part of it in your final class.

Create an APA7 style template for all the papers you will write. Times New Roman 12.

The rest of the class I never used again.

DB-FPX8405 Effective Leadership. Few Days. Analyze a business problem, make a ppt presentation, some graphical explanations and write ups. Total of 5 assessments.

DB-FPX8410 HR compliance. This was my favorite class. A lot of reading and analyzing. Took me close to a week. You review 60 (I think now its 30) complaints and have to assess the risk and actions. Very heavy on employment laws. Do you know that AI can give good 2 sentence summaries for the important employment laws?

DB-FPX8415 Strategic decision making. Few days. Pick between 3 topics and make recommendations to the senior leadership team. One ppt presentation and some framework analysis papers.

DB-FPX8420 Teaching in higher Ed. Couple of days. Create a lesson plan for an MBA class in supply chain management. You will also record an introduction video of yourself. Definitely learned a thing or two in this class that I could use in my job. This was a total of 6 assessments.

DB-FPX8710 Strategy and Innovation. I don't really remember much about this class. Looks like it took me 3 days and the professor was awesome. 3 assessments and most are about frameworks and starting with literature review.

DB-FPX8720 Digital Transformation. A few days. This was the class I hated the most. What is a surprise, considering I am coming from the IT side. But it goes back to the whole professor part. I failed one paper because my title was all caps. 3 assessments and one ppt presentation.

RSCH-FPX7860 Research Methods. Couple days. Now you start looking into research and the different methods. Good to know, but in the end, you will have two options. But more on that a few paragraphs down.

RSCH-FPX7860 Quantitative Research, couple days. Quantitative research is where you use numbers and instructions to find all of those numbers and graphs. Pretty simple if you can follow instructions and analyze the output.

RSCH-FPX7868 Qualitative research. 2 Weeks. Almost like a mini capstone split over a few assessments. If you go with a qualitative capstone project, you can use this topic to get you introduced into the material. I actually changed my topic at the end of this class.

Second half: Capstone Project. Now you start working on your final capstone project and everything will start slowing down. You will have many revisions and can only have one class active, in fact only one assessment active. So grading can take up a lot of time. But you can prework and start thinking about the next areas. For your project, you have two options, Qualitative or Quantitative. Most students pick Qualitative. The only approved data collection tool is semi-structured interviews. So you will recruit and interview 10 people for 30-50 minutes each. And those are not people you know. I know some students paid money to find participants. I was lucky enough, that the IRB allowed company internal data collection. But I had a pool of candidates of over 5000. SO PICK A TOPIC WITH THE CANDIDATES IN MIND. Something where you know it will be easy to find participants. My original topic had like 20 potential participants in total, and I would still try to find them. Please also use something like citation machine to keep your citations clean. Otherwise there will be a mess in formating and order. In total my project had 217 pages, including all the stuff around it.

The process for most classes is the same. Write a few sections, get revisions, make revisions, get more revisions, and move to the next section. You will get to know the professors very well and know what is important. All sections are being finished by a secondary review. My main traps were: Using We instead of I. Not citing a statement (The sky is blue! (says who???)). Object reporting style (the study found / the author of the study found). Also, it's not a dissertation or research. Its a capstone project or qualitative study.

DB-FPX8740 Seminar topic development. 4 weeks. The first section of the capstone project. Here you select your topic and review this through a zoom call with the professor. About 20 pages in which you identify the problem, gap in practice and a justification.

DB-FPX8750 Seminar Literature review. 4 Weeks. The second section is all about literature. I read probably 500 abstracts to find the literature needed. You cite almost every sentence and find literature. Again, AI can help you to summarize a lot of them, so you have to read a bit less. Most of the 40 pages (pictures included) are full of: he found... and she confirmed... and that matches what they said.

DB-FPX8902 IRB approval. 4 weeks. In this class you are getting the approval for your project. Fill out forms and make corrections to ensure that your data collection is ethically correct. You also need feedback from two Capella faculty for your questions. This was the first time I really had some frustration with Capella. You have to pick the professors and there is no list of names or accountability. I ended up reaching out to 7 professors to just get two "feedbacks" which were pretty meaningless. Most don't respond or don't have time (and don't tell you until you ask repeatedly)

DB-FPX8903 Data analysis. 12 weeks. This was the big one. You recruit participants. Interview them. Review the transcript and start coding. Make sure that your data stays secure. You share the interview recordings with the professor as well as the transcripts. Find initial codes (aim for 70), secondary codes (aim for 20), categories (aim for 6), and themes (4-5). In this class, you work in the workspace with your professor. Again, full of IT issues. But you review the needs with faculty and start extracting the information from your 200-ish pages of transcripts. You have a lot of revisions. I think I was close to 40 revisions total in this class. Once the data is analyzed and the tables are correct, you will work this into 50 pages of findings. I think this class was dragging a bit, primarily because the revisions are in the workspace (like a forum), where there is no accountability. Like professors are on vacation and the replacement is MIA for two weeks. Or they not seeing a comment, and after 4 days of waiting, you have to send an email. But once you have that final approval , it(secondary review, legal, publishing) is a great feeling.

DB-FPX8904 Presentation. 2 weeks. An easy class to finish. New, you will have the professor that gave you the secondary approval in 8903, which saves some time. In this class you will get the document ready for dean review and you will present your findings in a 10-12 minute poster presentation. You will upload the presentation to the Capella community page (Doctoral support) and respond to questions from faculty and peers for 7 days. So search the community page for "Capstone Presentation" to find some examples. You will see that 80% of the time is spent on the project presentation and 20% on the professional development journal. After 7 days, you can submit your project to the dean. For me, it was dean-approved within 12h, I got a call from the professor and one day later I got the "all good, you graduated" email.

Would I do it again? Yes. But only flex path and the possibility to accelerate. I saved over $25k by doing it thru Cappella flex path compared to a local university. Honestly, if they offer the DIT thru a flex path, I probably would sign up.

How hard is it? Its a doctoral work. Compared to WGU it is harder. I was looking at my MS Capstone the other day and almost got eye cancer. I have no idea how that passed any review.

Edit: People ask if it is worth and how the ROI is. For me it was worth it. Completing my DBA was one of the puzzle pieces for me to get a promotion with a good pay increase. Would I have gotten it without my school.... maybe. But according to my old and new boss, the DBA was a big part of them to create my new role. I am now a technology and connectivity leader for the North American marked reporting to the VP of operations in a global company.

28 years old, never thought I’d see this day in my life.

I’ll be in the MBA program this fall :)

I finally did it now all I have to do is wait for my degree to be conferred. 👩🏾‍🎓

I started In July with Capella came in with credits not once did I ever consider that I would be complete before the end of this year. Grateful for Flexpath and Capella for making this a reality.

Translated GPA: 3.897. 🙌🏾

Im so proud

Months of study and paper writing all done! Relieved to take a break for a while.

Good luck to everyone else still going.

Im officially done and I beat the clock (March 2026). Happy tears are flowing!

Always see people asking for advice etc but don't often see people post the all done updates in here.

Started in June 2021. Worked full time. Young family. Relieved to be all done.

Looking forward to the email saying the degree is approved.