Decision Making Process Paper Upon completion of my Associates of Arts degree program in business I was unsure what I should do next. I wondered if I should continue my education with the hope of having a better chance at getting a good career one day, and if so, should I continue at the same college. I didn’t know it at the time, but I used the first step in the decision making process and recognized “that a problem exists and must be solved" (Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A.,2011). The problem was that I needed to figure out what exactly I wanted to do with my life in terms of a career, and should I continue in school and which school should I attend.
I decided that my best chance would be to continue my education in hope of finding a better career. I spoke with my aunt who is an accountant, and she encouraged me to specify my area of business because more degrees in business would be too general. From there, I decided that it would be better to focus on accounting since accountants make decent money and everyone needs an accountant. After about a six month break from school during which I had more time to think about my next move, I began to research various other local universities to see if they had an accounting program and how much it would cost me including tuition, material, room and board, etc. I didn’t realize it, but I was “generating alternative solutions,” the second step of the problem solving process. There were a lot of factors for me to take into consideration such as the comparison of the cost of my old college, the University of Phoenix, with that of other local colleges, the possibility of some credits that I earned not counting or being non-transferable, the convenience of the online classroom, and possibly having to some classes, costing me more money. I concluded that although I would have to teach myself and
learn a program based on math, which is something that is hard enough to do in a classroom environment, and that the online college is year-round with only a break during the holidays, that continuing my education online would probably be better for me. I finally decided to stick to the online