u/Ok-Goal-9324

I’ve had two boarding requests and neither of them responded to my initial message asking if they would like to do a meet and greet. I responded to both pretty quickly. One request was made yesterday and then another one around 3 hours ago. Have yet to hear back from either.

I just realized that pending requests will take me off the list of sitters for the dates they requested.

I archived both and now I’m appearing in the search results again. I’m curious, how soon do you archive a request if the client isn’t responding in a reasonable time frame?

I'm in a bit a pickle right now and could use some guidance. I'm 26 years old and graduated with a CS degree from WGU this January. I regret doing it through WGU and now after graduating, I realize I played the game wrong the entire time and now I'm paying for it.

When I was 18 and a senior in highschool, I had no idea what I wanted to do. My parents are immigrants who didn't go to college. My older brother didn't go to college. Deep down I knew I had to pursue a degree if I wanted a chance at earning a decent living. I honestly never had any interest in tech or even knew what coding was at that time. I picked CS because at the time, it seemed like a stable field where I could grow and make something for myself. I took a few programming courses and did well and thought to myself that this is it.

I was a running start student so part time community college classes during HS. I graduated with an associates degree around 2019. My initial plan was to transfer to a 4 year university in the Seattle, WA area. Maybe UW or something. I ended up kind of losing interest in coding during that time and decided to hold off. I worked some part-time jobs for a few months, then covid hit. Took a break from school for a few months. I went back to school at this community college taking computer science classes. They had a 4 year program in software development that I was trying to get through the prerequisites for.

I eventually had my associates degree + extra CS credits. I was debating if I should admit to to community college program or something else. The CC path would have taken me two years. I also discovered WGU and other online programs and what interested me was that they were self paced and I thought this would be a better program for me. I thought I could get it done in less than two years. I could work part-time to pay for the degree and that is what I did. I didn't even consider things like their reputation, networking, and other benefits that a traditional university would have offered.

Well, that degree took longer than expected. Last summer, I was essentially in my senior year. I was around 80% done with the program. I was applying to tons of tech internships from SWE, cloud, networking, etc. and couldn't get anything. It's difficult when you're cold applying to these internships where hundreds of other applicants are, and most of them are from well known schools. I realized at this point that WGU was already holding me back in this regard. I had no network. All they offered was a program called Handshake which is garbage and full of spam.

Here I am, 4 months since graduating and feeling demoralized. Only two interviews for support roles and didn't get selected for either. I worked an entry level IT support job during my internship search, but got let go this January as there wasn't enough work. Not sure what path I want to pursue anymore. I don't enjoy coding so I am not even targetting SWE roles. For the past few months, I've been mainly trying to apply to support engineer, IT support, customer success roles at tech companies as I thought this would be the easiest way to break into a tech company given my experience level. I am even struggling here as these are also highly competitive.

I question if there is a future for me in tech or if I should pivot. There are hardly any entry level jobs. If it makes more sense to pivot, I am fine doing so. I just think the path I took is hurting me. No name school, no internships, basic IT job as my only experience.