Holy Schnikey!!

Okay, I’ve just got to lay this out… I can’t WAIT to be done with school! If you make it to the end of this rant/post, you'll understand completely. My school works in 6-month semesters. Like most MBA programs, WGU's is designed to take 2 years. Well, my two-year mark comes to a close on FEBRUARY 28TH, and I am hellbent on reaching my goal to complete my studies in that 2-year time frame!

Apparently I was only semi-present the first 18 months of school, because this semester I will have literally completed 21 units of the total 40 required for my MBA!! I'll spare my fellow nerds the struggle of reaching for their calculators: 52.5% In 25% of the desired timeframe! That indicates two very good probabilities, in quantitative methods-speak:

• It has been a hellacious few months.
• Had I applied myself similarly for the FIRST 6 months as I have the FINAL 6 months, I perhaps could have finished in ONE YEAR. But alas, I don't think I (or my family) would have liked that very much. I have professional associates who have been divorced by the time they finished their master’s degrees, and that was working at the standard pace. Grad school is definitely a pressure cooker!

My past four months have included the following so far:

• An 18-page “case study” paper for Marketing
• THREE brutal certification exams covering these 10 disciplines, each accompanied by weeks of preparation that normally takes months, and one of which proved insane enough that I had to complete it in two attempts:
  a. Strategy
  b. Operations Management
  c. Organizational Behavior/Human Resource Management
  d. Financial Accounting
  e. Managerial Accounting
  f. Corporate Finance
  g. Marketing Management
  h. Quantitative Analysis
  i. Macroeconomics
  j. Microeconomics

NOW, I have SIX WEEKS to complete a 26 to 40 page Capstone Project, which is basically an intensive research project of my desired “career path” and an analysis of my competency to travel said path. Interesting. So... now it's finally time to decide what I want to do when I grow up! Haha. (I'm left wondering if that is really a one-time decision for most people anymore... my belief is that reality speaks differently, and most people ebb and flow through their career, but I digress...)

As if that is not enough, I then get to complete an “Oral Defense” of that project by assembling a "career portfolio," creating a 10-15 slide PowerPoint “summarizing the salient points of my career field,” how I will be successful at it, and addressing 7 competency areas, and then I put the cherry on top with my own production of a video recorded professional presentation lasting 15-20 minutes which is to highlight my qualifications for maneuvering such an obstacle course. LOVELY!

If I go missing for the next little while, don’t answer the phone or return messages, YOU’LL KNOW WHY. :)