Thursday, October 2, 2008

An Executive MBA (is it right for me?)

Well....
During the past few years I have often ponder whether or not I should go back to school and acquire another degree. I have looked at different degree programs and thought about timing options. In the past I never felt it was the right time and I never found a degree that made sense for me to pursue. About a year ago the question came again to my mind and I decided I would explore the options in North Atlanta, since I had not done that yet. I went to an open house for the Graduate Schools at Kennesaw State University. I discovered they had a graduate degree in Applied Statistics, which looked appealing. You know I do a lot of statistics for my work already so it would most likely be a fairly easy degree to pick-up. However as I thought about it and talked with Heather and some friends I realized that it would not be very helpful it my long range goals. What are my long range goals you may ask, good question. I would like to have the flexibility to work in almost any geographic location and have the flexibility to move out of the Manufacturing Sector. Clearly a specialization degree like Applied Statistics would not support these goals. So it appeared that an MBA would most closely fit the bill, however the issue of timing is also an important factor. I do not believe Heather was pregnant with Kyle when I visited the open house at KSU. Knowing we were going to have Kyle cooled my jets a little, however since we have seen that God has blessed us with a very content child Heather and I began conversations again. We talk about the many different factors of timing, the age of our children, the activities they were involved in, the amount of extra work Heather has going to have because of my "school time". We thought about waiting a year or two, what that might mean, and many other things. The Executive MBA program was designed to best accommodate working professionals. They meet one weekend per month (Sat and Sun 8-5) with some meetings on a Friday. The program lasts 18 months. I am working out the details, school records, work schedule, ... so we will see.

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