The Road Back to School

It's pretty tough making the definitive leap of deciding to go back to school, and then actually acting on it. Sure I had been planning on eventually going back to further my education, but "eventually" meant that I could postpone it indefinitely while living in the relative comfort that I do now.

The problem is, I'm driving in third gear right now. Sure it's a nice, cruising, riding comfortably, and I'm eventually getting places, but I'm driving a Ferrari gosh darn it (a mighty good-looking one I might add ;) and I want to kick it up to fifth gear and have some fun!

So what are some of the reasons I'm doing this?

Well, the big one is that Engineering is not for me. In fact, I routinely tell people "Engineering sucks!" I guess it would be more accurate to say, "Engineering Sucks for Me!" Basically, nothing about engineering really caters to my personal strengths.

As most of you know, I'm very much a "people person." I thrive on interacting with people on a daily basis, and honestly, I'm pretty good at it. As an Engineer, I spend most of the day in my office working on this and that. Everything is done on a computer, and most of my interactions with people at work are centered around making some piece of equipment work that I really couldn't care less about.

Engineers are the "worker bees" of the colony. They go through a lot of processes and work to make the perfect honeycomb, but in the end they're recognized as just another worker bee.

On the other end of the spectrum are people who are great, passionate Engineers, who love what they do. My good friend Mark is a great example. When I met him in Middle School, he was the only person in class who owned a graphing calculator and everyone fought over whose turn it was to play this racing game he had programmed on it.

In college, he was a Programming Guru and was highly instrumental in helping me pass my programming classes during my first year. Thank God he's also patient, because I was utterly useless in the beginning (and he might contend that I'm still quite useless, but lets stop talking about things I'm not good at).

Quite simply, he loves computers and technology, is great at focused, applied thinking, and his career as a Software Engineer caters to his strengths.

When I was a Supervisor at Tennis Warehouse, I really excelled. My job was to create employee-work cohesion, maintain high productivity, and train all employees. The job basically catered to my strengths (except for the fact that I had to string hundreds of rackets in between all of this (stringing sucks), and the pay wasn't close to what I make now).

I'm a big fan of leaving my comfort zone to find something better. Sure it's a risk, but so is driving in fifth gear :)

So what am I going to school for? I thought about this for awhile and eliminated choices for a variety of reasons.

Med School - Too much undergrad work required (especially science). It would take two years alone just to take the classes required to apply to med school. The thought of two years of just Biology and Chemistry sounds dreadful. Then, I would have to hope I do well enough on the MCAT to offset my below Med-school average undergrad GPA. THEN, if I didn't get in anywhere, I would have to go to some podunk Caribbean medical school. The time, money, and personal investment is not worth it to me.

Law - Lawyers work far, FAR too much. My career is not my life and lawyers toil in hours of paperwork for a long time before doing anything interesting. Sure they get paid a lot, but it's not worth the hours you put in while you're young.

Psychology - A nice combination of money and people if you get your PhD. HOWEVER, I don't think I'd want to deal with disturbed or depressed people EVERYDAY. What a downer!

Politics - I've never been all that passionate about politics and it takes years of kissing ass and lackey work to become a bonified politician. If I could be an International Ambassador tomorrow though, I would.

Journalism - Sure I like writing, but I don't think I'd want to do it all day, everyday. Not enought interpersonal interaction, and the pay is sketchy. I would love to be a News Anchor, but that's another position that would take awhile to get to, especially for someone with no experience.

BUSINESS! - This is what I'm going to do for a multitude of reasons. First, there are a lot of different focuses that interest me; namely marketing, management, and entrepreneurship. Second, with an MBA, you can enter a VARIETY of different industries, from health care, to non-profit, to technology, to finance. Thirdly, I would get a pay raise (assuming a graduate from a highly reputable school). Fourthly, there are positions with lots of communication required. And last, I would have the option to get a PhD in business and become DR. ARUN!!!

Technically speaking, I suppose I already have an honorary doctorate in Female Attraction (granted by "Arun's School of Awesome Living"). I guess that's why people (and by "people" I mean no one in particular) always call me "Dr. Love."

Teaching as a professor sounds AMAZING! Other than the bulk of the work being interacting with students, having summers off plus winter break sounds AWESOME!

So in preparation I've been studying for the GMAT. I need to do awesome on this test to get into a top tier University. This is one of the reasons for the lack of posting recently. I have quite a few things going on between work, studying, the ebook I'm releasing next month, and a new project that I might be starting with a friend next week.

But have no fear! More adventures are coming and I, Dr. Love, will not abandon my faithful following of readers!