A couple of weeks ago I started playing with the idea of getting my MBA. Actually, I suggested to my (house)husband that perhaps *he* should go back and get his MBA since all he does is play with the stockmarket all day. He laughed at the idea and then I thought more about it and decided that perhaps *I* should.
I've been lucky in that I've always had jobs that I loved and, for the past 8 years, I've had a boss I adore as well. But by deciding to move to Alaska in the mid-90s, I pretty much short-circuited my original retirement plans. I hadn't planned on staying here more than a couple years before returning to "real life" in the midwest. But its pretty nice being the "goto girl" for IT in local government....I get to find and play with a wide variety of technologies, figuring out how they work and whether they could be useful to the organization and how. And this being Alaska, local government encompasses pretty much everything, from the airport and the convention center to streets maintenance and wastewater treatment. So, I'll implement a technology to help make some dept's (or somebody's) worklife easier or better, explain and document it, then pass it on to the sysops crew - only returning if things get mucked up. And there's a lot to like about the rut I'm in, because except for meetings, I get to set my own hours and wear what I please. So now that I'm writing about it, I guess I'm a bit nuts to want to give this up. But I do.
I'll be turning 45 later this month, and when I look out at the horizons, I see that I'll probably be working until I die and, while it hasn't happened yet, it will eventually start getting harder to embrace the constant paradigm shifts that characterize IT. I somewhat resent the idea that, with >20 years in the field, my greatest value relies, and will forever continue to rely, in what I've learned in the past two years. As a technologist, I'll never become an old master, I'll just become old. Also, while I love the variety of projects I get to work on, they're all here in the same place. As magical and exotic as Alaska is, I've explored most of the nooks and crannies and it's gotten too comfortable. I'd like to see more of the world as I work and live, and this means my life has got to change.
So I don't have an actual plan as to what I want to metamorph into yet, but I think getting an MBA in a foreign land will be a good start. Undoubtedly opportunities will become apparent as I make my way toward the degree. It's a bit scary to think about going back to school and which school and where. I'm not exactly your typical MBA candidate. I'm way over the median in age and except that I've always loved what I do, my career has been unexceptional. And while I have to work constantly at persuading and explaining, the closest I've ever gotten to being an "executive" was as a small business owner for four years. Nor have I ever had the responsibility to "manage" people in the traditional sense...my "teams" are always ephemeral from one phase of a project to the next. Oh, and finally, my GPA sucked, although even now I don't regret that in the least. I went to school full-time, and worked full-time, and refused to acknowledge that a good deal of partying wasn't an essential part of collegiate life. So I had a good time while preparing for my future and managed to graduate with almost no debt mortgaging it. But as you can see, I've got my work cut out for me if I want to get accepted into a decent case-based b-school.
So, my first task at hand is take the GMAT. I've pretty much decided that, with my dearth of other qualifications, if I don't get at least a 700, that perhaps getting an MBA just wasn't meant to be...I think getting into a school will be challenging enough with a good score; I'm not sure I even want to try otherwise. Armchair fantasies have their place as well.