Getting My MBA

I always figured business majors would make a lot of money but live rather dull lives. Forgive the stereotype, but I thought that all business people were like the cliché of the accountant: monotone voice, downcast eyes, hunched shoulders, working day after day to save the company one tenth of one cent per unit.

Now me, I’m more creative than that. I like photography, music, and writing. I want to create things–not necessarily build them, but create them. So I went into computer software. Hey, inventing new solutions is a way of life, right? Not so much. I spend my days hunched over a keyboard, looking for bugs in someone else’s code. Recently I got to write about 4500 lines of new code and it felt like heaven. Until I had to debug it.

Meanwhile, in my business classes, we’re learning about this amazing age of creative business — an era where innovation, flexibility, and a quick mind can give a decided advantage. It’s a time where the winners break the rules of traditional business (but not the law, at least not on my watch).

Wow.

Maybe it’s always been this way. But I sure as heck haven’t always seen business this way. Companies are creative, just to survive.

The difference between business and art, though, is that business is real. I don’t mean to diminish the importance, value, or impact of art. But it’s hard to deny that a failed business can impact hundreds or thousands of people. A failed painting, while potentially tragic, would have a tough time having the same effect.

Bottom line? Business is more exciting, and scarier, than I ever considered. On the bright side, the interests I already have and the skills I’ve developed can be leveraged by business school techniques to give me a fighting shot. That’s exciting.

It will take commitment, hard work, and guts, but I can do it. Look for a new, world-changing business to start by, oh, late summer 2008

Good morning! or Afternoon! or Night! or Kwanzaa! Whatever!

The economics mid-term was a take home, I took it home, vini, vidi, vici (now if I wasn’t a business major, I’d check my reference to make sure it’s right. Bottom line, though, you know what I mean and there’s no ROI for bothering to Google(tm) it. In fact, you’ll probably search for it just to prove that I misquoted. Ha!). I won’t say it was easy, but I think we were very well prepared for it. All the material was covered and explained well in class and the math was straight-forward.

Great. Now I’ve probably ruined my karma and I’ll get a 64 percent or something.

The accounting midterm is coming up in three days. I think that will be, well, not harder but definitely more frantic. We’ll have a couple of hours and I’ve still got a buttload (can I say buttload?) of studying to do. Lots o’ debits and credits.

Although, to be honest, we’ve got this new wave accounting textbook that doesn’t use debits and credits. Really! The idea is that we’re looking to be bidnismen, not accountants, so we can gloss over those piddly little details. I like the concept, even though I already understand the basics of debits and credits, because it simplifies things. A lot of the other students haven’t had accounting before and we would have spent weeks getting them straight. The time is better spent learning the concepts and learning how to read financial statements, if you want my opinion. (if you don’t want my opinion, what the heck are you doing on the interweb?)

The best thing, though, about not having debits and credits is watching the teacher try to explain contra-assets and closing the period without being able to use the terms.

I do have to say, though, that the teachers in these classes are great. The styles of my accounting and economics teachers are very different, but they both really know their stuff. They both have a sense of humor, too, although I think my econ professor tries to hide it sometimes.

Anyway, enough wasting time. I’ve got assets to depreciate!

Well, I am anyway. The added effort and time for two classes (8 hrs/wk) and homework (2-20 hrs/wk) is adding up. And I’m just getting started!

My hope is that I will figure out how to hit my stride, that I’ll catch my second wind, and will be able to hitch onto those Chariots of Fire and keep the pace. Hmm, enough running cliches there? How about clearing the many hurdles and breaking the tape?

I think I had a point there. I’m too tired to remember … oh yeah, that was it. Tired. “What did you expect?”, I hear you say (ain’t the internet amazing?). “You’re the one who insisted on adding to your already busy life.” Well yes, yes I am the cause of my own distress. Thanks, I feel much better now.

The good news, though, is that one obligation is off my plate. My youngest son has finished his football season and I no longer need to wake him up at 5am, drive to cold, foggy football fields 45 minutes away, and get him ready to play — all before 7am. Also, my obligation to take pictures of the game and post them on the website is done. Granted, that was a responsibility I took on myself (noticing a pattern here?), but it was a lot of fun.

Well, if I survived it at 19 I can do it at 39, right? 19 and 39 are practically the same age, when you consider the billions of years that scientists say it took for life to evolve on earth. Heck, I’m a kid!

Now tell that to my eyelids…