It’s my last night here before my adventures start! I can’t wait to be flying around a bit and finding a rhythm to work in. As soon as the dust settles, I’ll need to start tackling the goals I laid out. I’ve been spending a lot of time with my precious Missy, who is just so fun to play with. It’ll be sad to wake up without her, but hopefully we’ll be reunited before long. I’m looking forward to change and that’s about all I can think about now.
It’s Sunday night and for the first time in over two years, I won’t be joining the rest of the work force as they begin another work week tomorrow. It’s a peaceful feeling, to be able to sleep when I want to and not worry about waking up at a particular time. I’m excited to be able to wake up tomorrow and realize that I don’t need to drag myself up at the crack of dawn to drive for two hours just to get to work. It’ll take some getting used to, since I even woke up yesterday thinking that I might be late for something.
For the next week, I have tasked myself with two very simple things: pack and read. Panda’s in town so I’ll be hanging out with him at night. While he’s at work I’ll need something to do, so it’s a perfect time to get some reading in. My reading list is full of awesome texts and I look forward to everything these books have to teach me. Being able to do it by the pool, at the beach, or in a dessert/drink shop makes it all the more amazing. I’m pretty thrilled to spend my days with less structure and more go with the flow choices. Hopefully it will inspire a lot of creativity and productivity too!
Well, over the course of the last couple days, it has become public knowledge that I put in my two weeks and will be leaving my company at the end of the week. Today one of the CEOs said bye to me since he’s off to NY tomorrow and I won’t be seeing him again before I’m done. It hasn’t quite hit me yet that I won’t be seeing these people again (at least not in a consistent manner). The good thing is I will likely need to come back to train my replacement whenever they find one, so it’s not completely the end of seeing my coworkers! I’ll definitely miss them a lot.
Still, it’s time for me to move on, both personally and professionally. I don’t get to see Panda nearly enough, so I want to dedicate some time to that. Also, I have some of my own things I want to pursue and it’s a great time to do so. I don’t feel I can really give it a solid effort unless I were to work on it full time, so that’s the plan. Luckily, I have so much support around me and not a single person has discouraged me from my dreams. I have a lot to look forward to and I’m excited to be able to set my own schedule and take control of my life in ways I haven’t yet.
This week, I have done my best to “rally the troops” as I like to say, encouraging them to all join me for my lunch plans. Many have been working on various health efforts, like juicing or the caveman diet, so they don’t get out to lunch anymore. Happily, they have been taking a break from their efforts to save money or lose weight and I’m hoping everyone will come out Friday to the last hurrah! After all, it’s the people who make the place what it is and it’s the people I’ll miss.
You know, I think it’s time that the gadgets in our lives get extremely customizable. Why is it that I can’t set my lights to turn off at a certain time or the toaster to start toasting just minutes before I get downstairs? Why can’t I set my computer to turn itself off after that program is downloaded? Seriously, with all the cool things that our electronics can do these days, I’m surprised that I can’t control them beyond the simple power button. In fact, I think everything should not only be programmable to do what you want when you want, there should be an app that allows you to control it while away (like those apps for home security systems).
Imagine this: you start your day when your alarm goes off at a given time. You like to snooze, so you sleep in a little more, but when the alarm goes off the next time, the lights have been set to turn on. Now it’s bright in the room and you’re awake. You get up and wash up as the toaster downstairs starts heating up the bagel slices you put in there last night. The hot water dispenser doles out one cup’s worth of water, which brews the bag of tea you had waiting in a mug. By the time you get downstairs, your breakfast is ready for consumption! After scarfing down the bagel and sipping on your tea, you head out for work. At the end of the day, you’re heading back and decide to use your phone app to have your water heater dispense another cup of hot water so you can get home to a warm cup ready for drinking. You get on your personal computer and set it to turn off once all the files you’re uploading are done. As you’re winding down for the night, you fall asleep in bed before you even realize it, but that’s ok because your lights turn off for you at midnight anyway.
How awesome would that be? I don’t want my devices to be smart necessarily, but I want to be able to control them in such a way that they appear “smart” in a sense. I really think we should be able to set things to turn off or on at a certain time or with some specified trigger. Things would be so much more efficient that way! It’s not like the technology isn’t out there already. We have timers controlling things like when the sprinklers go off, so why not apply that towards any other technology we use? I’m really looking forward to the day I can do that.
It’s down to the wire for my HBS application and I don’t think I’m going to make it. I have been unable to get in touch with two of my recommenders and the third says he did it, but the system didn’t register anything. By the time we start work tomorrow, second round applications will be due (and all too soon overdue). It was disturbing to come to this reality, since I really want to get into b-school this fall, but at least there is still one more round. While that round is extremely tough since most of the class will already have been formed, I hold out hope that I will be able to stand out.
I’ve still got another day and a half to get my Stanford GSB application submitted in time for round two, so I’m going to put all my effort towards that and this time I will not fail. I will spend all day tomorrow making sure my recommenders get those recommendations in before we leave work. I won’t accept another missed deadline!
Oh what a marvelous thing has happened! It has been years since I started developing and talking about my business philosophy, one of the key components of which is a business partner. Finally, I have stumbled across the first viable lead and I am thrilled! I’ll call him Maven, since that’s what he is as per Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. Maven and I both have a strong interest in business and our conversation recently led us to budding partnership. He has a fantastic idea for a business and I have all the eagerness and complementary skills that he could ask for.
I feel like it’s been a long time coming, so it’s really rewarding to find someone who has a vast number of skills that I don’t, and who needs the very skills that I do have. At the same time, we share many values and both believe in the synergy that can be created to make a partnership more than just 1 +1. It’s just enough overlap to agree on the important things, and plenty of complementary abilities to pack a powerful punch. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect scenario! If nothing else, 2011 will go down in history as the year I met Maven. A very fortunate experience indeed!
Whether or not we are able to get this idea off the ground (and I am confident that we can and will), I have a great feeling about just knowing Maven. There’s a lot to learn from him and he is a fantastic conversationalist! I’d been craving the kinds of discussions we’ve been having – about business, personal philosophies, psychology, and so many other topics. We’re both very curious, inquisitive folks who think a lot, ask a lot, wonder a lot. I’ve never had someone ask me so many “whys” about my beliefs and it really helps me understand myself better.
In addition, I got a kick out of the fascination we both seem to have with personality tests and what can be gleaned from them. I love reading personality profiles! I feel like I learned a lot about him when I read the description of his “type,” whether or not all of it was accurate. At least it gave me a good basis for understanding the type of person he is. The more I get to know, the better it all seems. With our work ethics, determination, and combined efforts, I wouldn’t put anything past us. You just wait!
I finally got my GMAT over with! That’s the first big hurdle in the process and I did alright with a 710. It’s not as good as I had hoped I could do, but right on par with how I had been performing on practice tests. It’s also a good enough score that it won’t hurt me in my application, though I was shocked to find I only scored in the 76th percentile on the quantitative section, even with a scaled score of 47 (which I thought was decently high). In the verbal section I got a scaled score of 41 and that put me in the 92nd percentile, which was also the overall percentile I ended up in with my 710. Curious – do many people do that well in math but poorly in English? Am I competing against a lot of foreign test-takers or something?
With that off my back, tomorrow I’m heading off on a site visit to check out both Berkeley and Stanford’s MBA programs. I’m hoping to make some friends with my fellow travelers, all of whom either took a class with my GMAT teacher or know someone who did. Hopefully we’ll all end up at our dream schools! I’m looking forward to seeing the Stanford campus again and maybe even learning something I didn’t know that will help me with my application. Once I get back from that, it’ll be time to buckle down with my application essays! At least I’ve gotten the recommendations underway, with all of my recommenders aware of the questions and deadlines.
I have just over a month to complete my applications and I’m really hoping I can put together a strong profile that will get me in. I don’t have as much work experience as most of the other applicants, but my experience has been a super-condensed rollercoaster ride that has taught me a lot. That should make up for a lack of years worked. That’s the great thing for working for a small company! You end up learning and growing so much more than you might have at a large corporation, espeically with all the hats you have to wear. I’ve even been adopted into the engineering team more recently, since I’ve been working with our CTO on some things that he used to take care of.
It feels good to have time to dedicate to my applications now, but those essays are daunting. I really want to present myself in such a way that they can’t help but take me. That will be the hard part!
Today’s my mom’s birthday! I can’t believe a year has come and gone. I remember this time last year she wasn’t here, so we didn’t really celebrate. This year I’ll be going back to see her later in the week and hopefully we can get a nice dinner in before resting up for an early flight that she’ll need to catch. Soon, I’ll have my birthday too. My how it all flashes by!
I feel like there hasn’t been that much to pace my life by, since a work day is pretty predictable. I’m nearing two years of employment at my company and so much has changed, yet the pattern of each day makes things blend a lot more than during my school years. Within the next year or two I’ll be changing all of that though – it’s about time for a shift in my life. Going back to school will offer me a change in scenery and pace of life. I always enjoy shaking things up a bit!
For now I’ll just prepare for that next stage and marvel that in 2012, my parents will be twice my age! Has it really taken that long to get to this point? Sometimes I feel older than I am, but of course there is still so much more to grow.
I did it! I finally scheduled my GMAT exam, which brings me one step closer to getting my applications ready for b-school. It’s in just under two weeks, so I’ll definitely need to do some final prep work over the long weekend. After that, I will transfer all my energy towards applications and pump them out in a month. It all sounds daunting, but a little bit of pressure usually gives me the motivation I need to take care of business!
I’m optimistic that I can put together a profile making me a strong candidate, but the reality is that only 5-10% of applicants get in and I’m definitely on the lower end of the scale when it comes to work experience. Hopefully I can make up for that and state a good case for my qualifications. The good thing is, it wouldn’t kill me to get another year under my belt and I’m not in a huge rush to get an MBA right away, so even if I don’t get in to Harvard or Stanford (the only two I’m applying to this year), I’ll just try again next year.
Of course I’m definitely hoping I do get in for the entering class of 2012, but at least I have the luxury of more time if I need it. There is definitely a lot of experience I can still accrue with an additional year. However, I feel there are a lot of opportunities at work out of my reach without an MBA to back me up. Getting that degree would really help me over a hump in my career that otherwise may take two or three times as long to overcome.
I’m looking forward to getting the test out of the way so I can focus all my energy on my applications. If I can, I’ll definitely want to make a classroom visit too!
I’m not sure why, but I have had an aversion to following seasonal trends in the past couple of years. I guess it’s because after reading so many articles about Christmas, New Year’s, or the like, I don’t want to be contributing to all that. After all, how original could you get with that stuff? Instead I prefer to enjoy the season, where people are hopefully making positive changes in their life as they look to family and re-evaluate their priorities.
This year I’ll be vacationing in China with my parents, which is a great way to spend the holidays. It’s too bad Panda couldn’t be with me too, but we can do plenty of trips in future years. I’m really looking forward to going back to China; it’s been 3 1/2 years and it will be nice to visit again. You can be sure that around that time I won’t be writing about a tree and presents! I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other wonderful things to write about and thank goodness for that! If you want the same old holiday stuff, go watch some TV. :-P
