The Upstate Life

Monday, August 27, 2007

Back to School

So in just two short days I'll be starting graduate school. After taking the GMAT multiple times and procrastinating the process of actually applying to schools throughout the past year (and then some), I submitted my application to Maryland last month. I did this because a) they have a solid program, b) in-state tuition (which is an accomplishment of itself seeing as how I attended undergrad as an upstate New Yorker, but more importantly to the eyes of the Office of the Bursar, another out of state student), and c) they were the only school still accepting applications for the fall semester in the middle of July (hooray for rolling admissions). I figured I might as well start now than put it off another semester, year, etc.

Even as a 26 year old, I feel somewhat old now that online applications are standard these days. I remember using my mom's IBM typewriter when I was filling out my Maryland paper app back in '99 (just the application mind you, not the essays, etc. Come on now, I didn't live in some antiquated household without a computer. In fact, we had CompuServe on a 286 Epson PC with a 2400k modem and monochrome monitor during the early 90s. Oh yeah, we were ahead of the times.) Anyway, receiving a congratulatory email from Admissions just two weeks later caught me off guard but I was pretty ecstatic about the swift response nonetheless.

So, why am I going back? If I recall correctly, the revelation came when I was at home one night after work playing Xbox and thought to myself, "What the hell am I doing?" Ah yes, a moment of self-realization for a guy in his mid-twenties playing video games (a Live headset may have been on at the time, too). How Gen-Y-ish, right? I'm going back because, frankly, I have no idea what I want to do as a career in the grand scheme of things (as scary as that honestly sounds). I'm sure the rents will love reading that btw. Anyway, my first class stars Wednesday night and will thus commence my part-time trek to a graduate degree. On that note, I should probably cancel my Live account.

Posted by Brett at 2:47 PM |