Good News for MBA Grads

Hopefully this trend will continue. Although I find it really interesting that when only 50% of graduates have offers by mid-March it is considered a good year. Why am I getting my MBA again?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052700276.html

Job Update

Well, my wife still hasn't heard back as to whether she has a job in Illinois. We're still hopeful, but it is certainly taking longer than expected. She has found a bit of a loophole around the "must live in Chicago to teach in Chicago" rule: if the job is in a traditionally underrepresented field, then you can get a one year exemption. Special education is definitely an area where there are too few teachers, so we're going to pursue said exception. This opens up a much larger area of opportunity for her and it also gives her more options in impoverished areas (her passion and expertise).

After today, I have six more days at work before I'm officially on a leave of absence. I really had thought that I would be sad by now since I have spent three years here. So far, I wouldn't consider myself melancholy at all. Giddy would be a much better description.

And for all the NPR fans out there, I may be one of the contestants on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! this weekend. I'm one of the alternate contestants should someone else not answer their phone. However, if I'm not on this week, I've been promised participation on a future episode. I can't wait to completely flub whatever game they ask me to play.

Benefits of Being a Kellogg Admit

One of the unforeseen side benefits of now being widely known as a Kellogg admit, is that my coworkers now think I’m a business expert. Whereas I used to just be the kid (I’m 20+ years younger than all of my coworkers), by virtue of having an MBA in the future, I have suddenly become a hot commodity for strategic advice. Previously, when I made a suggestion the response was:

"Oh, you’re just a kid and you haven’t been here very long. We’ve never done it that way, and we see no need to change."

Now it is:

"Hmm. The Kellogg Kid suggests we make a change. He’s going to have an MBA soon, I think we should do what he says."

It isn’t just the people I work with that are doing it either. People from other business units have stopped by my office to ask my thoughts. I feel like the mountaintop guru from the B.C. comic strip. I’m just as competent now as I was six months ago, and most of the things I’ve been asked about are completely out of my area of expertise. It is really quite ridiculous. But still kind of cool.

Job Interview

My wife is off to Chicago today for a job interview tomorrow. She is a teacher and there are about a dozen open positions for which she is qualified in the district where she is interviewing. We are cautiously optimistic about her getting an offer since it would make life less stressful for us this summer. I have no doubt that she will get a job in Chicago, but we would like to have an offer in hand as soon as possible.

Good luck to my beautiful and talented wife!

KAOS

I can’t remember if I have broached the topic of KAOS here, so if I have I apologize for being repetitive. KAOS stands for Kellogg Adventures, Outdoor & Service and it is a usually international vacation (coupled with some volunteer work) that the majority of Kellogg students take the week before first year students start orientation. About 20 people go on each KAOS trip, and partners are invited to attend as well. (Unfortunately, my wife will not be able to go.) There were 30+ trips from which to choose and we are asked to rank our top 7 to 10 trips.

My top 7 choices were:

1) Hiking in Switzerland
2) Hiking to Machu Picchu
3) The Mystery Trip*
4) Some beach trip
5) Some beach trip
6) Some beach trip
7) Some beach trip

If my apathy about going to the beach isn’t already obvious, let me make it clear: I am not a beach person. I don’t have anything against the beach per se, except that I find spending time at the beach very boring. I like to be doing things, preferbably outside and preferably interesting and active things. I know I’m in the minority of people who think this way (my wife think I’m nuts for this and for many other reasons), but I was somewhat disappointed in the choice of destinations. To be fair, there were a handful of additional non-beach trips, but the vast many were to somewhere in the US or to somewhere I have already been (Costa Rica & Brazil). I was also somewhat dismayed that the trips are almost all to North or South America. I know that we only have one week, but I have it on good faith that students at similar schools that are taking similar trips had fewer but much more interesting choices.

Even with my complaints, I’m extremely excited about KAOS. It is going to be a great way to meet classmates and to hopefully make some really good friends. I do hope that I get to go on one of my top three trips, but I also realize that the most important experience of KAOS is going to be building relationships with a new group of friends. It is more about the people than the place.

*Apparently, participants in the mystery trip don’t know where they are going to go until they get to the airport. Past trips have been to some really amazing places.

Proof

Corpus Christi

We spent the weekend in Corpus Christi. It had been on our list of "must see places near Houston" since we moved south, but we had never made the trip. It is only a 2 1/2 hour drive (unless traffic in Houston is horrible...which it was on Friday when we left) so it made for a nice weekend getaway. (On a side note, this weekend was our anniversary weekend.)

We did the usual in Corpus: visited the Texas State Aquarium, drove down to Padre Island National Seashore, and toured the USS Lexington. However, the best part of the weekend - other than spending time with my lovely wife - was the dolphin tour. The tour is located in Ingleside On The Bay (about 20 minutes from Corpus Christi) and has been featured on a number of specials on the Disovery Channel and Animal Planet. We took a small boat out on Corpus Christi Bay and cavorted with wild Atlantic bottlenose dolphins for the better part of an hour. It was amazing. We have seen plenty of dolphins in captivity, but none of those experiences can hold a candle to seeing them as they are meant to be. The weather wasn't the best and the dolphins seemed a bit skittish, but we were still inches away from dozens of the majestic mammals. The tour - the Dolphin Connection - is recommended to everyone.

Flying Time

Time seems to be just flying recently. I can’t believe it has been a week since I last posted and I can’t believe that I only have 20 more days of work left. And it is only going to get worse. For the most part, we are busy every weekend between now and the day we leave. We’re doing a whirlwind tour of spending as much time as we can with those whom we’ve become close to in the last three years. It is sad that we are doing that as we get ready to leave instead of earlier when we had more time.

The bad news about being busy on the weekends is that we now have to do most of the packing during the week. When we moved to Houston, I actually came first. My wife followed about six months later, so this is our first time moving as a family. Previously I had my things and she had her things. Now we have to go through all of our stuff and decide if it is ours or if it should go to Goodwill (or the trash). With much trepidation, I went ahead and reserved a UHaul trailer for our move. My one experience with UHaul was positive, but I’ve heard so many horror stories about their service. Unfortunately the moving company that I normally use (aka my friend Bush and his wife) will be busy that week with wheat harvest and I won’t be able to use their trailer. So I’m forced to rely on what is almost universally derided as being an amazingly unreliable company.

I had nearly forgotten that I was officially a candidate at Yale, too, until I received an email from them a couple of days ago. I went ahead and had them remove my name from the waitlist; something I would have done a long time ago had I remembered.