If We Can Dream It

I haven’t been blogging much lately. This is partly because October and November are traditionally my busy time at work. And perhaps partly because I started this blog with a lot of things to say, and now that I’ve worked through the backlog, keeping current just doesn’t take as many posts as it used to.

But there’s a bigger reason, a sweeter reason as well: Last month, I began graduate school, part time in the evenings. I’ve begun a Masters of Science in Administrative Studies, with a concentration in Innovation and Technology.

This feels both ironic and quite fitting, given that I spend a certain amount of my professional time encouraging computer science undergraduates to continue on to graduate school, and here I am in my 40’s just starting a Masters degree myself. One of the things I’ve heard, and have said many times myself, is that it’s easier to stay in school than to go back. If you take some time off school after your Bachelor’s degree, you may never manage to get back for that Master’s or PhD.

And I’m sure there’s some truth to that, as I try to readjust to doing homework in the evenings, and studying for exams, even while helping my teenage son to do the same. I feel a little awkward sometimes, being the oldest student in the class. At least the professors aren’t younger than me…yet.

But the deeper truth is that for me, going back to graduate school is easier than continuing on after my undergraduate work would have been. Because for me, the hurdle of figuring out that I even wanted to go to graduate school, that it was even an option, was too high at the end of my undergraduate career. My undergraduate adviser warned me that she wasn’t very good at mentoring, and she was right: She never encouraged me to continue my studies, despite my excellent track record.

I’ll still be blogging here, of course. In fact, if I can figure out a relatively small, publicly-traded company that has some connection to the Disney empire (yet remains an independent financial entity), and is preferably a retail or manufacturing operation, I may well post one of my papers here. Any suggestions for a company that fits the bill? Remember, it’s gotta be publicly traded.

If we can dream it, we can do it. I don’t know if I’ll succeed in this Masters degree program; I can only keep taking the next right step, writing my papers, doing my homework, showing up for class. But I do know that there were times that I thought it would be impossible for me to go to graduate school, and now here I am. Yes we can, yes we can.