So Why Now?
This is the second part of my three-part series on some recent changes in my life.
After my first post, I think most people’s follow-up question is very obvious. I moved to Detroit for my dream job and I ultimately fell in love with the place where I lived, so it seems incredible counter-intuitive to suddenly want to leave after 3.5 years, so I think its begs the question: Why did I choose to leave?
I always knew in the back of my mind that I might want to do an MBA one day, and as the summer of 2008 rolled around, I also started to realize that I was at the right time of my life and career to start looking at the option. There were really two distinct things I wanted out of my MBA:
First, I wanted to be be more of a generalist in my field. At Bose, I was something of a specialist. Yes, I worked with a number of customers, and with tons of different functions, but ultimately, a systems engineer’s biggest value was his the ability to tune audio in cars. I will say that Bose is really good about realizing this and giving systems engineers the freedom to pursue interesting projects, but on the same token, if there is a particularly drab project that needs an extra engineer, there are only a handful of people that can fill in. Ultimately I felt like an MBA was the only way to give myself a more generalist area of expertise
Second, I also wanted an avenue to get more involved with my community. Going back to my post about Detroit, one thing that really struck me was how much people in southeast Michigan really love southeast Michigan. I never participated in a lot of community work, but I kept an eye on a number of grass-roots non-profits that operated within the area. One that struck in particular was a group called the Detroit Blight Busters, who sole mission was to organize and clean up blight in the streets of Detroit. One of my friends from Toastmasters, was the founder of a group called LandChoices, a group that promotes responsible use of land in building new subdivisions.
Even though I haven’t given a lot back to the community, I’m a very strong believer in people looking out for their own communities (I guess that makes me a hypocrite). Already at Kellogg, I’ve gotten involved with a school tutoring program with one of the worse-off areas of the city, and I’m hoping to go to Zambia to work with AIDS patients as part of the Global Health Initiative.
I haven’t found the case for which I’m really passionate just yet, but when I do, I want to be able to contribute all that I can. I think Kellogg has some unique opportunities to raise my exposure to the real issues in the world, and until I find my true passion, I can at least help others’ contribute to theirs.
As I realized that I really wanted an MBA, a few realizations jumped out at me. The only major part-time program that was local to me was at the University of Michigan, and enrolling would involved surviving a hellish evening commute, curtailing my work travel, and possibly trading away certain opportunities at Bose, because they might involve moving to Boston. Second, at 28, if I really wanted to do an MBA, I realized that it wasn’t worth 2 years of my life just to get any MBA, so I only applied to very highly-ranked schools. (Some of you know my rants about school rankings, so I guess that makes me a twofold-hypocrite). I picked four schools that I really liked and after learning about the schools, I secretly really hoped that either Michigan or Northwestern would work out for me. Ultimately Northwestern did, and that’s how I ended up at the Kellogg School of Management.
