Conditionally

So, if you read my last post, you now that my experience with the GMAT was painful. And that the powers that be decided I had to take the damned thing. Yeah, whatevs. What you do not know, unless you delved into the comments, is that I found a big pair of lady balls and called the MBA Advisor at my first-choice school. And told her the story. About how I meet every single requirement but the damned score breakdown. So her words? Basically she told me it had to be a fluke, that either I got some really difficult questions in the beginning and that psyched me out, or my math section was abnormally hard—Basically, that there had to be a reason that the math score didn’t match up with my academic record or the remainder of my GMAT score. She’s right. We started talking about the courses I have taken and my performance in them. Corporate Finance. Financial Accounting. Stats. Calc I and II. A. A, A, A, A. I even got an A in that damned corporate finance class and am thanking my lucky stars that I do not have to take it again at a 600 level lest I kill myself. Seriously. So wtf gives with the GMAT math? Because the GMAT is an asshole of epic proportions. But…She told me to NOT SCHEDULE THAT TEST UNTIL I HEAR BACK FROM  HER. She said she was taking it to the dean.

So anyway, she had me fax my unofficial score report to her. I got no response, so I gave her a day or so and called to see if she got it, which is when she asked for my resume. By now they have received my app, my resume, my unofficial GMAT score, and my official transcripts. All that was left were my letters of recommendation, cover letter, and hard copy of my resume. I mentioned as much in my email and that I was sending those in this week. I was waiing for a phone call from her when a funny thing happened.

I decided to empty my email inbox of spam. There were so many emails where I had been out of the loop recently that I was about to just declare email bankruptcy when I spotted it. She had replied.

“Andrea, with your existing GMAT score, your excellent GPA, and the resume you sent, you are fine for conditional admission. Do NOT retake the GMAT.”

Oh. Ok. Yeah, no more of that GMAT shit. And then I stopped to think about what she said. By then I had closed the email. So I reopened it. And got hung up on the word “conditional”. Until I remembered that my BSBA will not be completed until September and they cannot grant me full admission into the MBA program until that is finished. So what did she really tell me?

She told me I’m getting in. To one of the top B-schools in the whole friggin’ country. Not only that, but to the most competitive program at one of the top B-schools in the country, since it means they will basically be waiving all of the first year MBA courses for me and I will finish the degree in a year. Basically, because of this, you have to have your shit together to even avoid them not throwing your app in the garbage immediately upon receipt.

She told me that I fucking did it.

And then I started crying. And I picked Evan up and swung him around. And Zachy and I danced around the room. And I anxiously waited for John to come home from class so I could tell him. But I didn’t get to tell him because, as soon as he pulled into the driveway, Evan was running toward the car, shouting, “Daddy, Mommy did it!!! She did it!”

I did it.

I really did.

Conditionally.

No Rest For the Wicked

I swear, everybody, that this next comment is going to make me seem like a braggart. I’m not. I’m really, really not. But some people have to really work at academics. I am not one of those people. From grade school, I have handled school work with ease. My business classes have been a cakewalk other than the demands on my time and the volume of work to be done. It isn’t that the work is demanding–it’s just overwhelming for my current schedule.

I am currently in a statistics course. It seems like common sense, and I have an A in the course with only two more assignments to be graded before winter break. But I swear, some of the assignments have been insanely difficult. Maybe it is because it is difficult to learn the intricacies of these complex mathematical formulas online with no face time with my professor. I can do the work but it is actually taking a certain amount of effort. Monday, for example, I had to complete a project that involved a 250 sample size, including organizing the data, computing solutions for problems regarding the data, and presenting it all in spreadsheet form along with an APA-formatted paper analyzing and interpreting the meaning of the information I extrapolated from the data. All of this was done after working all weekend and not sleeping. I literlly came home from work on Monday morning and sat at my desk at 7:30 AM and not completing it until 1AM Monday night/ Tuesday morning. At one point, whether it was from exhaustion, stress, being overwhelmed, or whatever, I actually broke down into tears. In the process, John kept looking over my shoulder, shaking his head and exclaiming how no human could possibly understand the stuff I was being asked to do for the project. He brewed me 5 pots of coffee throughout the day. And then, once completed, I had to hurry and finish the 46-slide PowerPoint presentation on the organizational effectiveness of my current employer. By the end of the night, I was nauseous, my fingers were swollen from feverishly typing, my back/ neck/ head ached. I was still sore the next morning, and didn’t want to even see typeface for a while. No Kindle, no blogs or blogging, no reading.

I am almost finished. I will be on winter break from Monday through January 8th, when I will return to a whirlwind of classes before I can move on to the MBA. As a matter of fact, I will have 6 more 5.5-week sessions, back to back, with 2 classes each session. For the immediate period of time, I am working every hour that is available. I have 3 days off between now and January 4th, and none of those are holidays.

And now starts my countdown for my GMAT and working on grad school applications. I have put in for vacation for the last 2 weeks of January–time to wrap up exam prep and actually take the exam, hopefully with a few days left over to do nothing work- or school-related. To maybe kick back and celebrate what I have done just a little bit. On a side note, I actually got some interest from M.I.T, which actually hurt a little bit. I cannot pick up my entire family and move like that, though their interest is beyond flattering.  I mean, this is the number  3 MBA program in the country! For me, when just this time last year, I was on track to med school. Maybe in a different time and place. But for now, I have my top three choices and a couple of “safety” schools picked out, and we’ll leave it at that.

In the meantime, I am going to try to spend some downtime here in the Blogosphere over he net three weeks. Please be patient with me and don’t lose interest.

I’m not a huge country fan, though I love me some Kenny Chesney. His music just reminds me of my John. But anyway, he has this song that sums it up pretty well, and I leave you with the key line from it:

“Hey, I wanted it all and that’s what I got.”

Bitchypants, Out.

>What Have I Done?

>

Busy busy busy. Still.

Aside from working 60 hours this past week, I also started the journey that is to be my business degree. The online program is supposed to be easy, right? Since I have all of the pre- and co-requisites completed from my other degree, all I have to do is take my business courses and the degree will be awarded and I can move onto the masters. Okay. And this is an accelerated online program, so each class is approximately 5 to 6 weeks long. 2 courses at a time. No breaks for summer, which has me finishing early next fall.

Oh. Crap.

Because I started. I got my glossy new texts and I delved into the world of marketing. And my professor has us completing a paper or presentation literally every 48 hours. Because, in a degree program designed for adults with other obligations like job and family, there couldn’t possibly be anything else for me to do other than prepare fictional marketing plans and writing papers to critique the business practices of the establishments I frequent. Along with 10 chapters of reading each week.

Maybe, just maybe, I will lose the little bit of sanity I have left.

Maybe all of my hair will turn gray.

What is more likely is that I will pull myself up by the bootstraps and get it done just like I always do.

And for an extra dose of fun? I submitted my application and resume for a PRN therapist position at a local rehab hospital. And they bit. Hard. As a matter of fact, I simply emailed about the position before I submitted anything and had the interview already scheduled before I had even updated my resume and started the app. A second job. For when I don’t get as much overtime as I like. Like that ever happens.

Such is my life as a workaholic student wife mommy. Sometimes when you want it all, that is exactly what you get.

>Going Back

>

My name is Andrea, and I’m a student.

Again.

Barring any complications, I head back to class on April 3rd to begin the completion of my business degree. Since everything else is good to go, all I have to do to get a Bachelors o Science in Business Admin. with an emphasis on healthcare administration is to take the actual business courses. My stuff from my other degree exempts me from the rest.

It sounds so strange. Me. A business major.

Life does funny things to us sometimes. I never saw myself doing anything other than medicine. Never wanting to do anything else. Strange how having Zachy changed me that much. But not one for stagnation, I want to ensure that I have the needed degrees to take my current career as far as I want. Years from now, I don’t want to be limited because I didn’t take the time to get the degrees while I had the chance.

I’m doing a program that will have it all finished within 18 months so I can hurry up and move onto my MBA in healthcare management. I’m nervous and excited. I usually perform very well academically, and you cannot convince me that these courses will be any more of a challenge, or even as much of a challenge, as graduate-level human genetics, where I actually extracted and mapped DNA, or senior-level o.chem, which just about killed me, I swear. And I did all of thesre while working 70 hours per week, while being Mom Extraordinare, John’s keeper, and keeping straight A’s. Can you tell I’m trying to give myself a pep talk?

Because I have officially been out of school for a year. And now I have 2 kids, one of which is a baby who wants to wreak havoc on my laptop each and everytime I open it up.

I can do this, right?

I’m both excited and nervous. The less I am doing, the more bored and stressed I get. I’m the weird one for which happiness means a bursting schedule and a to-do list as long as I am tall. So on that note, I’m ready to go back. It’s just that doing so means the end of this chapter: the chapter of my pregnancy, Zach’s birth, and Zach’s first year of life. I gave him as much of myself as I could for this past year. We both needed it. Now it time for me to do something for myself once again.

Let the juggling begin.