OT: The Sunday Doldrums, An Opinion Request.

Mrs. Howard is in her 30s and is finishing up her Bachelors at EMU this fall. She works a good 50 hours a week as a Pharmacy Tech, so it will be nice when she doesn't have to work on top of going to school full-time.

I think you’ve got the right idea to go into something that interests you. Obviously you have to balance that with practical considerations, but one of my regrets is going straight to grad school out of undergrad and, worse yet, pursuing a degree based mostly on pragmatism. Turns out I hated the work and field I chose and struggled for a few years before pivoting to a new career, which is now something I actually enjoy and is quite a bit more lucrative.

Point being, you’ll be more successful at something that interests you and that you’re good at, so don’t be too skeptical of that angle as naive or idealistic or something. Good luck!

I just started working on my Executive MBA at Wharton (hence my new UPenn/Umich logo combo). It's not officially full time, as it's built to allow you to continue working full time, but it is all in-person, and it has the same amount of in-person class time as a regular Wharton MBA and it grants you a Wharton MBA degree that is identical to a full-time, you just do it over 6 semesters in 24 months, as opposed to 4 semesters in 21 months. It's hard, especially managing a full-time career at the same time. But it's required me to dramatically improve my time-management skills, and I'm already seeing changes in the way I approach my job and the way my job treats me. I'm so much better of a student now than I was as a kid too, it's like night and day. I do not have children to take care of, so there's that. But I am disciplined and crushing it so far.

I'm 38, and I'm a medical device engineer. I've had jobs that have given me the Sunday Scaries in the past. Jobs where all day Sunday all I could think about was how I didn't want to go back on Monday. The job I'm at now is exactly not that. It's my dream job. It's hard, but it's rewarding and it might change the way medicine treats sick babies. The fact that I'm in this job is a little bit of luck and a little bit of hard work. You don't accidentally get an engineering degree from Michigan, but also I was way underachieving career-wise before I joined this company.

Last year, I began to notice dumber people than me with more letters behind their names making stupid decisions that hurt the company, and I wasn't able to make convincing enough arguments to sway the people at the top. So I decided to level up. Getting an MBA seemed like an obvious choice, I knew enough about engineering to do any technical job well, but I couldn't see the motivations behind the people making the big decisions. So I studied my ass off and I nailed the GMAT (750/800, 98th percentile), and then it was an obvious choice to go to the ivy league school down the street.

I don't know what to tell you about what best to get into, but I think more education is almost always a good thing. You are the best thing you can invest in.

Maybe look into a PMP, a project management professional certification. It gives you the credentials to be a project manager, which is an extremely portable job that isn't terribly technically challenging and usually pays well without requiring significantly more than 40 hours/wk. It's what I usually recommend to people who are generically thinking about more education. It requires you to be organized and accountable and disciplined, and to get the same out of members of your project team.

Best of luck. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

1) Not sure I could ever go back to school. Even if I was willing to assume the financial costs, just the thought of starting over at this juncture of my life, with a wife, two small kids and a house to pay for.....it all seems too much. I've done certifications before. Got my SHRM-CP a few years back and am in the middle of the Google PM Certification course, but that's just to learn something new, and I suppose make myself more marketable for my next role. 

In a different life, with no kids and if I was on my own, I could see myself going back. I made some really dumb mistakes in school as far as deciding what I should study, and by the time I sat down and asked myself how that degree was going to get me a job, it was already mid-way through my junior year and it was too late to switch majors without effectively starting all over. I went through some of the most humbling periods of my life trying to find a job my senior year, and while I'm in a good, well-paying job now, there's times that I wish I could go back and swat my 18-19 year old self up side the head and tell him to go major in something that would get him a job. 

But if I didn't study what I studied, it wouldn't have taken me the path I'm on now and I almost certainly wouldn't have met my wife. So I guess it worked the way it's supposed to have!

2) I don't dread what I do anymore. I'm pretty darn good at it. I'm a relationship manager for a software company. We provide CRM software for trades-based companies (HVAC, Electrical, Construction, Irrigation, etc.) and I help advise them on how they can use our software to run their business. I would not say I'm passionate about what I do. I like it, don't love it. But I'm good at it, it pays the bills and allows us to live a comfortable lifestyle. Which is good because my wife is a teacher and she gets raked over the coals on a year to year basis, from what she gets paid, how she gets supported by her administration, and from P.O.S. parents who think they know how to do her job better than her. 

My first job fresh out of college, being a technical recruiter at a third party recruiting firm in NY, that job I dreaded going into. I'm not sure I will ever have a job where I felt more out of place and more miserable than I did those six months. I f*****g hated every day of it because I frankly wasn't that good at it. I did not have the killer instinct, never-say-die, will-not-take-no-for-an-answer attitude that you need to be able to succeed in that kind of job. I spent so many hours in the office bathroom, terrified to come out because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had days where I silently begged for someone at that company to come up to my desk and put me out of my misery. 

Guess the boss heard me. Its the only job I've ever been let go from, and it was for the best. It wasn't a fit on either side. I took the job because frankly that was the only job offer I got before graduating. 

If I can offer any advice to anyone here: college is a time for fun, but don't screw around with deciding what you're going to study. That decision could very well determine the path of the rest of your professional life. 

In August I will be working towards my MA in Global Risk at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  Much like "huntmich" the program is not full time and allows you to work full time.  It's all online except for two weeks when you work in person with your cohort on a capstone project for the first week and the second week is the capstone project presentation and graduation.  It's a total of 21 weeks.  

I came to this decision based upon my past work history.  I've been a Federal Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration for 15 years.  I'm a GS-14 with the title of Inspector as I'm currently assigned to HQ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) which is like DEA's Internal Affairs.   Prior to that I was assigned to the New York, Washington DC, and New Jersey Field Divisions.  While in NJ, I worked a lot of narco-terrorism cases (See Project Cassandra) and really loved the international aspect of my work, hence pursuing the MA at Hopkins.  Prior to that, I was an Assistant District Attorney in NY primarily doing narcotics cases.  After my last murder trial, I'd pretty much had it with that career.  I got lucky, DEA called, and I was off to Quantico. 

Spaz, don't be afraid to start school, pursue an interest, or change careers if that is what makes you feel fulfilled.  I'm a small sample size, but so far it has worked out for me.

I went back in my early 40s, though I only had to do one full year to finish. After working full-time for many years, this was a breath of fresh air. I was able to do something I really wanted to do for a year, and the pride associated with finishing college was immense. I obviously didn't live on campus or even close to it.

The only thing that sucked was that nervous feeling before exams. It was less than in my first go-round, but it was still there.

I didn't go back to school, but as retiree college professor, I've seen plenty of returning students.  Most are a bit anxious and worry that they're at a disadvantage compared to the traditionally aged students. 

With few exceptions the older students do better than the average student: they are motivated and aren't just trying to slide through with the least amount of effort.

I started a masters program 7 years after graduating from undergrad so I was in my late 20s, not 30s. Both degrees were in engineering so not really to make a career change but supplement my current job. I didn’t have any kids then so it was relatively easy to work full time and take one class at a time (3 per year). I was able to take classes that I could apply directly to my job so that was pretty cool. 

I’m a structural engineer at an aerospace company and most of the time I love my job.