Heading Back to School

I’ve been thinking about going back to school for a couple of years. I didn’t have a specific goal in mind at first, but I do think that it is important to keep learning over the course of one’s life, and I do enjoy being on campus. I also like the rhythm of the semester — start a class, meet the professor and the other students, go to class each week, study, learn, succeed (hopefully), and then wrap it up at the end.

I looked in to the University of Washington’s Technology Management MBA program last year. It is a good program, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I decided that I was more interested in enhancing my existing skill set than in learning entirely new skills.

A few years ago I was invited to join the advisory board of the Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington. The advisory board met each quarter to review the state of the program and to make recommendations to the staff and faculty.

As part of the planning for each quarter, program director Hanson Hosein would send around the course list. Last fall I looked at it and thought that every last one of the courses looked interesting. Hanson said that I was welcome to sit in on a class or two and I considered doing just that. However, I gave the whole matter some thought and decided that it was time to go back to school, and applied to the MCDM program!

I spent some time going through the application process — getting letters of recommendation, ordering transcripts from schools that I’d attended over 25 years ago, and writing a statement of intent. I got it all in by the deadline, and awaited the response.

I received notification last week that I had been accepted, and I am really looking forward to becoming a student at the ripe old age of 50.

My son Andy is already at student at the UW, and my daughter Tina is awaiting word on her application. With any luck, all three of us will be on campus at the same time.

Wish me luck!