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Saturday 9 January 2016

Reflecting on 2015, my year of social stagnation

As 2016 roars to life, I am reflecting on the year that was 2015 - the year that burnt up all my time and effort as a part-time MBA candidate whilst holding down a full-time job. This was a miserable year, I wonder if this is all worth it.


I had a great social life before, out to dinner in the city on a Friday night before hitting some bars, a party on Saturday night and after diving on a Sunday a get together with drinks around my place.

I have been told that MBA stands for marriage breakdown ahead, as my social life descended into stagnation. My career was starting to stall, despite all my hard work, my efforts were going unrewarded. I was being out-maneuvered by a bunch of yes men intent on collecting credit for my hard work.

I needed an edge and I thought an MBA might provide me with that skill-set I need. Fortunately, where I work they don't have a whole load of leadership ability and once I returned from three and a half months long service leave, I was able to counter some of their underhanded moves upon my return. There is, after all, no substitute for competence and I was easily able to showcase their short-comings. 

I decided to throw my thoughts down along the way, what is the value of all this pain? Will this qualification land me the job I want? Considering I will be 47 in 2016 and won't be completing this qualification until mid 2017, this is a risk. So far, all my job applications haven't been successful in 2015 and I don't see 2016 being much better as the state government has now enacted a hiring freeze to mid 2016.

You begin to fill with self doubt, just going out and getting a master's degree doesn't ensure success. You make a decision to take a tried and proven method to improve your earnings potential, yet I am beginning to feel this could be a big waste of time and money. This isn't exactly a medical, engineering, accounting or law degree - you don't require a business degree.

The year started with two units of accounting for leaders and economics principles and decision-making, that was just way too much with full-time work, I would rush home and begin reading and preparing case studies. I hardly slept during that period and thought I wasn't going to make it through that 14 weeks.

The second trimester saw financial management, if that isn't the most difficult unit on the course - I am in big trouble. That was seriously hard and I hope I have to never do anything like that again. Since I won't be working on Wall Street corporate finance won't be required, I can't see a whole load of scope for that.

However, entrepreneurship forms a large part of many contemporary MBA programs and financing a start-up business idea.Marketing rounded the year out, it was an interesting unit and integral to well rounded knowledge.

2016 will begin with influencing and making decisions, then hopefully onto operations management and I hope to round the year out with project management. Phew, this is exhausting. What am I talking about, 2012, 2013 and the first half of 2014 was pretty much the same, 2015 was just a return to what I am used to.

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