Not like there was any doubt it my mind, well I did wonder what was going to happen with my final report that I turned in. For those of you who are not familiar with the process of an Executive MBA you have to submit a final report, think of it is as a mini-thesis. Mine was only about 50 pages to be honest, and believe it or not I am STILL working the document so that I can make it all nice and pretty for my management.

Anyway, the kicker is that even if you pass all your classes, you must still get a passing grade on the final report. Otherwise, you have one more chance to resubmit…and if you don’t get it right the 2nd time, you don’t graduate. Full stop.

In theory this should never happen. You have an academic advisor who reviews and monitors your progress as you go along, and you’ll typically know if you have any problems. However, I am sure people have totally botched it up before and had to do a revision, but I am sure they are few and far between.

Anyway, I am on Cloud 9, relishing my new found graduate-ness that has been confirmed by the Academic Committee. Now I am prepared to scale mountains, move villages, and solve world hunger. Or maybe, I will start small and just make myself a sandwich with a side of “Freedom Fries.”

So as many of you know, I graduate this month. And the question that is swilling around my brain is “Now what?” I have promised everyone that this is my last degree (no really it is). Although lately I have started to muse about how cool it would be to get a PhD. Think about how much fun it would be to have people call you Doctor, and the nifty new business cards you could order with your title on them. Then I realized, why go to school for five to seven more years when I can buy a doctorate off the web from one of those “accredited” Universities that gives you credit for “life experiences.”

The other thing I am punting around is whether I stay where I am or move on at some point. I have a theory that your MBA is only valuable for approximately one year after you graduate. After the first year your MBA becomes marginally less and less valuable, until about two years after your MBA it is practically worthless. So what does this mean? Well my assumptions are that companies look to see what you have accomplished after your degree.

Have you gotten promoted? Have you left your firm and gotten a better job, or has the MBA qualified you for a better job. I am starting to feel the pressure to NOT be status quo. This means I feel obligated to kick start my career again and either transfer to a different department in the next year or so, or make a radical change within the next two years. I often wonder if I am the only one who feels this way.

I envy my classmates who have left their firms within the past year or have just recently accepted new roles. They are further along the game than I am, and for that I am envious. Well back to work…there is time to dwell on this later. I guess in the end I am just complacent. *smirks*

As many of you know the whole commuting thing was starting to wear me down. I was able to negotiate a deal with my employers to work out of our London Office in June and July. I essentially will be working on San Diego projects while in London. The benefit to me is that I don’t burn out from the commuting, and the benefit for the firm is I don’t take a 2 month leave of absence.

Not to mention my Landlord gave me until the end of this month to move out of the condo I was renting, because he finally sold it. So I am in the process of manically trying to pack everything up in my place and move stuff into storage. Talk about a complete nightmare.