In my blog I have been writing about my experience of going through the MBA program as a part-time student, full-time employee, full-time husband and father. I hope that some of my experience will be helpful to others who are considering taking on this endeavor of going part-time or even full-time MBA for that matter.
My personal way to MBA was very long. Suffice it to say, I am in my early forties. Not your typical MBA candidate. I really wish someone could tell me many of the things I know now may be 5-9 years ago. That’s why in my posts I will try to be personal, honest, informative, and hopefully regular. What I am trying to accomplish is just to give my personal perspective, so the readers could have additional information to help them in making some of the many decisions connected with the pursuit of MBA.
There is a lot of information about MBA programs, schools, courses etc on formal, official, semi-official sites of all kinds pertinent to ‘everything MBA’. There are also a lot of private blogs and websites from current and former students. All those sites combined provide a mother lode of information for prospective students. I hope that my blog will add some valuable insights to this wealth of information.
I am a part-time MBA student in Washington, DC area. I have finished my first year of MBA studies in summer 2010, and I still have a lot to share about in my remaining two or so years of going through the business school.
I realize that many of the readers could be prospective students and they are specifically interested in the application/preparation aspect of the MBA experience (I know I was, and intensely so). I will share some of the things that I think could be helpful for the aspiring students. They will be posted in ‘MBA Introspection’ section of my blog.
Otherwise I will try to keep up to date on my current journey through the program, so you might know what to expect once you overcome all the hurdles of application and get admitted to the school of your choice. May be for some readers my insights will serve as deterrent, but I think that for most of the MBA aspirants it will serve as encouragement and motivation.
I noticed that some visitors to my blog have been searching the site for my email. If you are too shy to leave a message in the comments, shoot me an email to webmaster at parttimembadegree.com
Have not been posting for almost a month. Now I am kind of have been missing blogging and ready to post some updates. The two main reasons for my extended silence are the preparation for the professional certification exam that I took in two weeks after the end of the summer module, and the family vacation trip to Barbados. I hope I will have motivation and energy to put some posts with pictures and videos or may be a separate website dedicated to this vacation, as it was really quite interesting and a lot of fun to share.
But first I need to put closure to my first year of part-time MBA program at GWU. As I was writing in my last post in June I was not expecting any surprises with the grades, but I actually was nicely surprised. Based on my grades for intermediate assignments throughout both classes I had in the module I was expecting an A in Business and Public Policy, but the Nature of Markets was a bit murkier. Nevertheless I got A’s in both classes! For the first time in my MBA terms I became a straight A student 
. Admittedly, I had only two classes in the term, and they both were not quantitative courses. But still it feels really nice. So I got my closure for the first year.
Now that I had my vacation I almost feel like I would be ready to continue with the MBA classes right away. But there are no classes I could sign up for right now. So I have another month to chill out. I am planning to use this time to do some reading to prepare for the fall term and just to read some of the books I had to put on hold during the year, my personal MBA summer reading list: Superfreakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, The Tipping Point by Gladwell, and surprise-surprise! – Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions (with CD-ROM)
by Spatz.
Even though I got my B and B+ in two statistics courses during the first year, I know I need to get a better grasp of the subject and solidify everything I learned in a hurry. I stumbled upon this book while looking for an easier introduction to statistics. I wrote about this briefly in my April 5 post . Eventually I found Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions (with CD-ROM)
and I really look forward to pouring over it in the next month. I will write a more detailed review once I finish it. But from other reviews on Amazon.com and my reading through the first 30 or so pages, I can tell that this is the must book for all of us who have stats anxiety. If you are preparing for MBA stats classes in advance or even take them at the time you read this post, I recommend to grab this book and start reading it ASAP. Statistics is not an easy subject for most students, but this book will make your experience with the stats as painless as humanly possible. I bought the eighth edition of this book used from Amazon for some really funny money, about $6. For the purists, like I used to be, but not anymore, there is the tenth editionn of Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions
available new between $129-150 on Amazon.com.
Enough blogging for the day. Hopeful to continue posting regularly in the time before the second year of my MBA studies starts.
I know, I know, I already reported it once, almost two months ago, that my first year of part-time MBA was over. But it was according to the business school’s schedule, not my personal. If I did not take take classes in the first summer term module, then it would indeed be the end.
But now I can honestly say to myself that the first year of MBA is finished. For some reason I don’t feel the same level of exaltation that I had back at the end of the Spring Term, just a deep sense of relief and calm serenity It works for me.
I am still waiting for my grades in both classes I had. In Business and Public Policy we had our final paper and in-class group presentation on Tuesday last week. Yesterday I submitted my take home exam in Nature of Markets. I don’t expect any surprises with grading, so I can mostly take my thoughts of the school for now and engage myself into other, no less pleasant, things in life: going to the pool with the kids, hiking on weekends, preparing for a vacation trip, read for pleasure, etc. And the beauty of it all is that I have 2 (TWO) FULL MONTHS of SUMMER BREAK. That’s a big luxury. I really feel for some of my classmate who opted for both Summer Term modules. That would be too much for me. My summer break is much-needed and well-deserved, and I am taking it!
There is still another test for my professional certification that I need to take in less than two weeks from now, but that really does not bother me too much. You always can re-take it without negative impact on your graduate GPA for the rest of your life 
. So I will take it easy.
I hope I will not disappear from this blog for the rest of the summer, but I am not making any specific promises. I have a lot of stuff I would like to put on the blog, but I don’t want to strain myself either. On the other hand, now that I don’t have homework and required readings, maybe I will fill this time with updating the blog. We’ll see how it goes, stay tuned! Have a great summer!
