Perhaps

So I've never been really sure what to use this blog for, but I think I have an idea. Grad school updates.

Tuesday I officially hit 'send' on the my application to KU and Wednesday I mailed off all my supporting documentation. Next up (if they chose) is my interview.

Let's back up a second (not sure who would be here and NOT know this story...by my estimate, no greater than 2 people will read this). I made the decision to go back to grad school at KU and get my MBA. I plan to do an Information Systems concentration. I am currently employed, but it is in the life insurance business. I don't exactly wake up with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step as I go to work to setup policies and create booklets. I had a job that I didn't despise once, but that company lost the contract I was working on...so I got this job.
Reasons why the current job is sapping the life out of me:

1. Its in Overland Park. The drive

2. The work. I realize I'm young and the job that I have now will not be glamorous, but the tedium I face sometimes... All of the systems are housed on the East Coast, so the lag time for the programs I use to do a majority of my work have a lag time that can cause some programs to just get hung up for 30 minutes at a time. Even when things are moving, the work can get boring. And when things get a bit complex and I have a question, well, check #4 below.

3. Meetings. I had an epiphany a few weeks ago: My job satisfaction is at its lowest when we have an site-wide or all employee meeting. Just hearing management fumble around mission statements and blow smoke up everyone's asses is killer. The worst was an all employee meeting that was broadcast from the East Coast and we watched in a conference room on an projection screen. It had the usual array of managers speaking and talking about maximize this, consolidate this, and leverage that. Then we got to listen to a motivational speaker. It was like I was in high school all over again. He talked for 30-45 minutes. Those are precious minutes I could have been at my desk reading up on baseball trade rumors on espn.com or the evolution of the apartment on Wikipedia. Meetings...useless in alot of companies, but this place....

4. I don't really have a problem with the people who work there, but the attitude of most support staff toward helping employees like me is piss poor. I've heard some describe someone coming to ask a question as "getting trapped." No, that's your job. I could ask my manager, but she probably doesn't know the answer and.....

5. My manager's availability is spotty at best. If she is not at her usual 5 meetings a day, taking a smoke break, just about ready to leave to go to a meeting ("if you're question isn't quick I can't answer.") or gossiping with another support staff behind closed doors she is on her cell phone.

I'm sure that's not the whole list and alot of things I may have sensationalized for dramatic effect, but regardless I'm trying to get out of there. I could keep going, but why waste the keystrokes.


So yeah, the interview. I've done some searching online and it looks like its pretty much a job interview, but (hopefully) with less emphasis on having to ask the all the questions that 'corporate' requires. In the end I hope I can be with a smaller company. I think many of my issues are with the bureaucracy that is prevalent in big corporations. I say that now, but if Proctor & Gamble comes knocking one day (yeah right), who am I to say no?

I should hear back with a flat denial or the interview request in 4-6 weeks, I think. Until then, think about this:
I saw this on the History Channel and guess who does NOT have it? Wikipedia! What?!?

New York City is now covered by skyscrapers and concrete. But in the city’s early days, while New York was a British colony, lower Manhattan still had farms. Hogs rampaged through the grain fields of New York City farmers. To prevent a repeat, Manhattan’s city fathers built a long wall along the northern edge of Lower Manhattan. The street bordering this wall became known as Wall Street. That’s the same Wall Street that now houses the New York Stock Exchange!