From one of my new favorite webcomics, Piled Higher and Deeper, which pokes fun at grad school and grad students. I’m probably all “old meme” on this one since the comic’s been published since 1997 (originally in a Stanford student paper), but I only found it recently and I’m loving it.

I withdrew from my MBA program today.

This is a good thing. The fit wasn’t right at all, it wasn’t what I wanted to do, and it didn’t make sense to pay tuition and forego salary and spend a year miserable and stressed for something I didn’t want.

And I don’t regret having tried. I’ve learned an awful lot about myself in the last month or so, and sure, I’m out a bit less than a semester’s worth of tuition, but it’s completely worth it.

Today was hard, though. I told my group after class this morning, after our last group presentation of the block. That went fine, as did the administrative stuff in the grad office, except for watching the program administrator click OK in the “Withdraw student completely” dialog. I ran into Prof. McIlkenny, the program director, on my way out of the office, so we went into his office for a few minutes to discuss it, and that was a bit emotional. But everyone I’ve talked to has basically said that it’s clear I’d thought it through and that it makes sense to them. It certainly does to Candice, and it certainly does to me.

I just told Dad a half-hour ago, which was the last “must tell in person before posting”, else I would have posted earlier. That went well too, although he had to go to do city council things related to tonight’s provincial election.

So, what now? I’m excited. I’ve got a real opportunity to decide what I want to do. I belong on the technical side, and I’m going to take a bit of time, not too long, to figure out exactly what I’m after. I’m going to spend some time getting my Perl flowing again and maybe picking up Ruby and Rails.

But if you happen to know a small to middling Internet company looking for an intermediate to senior Unix sysadmin or an intermediate Perl programmer (or, I guess, a junior-quickly-progressing-to-intermediate Ruby programmer, but I’m not sure I can afford “junior”), I’m on the market again.

Also, if you’re in my class, I wrote a little note over on Facebook.

In that post I linked, I wrote

I thought that turning 30 would feel weird, like a loss of freedom or the extra weight of adult responsibility, but while I do sort of feel that I’ve lost an excuse, things feel alright.

And it’s completely obvious in retrospect, but when that happens, it doesn’t happen instantly, and I’m realizing that I’ve been a bit of a boiling frog for some time now, and that it’s no coincidence that things got difficult in the last couple of years.

I was a happy-go-lucky indiepop-loving playstation-playing geeky hipster that got paid for playing with computers in my late 20s, and now I’m preparing to maximize shareholder value and I haven’t been excited about an album release in a year (I’m not even running my bittorrent client these days!) and spending — or I would be spending were I not where I am — an entire year’s time and lost salary on business school. And while I acknowledge that there probably are people out there for whom that’s a perfectly natural progression it doesn’t seem like one for me.

Woops.

When I was doing the NEO-IP personality test the other day two questions caught my eye. In case you haven’t done the test, it’s phrased as statements which you then choose a level of accuracy from “Very inaccurate” through “Neither accurate nor inaccurate” to “Very accurate”. Anyhow, the first one said “I fear that my life lacks direction.” And well, that’s certainly accurate. But if I were to rephrase it a bit to “I believe my life needs direction”… well, that’s a lot harder to answer. It’s only when I assume that direction is a given that I find myself worrying about my lack thereof.

The other one asked “I like a leisurely lifestyle.” And I do! I think of it as a Montreal pace. And there isn’t exactly much overlap between “leisurely lifestyle” and “MBA”, you know? I need to find that happy medium, where I have a job that challenges me but doesn’t occupy my existence, where I can control the pace of things and stop to do things I enjoy, and so on. I don’t have to be an outstanding success, I have to be happy. And Candice certainly saw this already: one thing about massage therapy is that it does let you live a leisurely lifestyle. There’s no promotions, no 60-hour weeks. And that’s been right in front of me this whole time.

You know, the timing of (and only the timing of!) our wedding might have been involved too; if 30 doesn’t turn you respectable, then 30-and-married sure does! And yes, a lot of people do sort of “leave their youth behind” after that, but there’s no reason that I (or we!) have to, especially without kids. But more than ever I realize that we’re not going to be your typical suburban nuclear family, and that I don’t need to put on a suit and show up at my downtown office everyday to feel like I’ve made it.

I need to just be geeky old me again.

Because we’re grownups now, and it’s our turn to decide what that means.

• When did we forget our dreams?
• You’re curious, smart, and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. (This one’s my desktop right now, and also on my fridge.)
• Because we’re grownups now, and we get to decide what that means.
• Hey, I found squirrels!
• Maybe just having this conversation means we’re lost.
• The difference.
• Interesting life.

Their punchline strips are always great too, but it’s the deep ones that are speaking to me right now. How did I ever convince myself that I wasn’t a geek at heart?

How can I avoid turning into a pointy-haired boss?

The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn’t program. So the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer. What tempts programmers to become managers are companies with old-fashioned corporate structure, where the only way to advance in salary and prestige is to go into management. So if you want to avoid becoming a PHB, avoid such companies, and work for (or start) startups.

I never had to manage anyone in our startup, even though I was the president. The other hackers were my peers, and would have given me the raspberry if I’d tried to “manage” them. We operated by consensus. And the rest of the company reported to our experienced COO, who was also more of a peer.

Why be a manager when you could be a founder or early employee at a startup?

Yeah. Been reading a lot of Paul and Seth Godin lately.

One thing about school applications: No-one will tell you if what you say in your letter of intent doesn’t actually match what you’re proposing to do, nor whether what you say in your letter of intent — which is, of course, written to get you admitted — is what you intend.

Making sure those things match — letter, intent, and the program’s capabilities of satisfying those intents — is the applicant’s responsibility. Ideally the applicant discovers this prior to applying, let alone enrolling. But even then the earlier the process occurs the better.

(Let’s put a cut here. If you’re in my class it’s up to you to decide whether or not to read on.)

Things haven’t been going so hot. I am left to wonder if I didn’t think this through so well; specifically, I’m reevaluating whether or not those letters after my name are worth the trouble of getting them.

The first problem is the content. In six weeks I have learned nothing new. Accounting and statistics are high-school level. Organizational Behavior is interesting but textbook-bound. IT for Managers and Business-Government Relations are free of any substantial content at all. Future courses’ outlines don’t suggest any improvement anytime soon.

And that makes sense, really: it’s a 12-month “Master’s” program with no specific prerequisites. Can you imagine a 12-month MSc or MA that didn’t require undergraduate work in the field? So every course is ab initio, and since they’re all either six or 12 lectures (one per week) they can’t get far away from that point. I’d rather just read a good book.

The assignments suffer similarly. They can’t be substantiatively difficult because the content is so light, so the difficulty is all artificial: deadlines all at once, everything is teamwork (including 20-page papers on vague subjects), most are “paper plus presentation”. It’s as though the point of the courses is to force us to learn to schedule team meetings and not much more. They’re not challenging; they’re just awkward and inconvenient.

But the main problem is fit. I was so concerned about changing how things were that I didn’t think enough about where I wanted to be. I’m a geek at heart. I don’t really know where this whole business thing came from; I think I was so tied up in finding “success” that I started using someone else’s definition of it. Because where’s an MBA going to get me that I couldn’t get to on my own? Management consulting, senior management in large companies, that sort of thing. Doesn’t really sound like me.

Because the school offers testing, I’ve been thinking a lot about my Myers-Briggs type lately. Surprise surprise, I’m an ENTP. Not that this commits me to anything, but still — a couple of choice quotes:

ENTPs learn least well and may be demotivated when bonding with a team or group, or identifying with a school, organisation or company is valued over independent thinking.

ENTP: Entrepeneurs, lawyers, psychologists, photographers, consultants, sales represenatives, actors, engineers, scientists, inventors, marketers, computer programmers, comedians, computer analysts, credit investigators, journalists, psychiatrists, public relations, designers, writers, artists, musicians, politicians. Very freedom-oriented, they need a career which allows them to act independent and express their creativity and insight.

Not so much creativity in the program. It’s a bit better on insight, but for a program which is case-based, in which the professors act as facilitators for class discussion, it’s not so much.

So the whole point is about the letters. And the letters are a necessity for some fields, but I don’t think those are the fields I’m after. I like hands-on. I like small companies. I like directly making a difference. I get interested in consulting during the recruiting pitches, but then I come home and the only attraction is the prestige, and more and more I don’t think I care about the prestige.

There’s a weird thing in there with my father. (Hi, Dad! Keep reading, it’s OK!) Dad’s a very successful small businessman and recently was elected to Belleville city council and I’m really proud of all he’s done, but there’s some influence there — all in my own head! — that sometimes I have to work hard to resist. It means I have a respect for entrepreneurship and commerce that’s hard to shake, and that even though I am a geek and engineery-type through and through I was trying to turn myself into a bit of a suit. And I don’t think I’m a suit.

So that leaves me wondering what the heck to do about school. I’m seriously considering withdrawing after this block to cut my losses early, and look for a really good, challenging job back on the technical side — maybe with an eye towards certifications later, CISSP maybe — that keeps me interested, pays ok, and maintains a good work-life balance. There’s a little voice in my head that tells me that when I start something I have to finish it, but I don’t really know what it’d be proving, and I don’t think I’d see much of a return on that investment, especially when I calculate in the opportunity cost of lost wages.

I’ve got lots of people to talk to about it — the school offers free career counseling and a psychologist, plus the program director is very approachable, and I think the folks who wrote my letters of recommendation will have some input too. And there were some red flags on the way in that I completely ignored, friends telling me that they didn’t see the fit. I think they were right, and I think I’ll track them down too.

We’ll see what happens. I’m certainly learning a lot about myself, and things between Candice and I are better than ever, and I’m discovering new friendships in the strangest places. Before, nothing felt right and I blamed work; now, everything feels right except “work”. Well, damn.

It is not like the geek world where top-posting is uniformly evil and >-quoting is normal. Top-posting is unremarkable, and in fact in Outlook it is difficult to not top-post when responding to HTML email. I am at least using Outlook-QuoteFix to >-quote when dealing with plain text, and new email I send is in plain text too.

But still.

(HTML email itself is not hard to get used to because I am using Outlook.)

One thing I’ve noticed is that >-quoting lends itself to taking apart someone’s argument point by point or line by line. It turns out that often this isn’t a very productive approach!

It’s also hard to get used to not being surrounded by geeks. One of the things I did in the weeks I had off between work and school was install Skype and plan on buying a headset, because obviously my team at school was going to use Skype for conference calling.

In fact, none of my group regularly use instant messaging, even. It’s remarkable to some classmates that I have a blog.

I’ve been working hard at not becoming “the IT guy” at school, although there are enough people on Vista that I didn’t really have to worry about that. However, I’ve converted three or four people in class to taking notes in OneNote. (It doesn’t hurt that it’s free on MSDNAA.)

I am, strangely enough, becoming “the financial accounting guy”. Unexpected!

• Sep 19 – MBA 5235 Mgmt Skills – DVD of Group Presentation
• Sep 19 – MBA 5300 Data Analysis – Individual case study
• Sep 21 – MBA 5235 Mgmt Skills – Group Presentation
• Sep 25 – MBA 5270 IT for Mgrs – Case #2
• Sep 26 – MBA 5300 Data Analysis – Group case study
• Oct 9 – MBA 5270 IT for Mgrs – IT Project (#3 – #6)
• Oct 9 – MBA 5210 Bus/Gov Relations – Governance Diagnostic
• Oct 10 – MBA 5300 Data Analysis – Individual case study
• Oct 11 – MBA 5340 Fin Acctg – Group Project 1
• Oct 11 – MBA 5340 Fin Acctg – Quiz
• [Oct 12-20 Midterm exam week]
• [Oct 21-18 Fall break]
• Nov 12 – MBA 5235 Mgmt Skills – Group Dynamics Analysis Paper
• Nov 12 – MBA 5235 Mgmt Skills – Individual Development Plan
• Nov 12 – MBA 5340 Fin Acctg – Quiz
• Nov 14 – MBA 5300 Data Analysis – Individual case study
• Nov 19 – MBA 5340 Fin Acctg – Group Project 2
• Nov 20 – MBA 5330 OB/HR – Group case analysis
• Nov 21 – MBA 5300 Data Analysis – Group case study
• Dec 5 – MBA 5300 Data analysis – Individual case study
• [Dec 12-20 Final exam week]

And that omits the deliverables for two courses which begin halfway through the semester in Block 2. Boy, that’s a lot of things. And on top of that there’s five classes’ worth of reading per week. The hardest part about this will be using group time effectively, splitting up tasks and so on.

And on top of that I’m very close to taking on some duties in the communications portfolio in the student association, mostly because I don’t want my resume to have no extracurricular activites for this year. The case competitions sounded promising but involve five-hour Friday night practices which would disqualify it even if it didn’t conflict with curling, and I’m not sure I’m MBA Games material. I’m hoping to attend the Mindtrust Leadership Development Program, under a program where the school pays for all but $130 of the $2000 fee, but there’s only 30 students sent so it’s not a sure thing.

I’m inclined to treat the entire semester as a single project, with each assignment, exam, etc. as a deliverable within the project. (Luckily nothing spans semesters, or else it’d be getting silly.) Time to grab MS Project through the university’s MSDNAA subscription.

We’re in the new building now, at least — I’ll take pictures of some of the facilities and people soon.