I’ve been feeling so restless lately for some reason. Maybe it’s impatience for autumn to begin; the hot weather pattern where I live has broken, and some of the earliest signs of summer’s end are here. Maybe it’s impatience for me to get my bachelor’s degree. Or maybe it’s just a general desire to do something, anything, after having been sick and under the weather for the past week or so.
Wanderlust? I don’t know. Maybe I should take that road trip to the Desert Southwest I’ve been planning. On my bucket list is seeing the desert and the Pacific Ocean, not to mention California. I have a feeling I might really like it, and even if I don’t it’ll be a great adventure. More than anything, though, I’d like to go overseas someday, perhaps to Europe. I might like it there too. But I really don’t feel like I’m in a stage of my life where that makes sense. Oh well.
I’ve even toyed with the idea of taking up martial arts or becoming a real estate agent, but whenever I seriously think of them I’m like “nah”.
My Degree and other Things
I feel a bit like a maniac with regard to my higher education, having gone full beast mode when it comes to amassing college credits; I’ve earned 18 so far, and I only started on August 4, exactly one week ago! Woo! Sophia’s go-at-your-own-pace coursework has proven a boon to me, but my endgame is to transfer in those sweet credits to Western Governors University. I’m currently working on College Algebra (which is all review for me, but it takes a bit of time to get through it), and waiting on a paper (the first of two) in my Introduction to Sociology class to be graded; together with the introductory-level Statistics course, that should leave me with 27 college credits by the end of the month. I think late this month I’ll contact WGU and apply; most likely my start date will be October 1.
The interesting part of all this is that the WGU’s bachelor’s degree that I want, BSBA in Business Management, takes 122 credits, and with the 18 I have now I’m already 14.75% of the way there. When I get the 27 credits I’ll be 22.13% of the way there. That’s about a year’s worth of credits in a month, so I’m going at 12 times the normal rate for a college degree. At that rate I should be able to earn the remaining 95 credits in a bit over 3 months after I start, so there’s a decent chance I’ll have my bachelor’s degree wrapped up by Christmas!
Admittedly the material going forward will be a bit less familiar, so I might get bogged down more, but even if I can only progress at half the rate I am now that still leaves me with a fast enough pace to finish it in one term, and thus for under $4000 total.
My ultimate endgame is to earn an MBA also from WGU. My understanding is that it builds directly off the undergraduate material, and is designed to take about half the length of a bachelor’s degree, so I likely could finish that in one term as well. At most that’ll all be wrapped up in September 2023. Then I’ll be a man with a master’s degree!
While all this is going on, I’m continuing on my program to improve my physical fitness and to become a ballroom dance instructor, the latter of which I’ll be starting up in earnest after the former is completed; for the nonce I’m contenting myself with learning both lead and follow, and brushing up on choreographing.
Wheeler-Dealer-lust?
I’m progressing in all of this just fine, well on track to meet my original timelines, but it’s all so frustrating in its slowness; I just wish I could get everything done I wanted to get done faster. Lately it’s been mostly grinding it out little by little; I keep telling myself that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but that doesn’t change the fact that marathons are so ponderous. Maybe that’s why I’m restless. Yeah, along with me recovering from being sick earlier this month that’s probably it. Curiously, about the only thing that has sated me recently has been going out to dance parties and watching “Quantum of Solace” (yes, really: that one movie). The real giveaway might be my recent feelings of envy for those who get some extra help from steroid regimens when it comes to their physical training. Heh. If I had the same resources as those Hollywood people I’d be all done by now.
Oh well, I’m on track to finish a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree program in under a year, so imagine me being envious of anybody else. Yet I am.
One wrinkle in my plan is that I’m not sure what exactly I want to do with my MBA once I have it. By then I should have a whole little business going giving people ballroom dance lessons (and perhaps other endeavors as well; I’m a man of many talents, after all), and on track to become a certified instructor. None of that requires an MBA, or any particular degree or diploma for that matter, but I want one just to have it. On the other hand, it’s actually rather common for people who get MBAs to then start their own businesses, so should I want to pivot into some role that required it it should be straightforward for me to do so.
Lately I’ve been wanting to explore the possibilities of getting into something really sharky and businessman-like, business at the highest levels, where you wear nice suits, travel the world, work on interesting problems, meet interesting people, and wheel and deal in power while making lots of money. Maybe that’s why I find myself drawn to “Quantum of Solace” lately; it has that atmosphere perhaps more than any other “James Bond” movie (well, except “Casino Royale”, maybe?). Dominic Greene might be the villain, and a rather slimy one at that, but when I watched him this morning (twice!) I was like “Gee, imagine operating at that level; wow”.
I know it’s really silly, and I have no illusions about anything I’m doing now getting me there, but on the program I’m on now I should be in an excellent position to receive interesting and lucrative opportunities that are closed off to me today, so it’s hardly the worst idea. At any rate I’ll be accumulating experience, reputation, expertise, and wealth, all of which will prove very useful for fulfilling any dream or goal I might have.
Adamas Nemesis ad Nauseam?
A lot of you familiar with this blog might find some of this repetitive, but really, putting all this into words and sharing it with the world has helped me make sense of my feelings about my life. I was starting to worry that maybe I needed desperately to change up something, but I think I’m just frustrated at the grind of it all. When I get some tangible results, even something as simple as really starting at WGU, I think I’ll feel a lot better.