Since Friday was over Thanksgiving Break, we figured we’d save this bundle of joy to brighten your Monday.
For Thanksgiving my wife and I visited family in Cincinnati. It was our puppy's first one. Yeah, I know, big deal. The photo is of her on the ride back. She's much better looking than I am, so I figured I'd throw her up here and perhaps spawn some interest from the dog lovers who otherwise can't stand me.
The past few weeks I’ve rambled about my background and what I do, as well as wrote about asking quality questions in the workplace, why I chose my industry, and keeping the stress away. This week I hope to pass forward some advice concerning graduate school and how best to pursue it.
I’ll be starting my second year of graduate school through the University of Maryland here pretty soon (pursuing a Master’s of Engineering in Fire Protection) in addition to working full time in the fire protection industry. While it is challenging to work and complete a Master’s degree, I find that in the end it will be well worth it.
Starting off, I decided to even go for the Master’s by looking at the industry I’m working in. It’s relatively small (especially compared to building system mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design), but is very deep and very diverse in its coverage. I believe that getting a Master’s degree will help give an edge career-wise in a technical field that is so deep, and getting the engineering degree (as opposed to business or some other degree) is a great compliment to the wide-ranging bachelor’s of science in architectural engineering degree that I received from KU. Because Master’s is still unique but will become more common in the engineering profession over time, I felt that it would be in my best interest to get the graduate degree. Simple as that.
The real advice that I find worthwhile and that I’ve heard countless times is to ‘do it now’. Knock out that graduate program before stopping or leaving work could become too difficult, before families, kids, and what not. This is of course for graduate degrees that aren’t built on work experience, such as an M.B.A. or management degree. By far the number one thing I’ve heard is simply to do it now, while undergraduate knowledge is fresh, and Sunday nights without homework have yet to be experienced. If you’ve thought about a graduate degree, you may have already heard this. All I can do is pass it forward and recommend it as well. Next May I plan to be done with graduate school, and done (completely) with my formal education at least for the foreseeable future. The transition to work and school hasn’t been easy, and it is a true time-killer. But I know that bulldozing it now will be easier when I don’t know any better than trying to go back to school later in my career.
Is a graduate degree worth it for you? I have no idea. It is all dependent on the industry, the cost, effort, payout, career potential, and much more. But if you do decide to pursue a degree that doesn’t necessarily need industry experience, I would highly recommend doing it now.
On a side note, my wife and I went and saw the movie ‘Lincoln’ last weekend, and we both found it interesting. Not just because I’m a nut about historical events, but the movie offers a fairly thorough insight into the issues of the time and the political difficulties that are not all that different than today. What was encouraging is how leaders and forward thinking people of those times got us out of issues of a scale I just can’t imagine now. It’s a long movie, but interesting.
Thanks! Talk at you again on Friday.
Joey