works of wanderlust

Tag: school

  • weekend wrap five

    It may not be summer, but tell that to the weather. It was a weekend for wide open windows trying to keep the house cool enough to sleep at night. I may need to drag out the air conditioner unit soon.

    All that said, I barely pulled myself far from the house this whole weekend, studious pupil that I am.

    It was the calm before the storm. The next couple of weekends are going to be filled with activity and socializing and concerts and grad activities and getting ready for summer. This was busy enough, I suppose, but whatever.

    This weekend was spent doing…

    School. Mostly school. And not much else. I wrote a few words and few days back all about the final weekend of coursework for my professional development program through the university. I spent the best parts of both days sitting huddled under a fleece blanket in the chilly basement staring into a pair of eight-hour long video class sessions. There were only five people silly enough to be taking business courses in May, though, so I found myself needing to stay very engaged. No hiding behind the crowd. And at the end of it I was actually pretty tired. It did, however, mark the final module of classwork and all I have left in the program is a single homework assignment.

    We did find the energy to go out for ice cream on Satuday evening.

    And on Sunday evening, after searching the whole house for the second lawnmower battery, I found it hidden under a pile of jackets and then I was able to cut the grass which seemed to have grown six inches while I was hiding in the basement all weekend. I practically could have baled it. And the dog was creeping around the yard like she was an intrepid jungle explorer, what with the grass up to her literal eyeballs.

    While I was out in the yard I also did some adjustments to my garden irrigation system, plucked about a thousand dandilions, and spent a fruitless half hour trying to figure out if there was a wasp nest nearby that would explain the unseeming swarms.

    In the gaps I read. I did a lot of reading, actually. I splurged on a digital copy of the Hyperion Cantos, a four volume compendium of a thirty-year old science fiction series that I have read a half dozen times but is on my list of comfort reads. I curled up on the couch and read and read and read and pushed through like half of the first book. More on that later, I suppose, when I post a book review.

    And on we go.

  • study’s end

    Twenty four hours from when I started penning these words will mark the start of the final module in a bit of professional upgrading I’ve been working on. That’s to say, class starts this time tomorrow and then after this final weekend of lectures—and one more big assignment to submit—I’ll be complete.

    On a weird side note, one of the reasons I decided to take the course was to spend a small bit of inheritance left to me by my grandmother, and to spend it on something both experiential and useful: education. The last class of the last modules is on Sunday, two days from now, which would have been her one hundred and fourth birthday. Unplanned. Coincidence.

    I spent over a decade working for the local municipal government, and that was after a previous decade spent hopping around between project and program coordination and management roles.

    I was trained for none of it.

    I had done a pair of degrees, one in science and one in education, and both pursued out of some vapid obligation to a sense that I was “supposed” to do something both useful and that would pay well. I hated lab work. And then I emerged from my education degree in a hiring freeze.  Instead I landed at a sweet job in the not-for-profit sector out on the west coast. 

    Long story short, I never went back to any job that used either of those degrees directly, but instead I bopped around using all those critical analysis sciency and stand up and educate others skills to become an ad hoc project manager, systems designer, and eventually a straight up middle manager guy.

    …with a science degree.

    After nearly a year and a half of a career transition, having done some personal projects, part time work, and personal reflection, I figured my next obvious step was to put some credentials behind all that experience I had gathered on my meandering journey through the work world. Sure, I could do it. Sure, I had a seventeen page resume giving examples. But there is just something about those educational bonafides that throws a brick through the glass walls of future employment prospects. So I’ve been working on a business certification: a piece of paper from a high class university that says, hey, Brad studied this stuff formally, listened to experts, wrote words about it, handed in assignments, and got adjudicated on his effectiveness in these things.

    And in a week or two, when that final grade appears on my transcript and they tell me I’ve completed all the pieces, I will be able to add to my resume an extra line that says “Business Analysis Certified, University of Alberta, 2025.”

    Thanks Grandma.