Monday, June 9, 2008

Change Agent

When I was in graduate school, I wrote a business case about a change agent - me. The case described how my office changed - at least in part from my efforts - when I worked in it before graduate school. That was five years ago. Now I feel like writing an update - how I have changed, or perhaps how my own perceptions of "me" have changed. After all, how can I study organizational change, individual changes stemming from their involvement in organizations, or those who enact change without being able to look at myself? Alas, I am not prepared to write such a thing, but I am at least glad to see things more clearly. For now, I will simply write down a few things we are working on as part of our future.

- Putting our house on the market. We planned to pay off our house as fast as we could, but now we're packing it up as fast as can, hoping to get it ready in less than a month so someone looking to move to this area might buy our house. We have a house that is "perfect for a family" (words of our realtor). That also means that the summer is the best time to sell since families don't move in the middle of a school year whenever possible.

- Researching schools to attend. I have spent hours poring over the websites of schools recommended by various professors, and I have started to narrow down my list. I can only send my new score to five schools, so I have to decide which five to send it to for sure. I have a few more than five still on my list for now, but I have a list I know I want to get my score. On the off chance that one of the schools looks at my website and finds this blog, I won't include the list here.

- Studying for the GMAT. I have continued to improve my scores on practice tests, and freshened my memory of how to handle the various questions. So I went ahead and scheduled my GMAT for June 21, a week from Saturday.

We are doing our best to muddle through the day to day while we make these plans. My father has been very supportive of the plans, thankfully. He wants to share what he learned about time management with me while I teach him geometry. I think he marks that as one of his life's shortcomings - he never got to take geometry, despite holding a Masters. I look forward to spending the time learning from each other, bringing a positive change into each other's lives.

-- Robert
-

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That knowledge exchange with your dad is the cutest thing I've heard all day.

Robert said...

Cute... you always have had an interesting way to phrase things. I'm glad you find it such, though. I plan to enjoy what could be an amazing memory with my Dad. Whenever we've gotten into sharing knowledge like that, we've generally had a great time together, like when we took accounting together one summer.

Melissa said...

WOW!

You don't do anything by half measures, do you?

I wish you the best of luck on everything, especially the house.

And that is the PERFECT prayer for such things. I'll have to remember that.

Robert said...

I am known for my zeal and passion when I find something I want. We really just felt that getting the house on the market now was the wisest financial course of action. It gives us an extra summer to sell the house. A friend of ours who has been a lot more involved in the real estate market around here feels sure we'll sell it almost immediately. Here's hoping he's right.