CLS catch-up (July 3-22)

I intended to write a post this past Sunday or Monday July 5th or 6th, but life got in the way. So now here I am, on Friday evening weeks later, finally crossing it off my to-do list. Minor aside: I always love weekends because they allow me to catch up/get ahead on my work. Does that make me weird?

Every day has been busy. On weekdays we have a 2-hour language lesson before lunch and another one after lunch, but the topics and instructors cycle. Our topics are grammar, speech practice, phonetics, history, and (fiction) literature. For the speech practice class everyone must prepare a short topic for discussion. For grammar, we take turns preparing more substantial presentations; each week it's the turn of someone new.

After language lessons conclude at 2:30pm, we have either folklore lessons (traditional music, dancing, and games) or cuisine lessons. However, this week we also had to make up for two excursions that had been postponed for various reasons. So every day this week went late! It's been a long week.

Commencing recap:

Last weekend I went to Moscow

Week before last (week of July 6), our first excursion was to Bogolyubovo, where there are some fantastic churches.

Our second excursion of the week was to the Golden Gates of Vladimir. There's a museum inside, but there weren't many good photo ops. Here's a photo of the Golden Gates at night that I took well after our excursion.

At the end of the week we went to Suzdal. It is another historic city with really old churches and a historically accurate settlement. There happened to be a medieval festival happening while we were there.

The shirt with Putin in sunglasses says "The very nicest person"

Last week (week of July 13) I came down with a stomach bug and missed two and a half days of classes. I only took my temperature three times, so I don't know exactly how high my fever got, but one of the times I measured it, it was 38.8C. I felt pretty awful, but recovered by Saturday morning (July 18) when we had a master class on miniature lacquer paintings. I forgot to take a photo of mine, but we'll get them back soon and I'll try to remember to come back and add a photo.

This week has been a short one because our excursion to St. Petersburg begins tonight (in an hour, hence my rushed writing). Earlier today we had an excursion to the Vladimir historical museum. Here are some pictures, as well as a photo of my delicious breakfast (blini with homemade jam and not-homemade cream cheese)!

And here's a bonus picture of Vladimir's own Uspenskyy Cathedral with a rainbow behind it.

Next post will be about St. Petersburg, my favorite city in the whole wide world (so far)!

Math with Dad

In first grade I had a friend named Hunter Gamble who was a year older because, after kindergarten, he went through a year of something called “Developmental First” that was intended to ensure all kids were emotionally prepared for first grade. (Did you know that Oklahoma was the first state in the US to have universal, free kindergarten and pre-k? And it’s been one of the most conservative states since its formation! There’s a Planet Money about it. Or maybe it’s a This American Life.) Hunter came from a broken home. As far as I know, his dad was never there, and his mom was only sometimes there. I saw inside once. It was really messy. I think other people were there more than Hunter’s mom, and when she was there, I doubt she gave Hunter much positive attention. Hunter liked to postpone going home after school as long as possible. Hunter and I knew each other from the soccer team. We loved soccer. One day it was Hunter’s turn for Show and Tell, but he basically didn’t have any toys or anything interesting at home, so he showed up empty-handed. Everyone thought he was going to be in big trouble, but he surprised us (and probably the teacher, too). He said he was going to show (and tell) us how the number 3 goes into the number 15. We all looked at each other and scoffed. Some laughed at him as if he were a charlatan. We saw no evidence whatsoever to suggest that 3 would go into 15, a number so obviously consisting of a 1 and a 5. But he did it. He knocked our socks off with his otherworldly knowledge of multiplication and division. But then, what did we expect? We were mere 5-year olds, and here he was 6.

So first grade was the year I became kind of intrigued by math, but it was also the (first) year I had a real discipline problem. I recall the following dialogue with my mom. It was repeated virtually every day, for every subject.

Mom: Kamalu, you still haven’t done your (phonics/math/spelling) homework.

Me: I don’t want to. Why do I have to do it?

Mom: Because it’s the rule. You have to do your homework.

Me: But I’m busy (playing Legos/watching bugs/building miniature canals next to the creek)!

Mom: You have to do your homework.

Me: Mom. There’s no reason for me to do the homework. It doesn’t teach me anything. You know I know it. Mrs. Shoemaker knows I know it. It’s easy for me.

Mom: You still have to do it.

Me: But if you know I know it, and Mrs. Shoemaker (my teacher) knows I know it, and if I know I know it… why do I have to do it?

Mom: (sighs) You just do.

Me: (angry, does homework extremely fast, out of spite)

So in first grade I kind of became interested in math, but not the math we were learning, so my interest fizzled. I took a much greater interest in sports and friends than in academics.

Then in third grade we were learning multiplication tables up to 12x12. Every student would work through a course of 1x to 12x. The first 2 minutes of math class every day would be dedicated to a short multiplication quiz. Thirty seconds were allotted for the distribution of small sheets of paper (one per student) which had 30 multiplication problems based on a specific number (i.e. 4x or x4 would appear in each problem). Sixty seconds were allowed for answering the questions. Thirty seconds were reserved for the collection of the papers. It was a tight ship. If a student answered all 30 questions correctly in the allotted time, she passed the quiz. Any other outcome constituted failure. As a reward for her triumph, she graduated to the next number in the series (from 1 to 12) and was awarded a component of a banana split made out of colorful construction paper. Students’ banana splits-in-progress hung on the wall for all to see. Over time, they grew towards completion. There were 12 necessary components.

We all started out with a quiz around the number 1 (e.g. 1x4 = ? and 11x1 = ?). There were about 25 students in the class, and I think everyone managed to pass that quiz on the first try. We each got an ice cream dish made out of construction paper with our name written on it. Long did we admire the way they looked on the wall, neatly arranged, all so alike, but all personalized.

Then came the struggle. I had no recollection of learning my 2 times tables, and the quizzes weren’t teaching me anything. And after school, it’s not like the quiz was part of my homework, so I didn’t think about it. About two weeks went by. Some students (the real brainiacs) were already on something like quiz 7. I think there were three or four of them with banana splits that actually resembled the real thing: banana, three scoops of ice cream (different colors), some whipped cream. Next to those tantalizing masterpieces, my empty dish looked downright pitiful. I think the teacher contacted my parents. (I can only imagine how that went. “I’m calling to announce a state of emergency. Your son is trailing the entire class in times tables. He hasn’t made any progress since we gave him the quiz on his 1 times tables two weeks ago! All he has is an empty dish! That’s a gimme! That’s where we write the students’ names!!!)

All of a sudden, my older sister’s and my bedtime routine shifted from listening to (but not comprehending, if I’m speaking for myself) my father’s readings of The Hobbit to a routine consisting of Hobbit readings PLUS multiplication flashcards. I think the flashcards were the first act, and the readings followed, as a kind of dessert. I always fell asleep before the end of that anyway.

After we started with the flashcards, I consistently passed my daily quiz. I ended up completing my banana split at the same time as one other student who had led the class the entire time. My appreciation for (and recently shaken confidence in) math was restored.

In fourth grade I met a girl named Sarah Radke. I liked her. She told me she liked to eat small pieces of paper, so I decided I’d do that too. (A romantic from the beginning, I know.) The trouble was, the only paper I had handy was the top of my crayon box—which wasn’t a big deal exactly, but it struck me as a bit of a shame to compromise the storage functionality of the box by tearing off the top. Only later did I realize that not only was a crayon box made of tough, durable cardboard instead of soft, supple notebook paper but also crayon box lids are relatively large and also relatively covered in wax. Anyway, Sarah also told me that she was studying calculus. “What’s that??” I asked, enchanted. “Advanced math.” Well, this girl basically just told me she was out of my league. And just before summer break! “Haha, not so fast!” I thought.

Shortly thereafter, on vacation, my dad and I had a quiet moment, and I told him I needed to know everything he knew about calculus. I think he was thrilled that I was taking an interest in something he knew a lot about. I don’t recall following his explanation very well, but I know it included an example involving the flow of air around an airfoil. Sadly, I ended up not learning calculus that summer. In the fall, I asked Sarah to explain what calculus was, and she looked at me as if I was crazy.

“You said you were studying calculus,” I said.

“What?”

“Last May. You said you were studying it.”

“Oh, I must have been kidding. My brother studies that. He’s in high school.”

I’d been had! That’s the last time I pursue advanced math for a woman. Or anyone other than myself. Unless it’s going to save someone’s life or something, and I’m the only one who can do it… But what I mean is that’s probably the last time.

For just about forever after that, my dad loved to give me math problems whenever we were killing time together. And we used to kill a lot of time together. He’d take me on business trips all around the state, and to neighboring states, and the whole time at least one of us would be working out a math problem (he would solve a problem, then give it to me, and work on the next one while I worked on the given one). There would be a lot of silence, but I wasn’t bored. Back then radio was an unreliable form of entertainment for rural drives, car CD players hadn’t been invented, and there probably wasn’t much he could tell me about his job that would interest me, nor that I could tell him about anything that would interest him. But we did have math. A favorite of his was base conversion. “Warren, what’s 562 base 7 in base 5?” Those problems would keep me busy for long stretches and make the drive go way faster.

As I got closer to high school we stopped doing that. I’m not sure why. I definitely didn’t go on as many road trips; maybe he didn’t either? I was definitely getting very quick with calculations, so maybe he had a hard time staying ahead of me with the problems. Maybe both of us just got too busy with our own work. I know we started having other, more substantive stuff to talk about, especially my performance in school (exemplary) and my involvement in Boy Scouts (exceptional).

Knock, knock! Who's there? Russia!

Nearly two years without a blog post... and just when you thought this blog had taken its final dying breath, BOOM! The power of the motherland not only resuscitates it, but makes it stronger and more stony-faced than before, while putting a gold cross necklace on it.

Lightning round of catch-up questions.

• Where am I? Vladimir, Russia.
• Is the city named after Vladimir Putin? No, and that's not a dumb question because there are statues of Putin in some parts of Russia.
• What should I know about Vladimir (the city)? It's super old. The Wikipedia page says it was a medieval capital. Some think it was founded around 1000 AD. Others think it was closer to 1100 AD. Either way, it's beautiful and there are several surviving structures that are nearly 900 years old. People from all over Russia come here as tourists.
• Why are you in Vladimir? I'm studying Russian as a participant in the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program.
• What's CLS? It's this cool thing funded by the US Department of State that allows US citizens who study at universities the opportunity to study "critical languages."
• What's a "critical language"? There are currently 13 languages that the US Department of State feels are critical to the future of the USA, but not enough Americans speak them. Languages include Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Mandarin, Punjab, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Azerbaijani, Russian, and some others that slip my mind at the moment.
• Wait, are you telling me that you're still a university student? Well no; I just finished my MBA. To be eligible for CLS, applicants must be enrolled at a university at the time of application, which was last November. I'll start work in the fall.
• How long will you be in Russia? Until August 19th.
• Are you allowed to leave? Not until August 19th. Our visas are only good for a single entry.

Now that everyone is up to speed, let me tell you what's happened during the time I've spent here so far (1 week).

We have Russian class Monday through Friday. Two hours before lunch and two hours after lunch. Lunch is paid for, and it is delicious.

I was so excited for lunch, I ate almost all of my salad before I realized I should photograph my meal!

There are 26 of us here in Vladimir in the CLS program, but we don't spend all day together. We've been broken up into four groups for the purposes of classes. These groups are loosely based on fluency and familiarity with Russian. When we have lessons on folklore or traditional cuisine, we are divided into two groups instead of four.

Learning traditional dance moves

Here is a photo from when we had a lesson on Russian blini and blinchiki (which are different things, we learned!)

The Russian way is not to smile in photos, or, more generally, not to smile for insincere reasons. This is a topic unto itself.

It has rained every single day we've been here, for hours on end and sometimes with extreme force. And Russia is not exactly known for its drainage systems. It's been pretty rough walking about town. In fact, the rain was so bad this past Saturday, our excursion to a neighboring town was cancelled due to a storm warning! We'll make it up next week on Tuesday/Wednesday.

In general, we will have excursions on Saturday, but this past Saturday was freed up on account of the bad weather, and the upcoming Saturday has been freed up to allow us to go to Moscow (on our own), if we so desire. Everyone so desires.

Because Saturday was kind of wide open for me, I accepted an invitation to go to my friend's dacha. For those who don't know, a dacha is a small home in the country where people grow their own fruits and/or vegetables and/or raise animals. A lot of Russians and Ukrainians have them. I learned today that the name comes from the Russian word дать (dat'), which means "to give", because during the Soviet Union, citizens were given the opportunity to purchase for a pittance parcels of land beyond the city limits. And there they built little houses!

Anyway, it was raining when I left Vladimir for the dacha, but at the dacha it was not raining--at least for a while. It was picturesque there (at least to those who like the country).

My friend's grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, and cousin were there too. We had a great time getting to know each other and eating food and drinking alcohol that the grandparents had produced themselves. Later, the uncle's car got stuck in a muddy rut and I helped push it out.

Then I was quite dirty, so I went to the banya, which in this case was a small structure that functioned as a sauna. The dacha doesn't have running water, but the banya has a tank of heated water and a tank of unheated water, and they can be mixed and used for bathing. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a second set of shorts, so the rest of the time, I had to walk around in my pajama pants, even outside. But I'm glad I could help push the car out, seeing as how the family was so hospitable to me! Some kind of insect bit my leg during the process and it burns, but it probably won't kill me. I'll keep you posted.

Also, we (by which I mean the grandmother, primarily) baked pirogi and bulochki, which basically means savory buns/rolls and sweet buns/rolls. Here are some photos.

Today the other CLS participants and I purchased train tickets to Moscow. It's about 2 hours away. We plan to be there from Friday evening until Sunday evening. I'll give you the highlights in my next post.

Miscellaneous photos:

Lunch, 25 June, mine

Lunch, 25 June, guy diagonal from me

Lunch, 25 June, guy next to me

Vladimir's Golden Gates (ca. 12th cent.)

During our initial walk around town, during the one 4-hour period of the past week when it wasn't raining

My room! It's narrow, but cozy. Currently no internet service, to be remedied 1 July.

Shortly after our initial arrival in Moscow from the US.

Panorama photo of a vista in Vladimir. Not sure whether this will be properly viewable.

Good vs. True

I didn't post last month because I spent most of it in Ukraine revisiting the people and places of my now-previous life. And in addition to affirming to me the positive memories I had, it reminded me of both pleasant and unpleasant aspects that I'd forgotten. It's so easy to romanticize the past, and one could argue it's evolutionarily advantageous. After all, sorrow and regret can be debilitating. This got me thinking: is it better to remember only the good things, or to remember things as they truly were? In what situation would it be disadvantageous to see the past through rose-colored glasses?

It should be noted that one's past influences his future at the subconscious level if nothing else. At the very least, past experiences serve to form one's worldview, which drives decision-making going forward. At most, a person actively mines past experiences for specific insights to guide him in the future. In this case, it would clearly be better to recall accurately past events--that the lemon stand wasn't as successful as the lemonade stand, despite the fact that the lemon stand did find two loyal customers in Grandma and Grandpa.

But what about the case for selective memory, or at least memory with "positive spin"? Certainly such memory protects us from the anxiety and heartache of shame and loss? Imagine for a moment that a young person asks you for advice. You give her some piece of wisdom and send her on her way. Now imagine that she didn't understand your advice, or even worse, took your meaning for something entirely different. If you were to discover that she had misunderstood, you'd likely feel compelled to set the record straight--that you did NOT advise her to join a cult or some such thing--because you, like most people, feel a need to be understood.

When I lived in Ukraine, I found that people were more gratified by conversations with me when I avoided or minimized telling them when I didn't understand. Because if I furrowed my brow or revealed my confusion, the other person would feel at least partially responsible for the miscommunication. And so, when it wasn't a high-stakes, super-important conversation, I would simply read the person's emotions when his words were unclear. In times when the meaning of a sentence eluded me, I came to be quite adept at knowing when to laugh, when to look concerned, and when the conversation was coming to an end. You might say this is shameful, that it's unconscionable to pretend to understand and let someone go on thinking all is well. Some might call it "manipulative." But from my perspective, the point of those innumerable little chats with strangers was to show that I as an American was amicable and willing to take time to stop and chat. The point was not actually about the gardening anecdote itself. It would have been selfish and needlessly taxing to force the person to explain repeatedly, with increasingly simple words, exactly what was being planted, when, where, why, by whom, and with what tools. I would have been demanding not more than I was interested and willing to hear, but more effort than the other person was willing to afford the conversation. I had enough experience to know that my patience with my own limited vocabulary and interest in learning exceeded the other person's time and energy. So I often let him walk away feeling entirely understood.

It seems to me that rose-colored glasses are a boon due to our innate human desire to fix things. Let your friend continue to believe his joke didn't fall flat. Spare him the embarrassment. Let your sister remember her childhood piano recital as a revelation. Let people remember the old pond as a hidden oasis, not as the glorified marsh it actually was. But when a charitable view of the past threatens to misinform a future decision, you should seek to reveal the truth, even if it's your own recollection you're setting straight.

Gestation Period

How can you determine a person's potential? Is there a trick to it?

Toward the end of last month I spent a week with my father's mother and stepfather. Years before I was born, my grandmother divorced my biological grandfather and later married for a second time. During my time with the two of them, she told me that her second husband had seen in her a unopened flower bud that had yet to bloom. And she strongly feels that over the course of the last 30 years, she has been able to develop into the person she was supposed to become during the first 50 years of her life. Interestingly, I see in her second husband nearly all of the traits of her first husband that she says suppressed her development.

I wanted to know what my grandfather (her second husband) knew that I didn't. "How do you look inside someone and see what she's capable of? Is there a trick?" I asked. He laughed. "I have no idea. I don't think there's a trick, though."

Okay, so I didn't get an answer to that question. But I had another one: Why couldn't my grandmother see for herself that she wasn't developing to her fullest? That's a question I decided not to ask aloud.

But maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe people don't explicitly realize when their development has stalled. Maybe they have only a vague feeling of ennui. And was it in fact the characteristics of my grandmother's first husband that held her back? Were they really to blame? Or was it merely her perception of their culpability, and her subsequent resentment of them (and him), that made divorce the only course of action?

This fall I'm going back to school. It's comfortable and lazy to think it will be a period of great personal development. I say "comfortable and lazy" because it's a deferment of action. Why should I wait until then? What would the-person-I-want-to-be do in my position?

I'm off to go learn something.

Leap of Faith

(Preface: Before I say anything else, I should provide some resolution to the previous post: I've been accepted to the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago! I found out at 5:30pm on the day of the admissions decisions. It was the perfect conclusion to an excruciatingly lengthy application process.)

In The Art of War by Sun Tzu, we are told of Hsiang Yu, an army commander who did something quite unusual. After leading his army across a river toward enemy troops, he ordered all his army's ships burned and all the cooking pots broken. Retreat and camp-making both became impossible, and there remained no alternative besides victory in combat.

***

I find motivation fascinating. I'm often intrigued by the forces, great and small, that cause us to do the things we do. (If you're also fascinated by these things, check out Drive by Daniel Pink. Here's a primer.) Naturally I've been thinking a lot about business school lately. It's so expensive, I think. In fact, that was my first thought when I got the good news. I was in, but wait--do I really want to go? In an instant I switched from dying to get in to hesitant... and in the next instant I reminded myself that I was being irrational. I knew it was expensive from the get-go. It's irrational to want something for so long and stop wanting it because you get it. (Of course, to stop wanting it because you realized you only ever wanted it in the first place was because you couldn't have it is rational, but it requires an admission of previous irrationality. But if we refuse to change our minds out of a stubborn refusal to admit prior irrationality, then that too...

Anyway, why did I suddenly become hesitant? It wasn't because I suddenly got what I'd hoped for. It was because of the cost. I've never had debt before, and business school requires me to take on about six figures' worth. Now, I knew that from the moment I began applying to schools. I applied to schools that have amazing employment statistics. Every one of the schools I applied to boasts a median starting salary in excess of the (lofty) average debt students have when they graduate, and that doesn't account for the signing bonus, relocation package, and other compensation that many graduates accrue. And for me, the value proposition of business school is much more straightforward than it would be for the average applicant, who must consider lost wages and the needs of a spouse or perhaps children. But again, I've never had debt. I don't have a phobia per se, but certainly a strong aversion. I've been taught that it's bad, not to be trifled with... evil, practically. And like the vast majority of Millennials, I avoid it entirely. I've never even carried a balance on my credit card from one month to the next. Freedom from debt has allowed me freedom in other areas of life. I went to a state school that offered me a generous scholarship partly so that I'd have more freedom of choice later. There I got a degree in chemical engineering, and then bioengineering, and then I abandoned engineering because I didn't feel passionate about it. Without the pressure of student debt (and in the absence of passion), I hadn't really committed. I hadn't needed to. Attending business school will put me in a do-or-die situation. I'll need to land an internship this winter, and I'll need to get a full-time offer before graduation. I've never been in a do-or-die situation before. I've always operated over a safety net.

But wait a minute. I joined Peace Corps. I decided to do volunteer work in another country with no assurances of a future afterward. I agreed to abandon any network I had in the US and spend two years in another part of the world building a network I'd also abandon. I didn't know how to parlay the whole experience into a career; in fact I had no intention to do so. I simply decided it would enrich my life and I did it. I committed. And it worked out. Of course, I had NO IDEA what a professional risk I was taking--many of my fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have been looking for work for six months now--but at least I realized that quitting prematurely was not an option.

So maybe committing to something isn't entirely new to me. Maybe I have to commit again, only now the stakes are higher. Maybe the key to success in life is committing. Getting rid of the safety net. Burning the boats, and breaking the cooking pots.

Living, Striving

I didn't post last month, but it wasn't because I forgot. I wanted to wait until I had some news.

Since the first week of January I've had my hands full working at a nonprofit during the day and doing one-on-one tutoring at nights and on weekends. I've also been waiting to hear back regarding my applications to business school. Applying to MBA programs is a process that is sometimes described as "death by a thousand cuts." It involves research, campus visits, dozens of letters of recommendation, twice as many essays, and nervewracking interviews. On top of that, applicants need to take the GMAT or GRE and the TOEFL, perhaps more than once, which is a hurdle that demands its own considerable preparation. Altogether this takes several months. Actually, the successful applicant has spent years preparing for business school "in the background" by showing leadership at school, work, and in community involvement; by outperforming his peers academically and professionally; and by assembling an impressive work history (preferably international) punctuated by frequent promotions. In fact, creating a successul application might just be the most difficult step in getting a top-tier MBA. While it's typical for schools to accept less than 20% of applicants, approximately 99% of those who begin an MBA program complete it successfully.

Yesterday I found out that Dartmouth's Tuck School of Management could not offer me a place in their incoming class. That marked the fourth school to reject my application and thus the fourth significant disappointment since I began the application process nine months ago. And I must say it's exhausting to hope for something so long and not get it. To be completely honest, I've never wanted anything as strongly as I want business school. And at the risk of sounding vain, nothing has ever come so hard. The two results are that it's emotionally trying yet stubbornly appealing.

The whole process has given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on dreams and goals. How long can a person continue to hope for something in the face of repeated denial? I suppose the answer depends on how undesirable the alternative is. Some obvious examples come to mind, such as risking one's life to escape abject subjugation. But let's stick to the question's application to professional development. I've talked to people who have been applying and re-applying to business schools for two or three years. Some are now 32, 33, 34... and they say upfront that this year is their last hope. It's common knowledge that business schools prefer applicants at an early stage of their careers; there exist executive MBA programs dedicated to those applicants with more professional experience. These unsuccessful, repeat applicants, three (or more!) times more dejected than I, somehow find the will to repeat the life-consuming process year after year, writing four essays and wrangling two recommendations and taking off work for two visits and campus interviews and paying $250 multiplied by six schools--not to mention fees associated with essay services or admissions consultants... with nothing to show for it. No discernable fruits of their labor. With every rejection, the effort required to repeat the process must grow higher and higher. It must become more and more difficult to summon the energy to try again. Or does it? Does intial rejection cause an applicant to put forth less effort, thereby weakening his application, or does he redouble his attempts?

We all know that making something unobtainable increases its allure. Kids and adults alike long for that which they cannot have. It's one of the cornerstones of the luxury goods industry. Is it possible that unsuccessful business school applicants actually have more motivation to get in after initial rejections? Do his submissions actually get stronger and stronger? Certainly everyone must give up at some point. But which man is the coward--the one too easily discouraged--and which is the fool--the one who refuses to accept defeat? Which kind of person am I? Which kind of person are you? Which would you rather be?

I'm waiting to hear from one last school. If I'm not accepted there, I'll take it to mean that I simply don't have enough work experience, or the right kind, to get in. And I'll pour all my energy into making the career change I'm striving for. The career change that I've heard is only possible through business school.