Life After School

It's been two weeks since I submitted my final paper for my MBA at NYU's Stern School. I am incredibly happy to be done, as you might expect -- it's been a long four years! But there is definitely part of me that is sad to be done. I have had the opportunity to hear lectures from brilliant men and women for two nights a week and I've been challenged to think in ways that were completely new to a math/engineering guy like me. For each of eleven semesters, I excitedly reviewed the course catalog and considered what I wanted to learn next. Of course the learning won't stop with the end of school, but the opportunities won't be the same and I just hope that I made the most of my time at Stern.

Now that I am finished with school it feels like I have a lot of free time, even with that pesky full-time job! There are many, many things that I hope to do with this new-found freedom. I want to spend more time with my wife, which I have been missing for a long time. Hopefully, we have a long summer of camping trips ahead of us! And of course I really want to spend more time reacquainting my body with physical activity -- soccer (the season is already underway), golf (ok, maybe it's not physical activity, but I'm dying to get back out there), the gym (at least more frequently than I already do), and hopefully I'll soon get a bike and begin cycling with my brother-in-law.

I also hope to spend more time studying one of my favorite interests: personal finance. This may sound like a strange thing to list as an interest, but I believe it's a powerful force in people's lives that can either be the cause of enormous distress or freedom. It's made a big difference in my life and the lives of people close to me, and I hope to find a way to share some of that peace with others. Lastly, as I alluded to in my last post, I joined the board of a non-profit and look forward to assisting with its growth. The non-profit is called Shiloh, which is an organization that serves at-risk children in New York City through neighborhood programs and a summer camp in upstate New York. I have seen Shiloh work in the lives of kids firsthand through my involvement over the past seven years; I am proud to be able to serve Shiloh in a new capacity.

Yep, I've been waiting a long time for this free time and I plan to put it to good use. I'm even going to try to do a better job working on my blog, but more on that later...

We went to Spain!

And London! And Palm Springs... and San Antonio to meet our new nephew... and my friend Irene came to visit... and I joined the board of a non-profit... and the spring soccer season began... and Beth had an awesome birthday party...

All kinds of things have been going on since my last post, but I have not taken the time to blog on any of them! One of the primary reasons for that is school... but not for long. I'm working on my last paper for my last class of my last semester... finally!

Once the semester is over, I am going to try to become a more regular blogger. I have a long list of things I intend to write about, but just very little time. Hopefully, finishing school will change that.

In the meantime, here are a couple photo albums:

Spring Break 2007 with Nephew Austin

Spain 2007