Day Two of Year Five

It's day one of week two or really it's day eight but if you you take into account when I came up with the idea of going for my MBA it's day eight of year five...anywho, I'm standing on the train platform waiting for the doors to open (they do realize it's below freezing, right?) and  I've learned a lot in the last week especially when my specially created plan was put to the everyday reality test. We've all heard the phrase 'the best laid plans of mice and men...' and I can honestly say I've never seen any mice making plans or at least not writing them down, no opposable thumbs and all, but with Dragon Dictation and Siri with her voice recognition, that voice just gets me, who knows what nice are up to. 

I initially made the plan to study every morning from 7:15-8:15am just before work. My commute totally sucks with 62 miles one way and heavy traffic if I leave any later than 6am but I'm leaving the driveway at 6:01am, I can't do 80-90mph for the first 15 minutes of my drive.

The 7:15 start works out great as no one is really at work that early and I can study at my desk. There was a day or two where I started at 7:30 which still gave me plenty of time to get my one hour in. Round two was from 7:30-8:15pm so that would mean 1:45 a day with five hours on Saturday.

Reality had a different plan with 13.75 hours of scheduled study with another 3 in class brought me to just under seventeen hours but the actual was 17:53 as last Monday was Presidents' Day and I got to spend some extra time. The brass tax of it was that I pretty much stuck to my plan; Friday was the only exception. I got to work on time but a coworker got in early too and it was a rough work week so we talked for a while; then another guy needed to borrow my iPhone charger and he hung out while he phone charged so Friday morning's 1 hour shrunk to 30 mins. 

Friday night after work was a visit to someone in the hospital and I was burned out when I got home at 8:45pm so I took the night off. Going forward, I'll take Fridays off as I need a break and to butcher the words of the immortal Lee Iacocca, "I can get all of my studying done in six days but I can't get it done in seven."

I learned a lot about myself in the last week and my Manhattan GMAT instructor said to take a practice test right away so I did, last Monday. My goal score is 710 as I plan to get into NYU and although that's higher than most should need, my lack of a quant degree requires that I do better. The first score was a disappointing 520 but I was reading in my GMAT book of a student account where her first practice score was 530 and on the test she got a 740. 

I slam dunked the algebra regents exam with a perfect score but I must have been 15 years old  and I'm 45 now so I doesn't take a GMAT quant score of 51 to tell you that it's been a long time since I've used those skill so it's all uphill from here. I probably never mentioned I live in upstate New York five miles east of Poughkeepsie and my 10:32am super express train gets me to Grand Central at 12:11pm which gives me over an hour to walk from 42nd and Lex to W25th Street between 6 & 7th Ave. 

The Manhattan GMAT class is costing $1599 minus a $75 discount plus $20 to ship the books to me so it's not cheap. Their teachers, however are all in the 95th percentile and my thought is that I'm going to put the same effort towards a course regardless of the cost and my effort is worth as much as money, maybe more. So I'd rather pay the extra $ and get the best teachers and the best materials; the same goes for my graduate school studies; the best school will cost the most but also give me the most return.

With that, it's 11:04am and we just passed under the Bear Mountain Bridge and this is my view above. I'll catch up with you after class. It has begun.