Graduated College Today, now what
 

Glad to be done, onto my MBA now. Staying at the same school.
Good buddy from Alaska came into town from Florida, we got super drunk last night and I was definitely way drunk all through graduation this morning. Don't think I could have done things any better.

congrats!!! what was your major?
I still have a few yrs of engineering hell

Manufacturing and Industrial Technology, currently working as a machine designer for an industrial automation company.

awesome. I look forward to taking machine design principals as a professional requirement next semester. definitely something im interested in.

congrats man!!

From my experience graduate school is much easier than undergrad. But that's probably not true of every degree program.

Congrats, are you going right on to grad school, or working first?

Congrats Chad!

Congrats Chad.

Congratulations Chad!

Now on to the next milestone!

CONGRADULATIONS good sir

Hey Chad, nice work man!

congrats!

Way to go!

jealous, very jealous, good job!

Well i have two solid options.
A. Maintain my job working full time as a machine designer, get my MBA part time over a period of like 2.5 years, and buy a house to live in.

B. Work my job till the end of March. Quit, go to Europe for a month and love life. Then go to Alaska for 4 months of construction work. I've been offered a Civil Engineering intern position and my position as a heavy equipment operator. Make enough money to pay for grad school and all the beer I could want for the 1 year it would take to get my MBA. Then hammer out my MBA starting the fall of '09. Then decide what to do with myself.

A. Slow and stable

B. Most single men's dream.

Any opinions fellas?

Congrats Chad.

In this economy I would chose slow and stable. You can always pursue every mans wet dream after you have your degree.

Yea, get it over with. the wet dream works better with more money. And you don't always have that hanging over you. If a job arises, your ready.

Once you stop school, it is hard to drop everything and go back.... I still like 15hrs of my bach deg. That has been 3 yrs. I was just taking 1 sem off.

Now I have so many, bills, credit cards and bs.... It is going to be hard to go back.

+1 stable.

And CONGRATULATIONS!

Either way I will get my degree.
I can maintain a stable job and get it slowly or I can work 4 months back in AK and come back to TN with more than enough in the bank ready to pay for the MBA and living expenses while I do the 1 year MBA program.
So both ways I get my MBA. The primary difference is 2.5 years vs. 1 year and all that work experience vs just getting the education as quickly as possible.

If you have the cash, get a backpack and travel like a motherfucker.

Congrats Chad!

Go with option A so you stay in TN. ATC is a good company and machine design kicks ass.

As far as work is related; would you enjoy B? If so, then you have really 2 very good options before you.

FWIW, I bought a Lancia Montecarlo at the Fiat factory the moment I finished with the University and left for Europe to pick it up. I then spent 3 months that summer going to different places in Europe. Best summer ever! I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

One thing to remember: a trip to Europe is an experience that gets more and more complicated the older you get.

Let us know what you decide in the end. I know I can provide some assistance in Spain and I'm pretty sure other European members would be more than willing to assist also. (I know there are members from the UK, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and even Latvia in this forum and I'm sure most of them would also be pleased to assist you).

Best,

Rafa

B was my choice. You'll have many years left to slow and stable. IMO have fun while you can when it's available.

Definetly have the fun while you can before you're saddled with bills and work and relationship, etc.

Congratulations Chad!

If you know that you have the discipline to stick to option B then that is what I would do. The older you get the harder it gets to do. I would see if you can make it two months instead of one though.

I have a friend that worked for one year after he graduated BSEE. He lived very cheaply and saved most of his income. He quit his job, and then backpacked most of Europe and some of western Asia over the next year and a half. He then came back to the states and earned his Masters, MSEE.

I myself took 3-4 years off between High School and College before getting my BSME for reasons I will not go into. It worked out for me.

Taking some time off makes it harder to go back, but not impossible. If you really want to see Europe, do it now. I just saw a show in HD on Northern Italy (Milan, Lake Como, the Alps); that place is beautiful and the women are hot. I'd love to go see it. Who knows, maybe you can work in a couple of F1 races while you are there.

Just in case and before some of the members from other European nations call my attention to it: we also have people from Greece, Russia and Serbia in this forum.

congrats.

Congrats man. Two tough choices there. I'm old, so I would say A. Part of that is I couldn't do the salmon boat thing back in high school. A local guy had a boat. But, I wore glasses and was left handed. Two strikes, so that killed me.:vash: So, if I couldn't go, you can't go back. You've already been there. No more for you.:giggle:

Besides, the real world experience with ATC will be worth a ton over some schmoe that just has a degree later when you are interviewing for your next gig.

B man, fffing B! Do it now while you can

Congratz, now you get to bitch about your loans, bitch about not finding any jobs, bitch about the economy.

and become a republican!

I'm actually debt free and have two different job options and the economy hasn't yet affected me besides the fact that gas is cheap as heck right now.


I'll keep all that in mind, if anything maybe they can show me some good bars.

I've been there since may so I'll have about 10 months of experience logged before I quit. Even though thats hardly anything it's better than nothing.

I'll definitely see what I could do to make it more than a month. I know for sure that I would be able to stick to the MBA and hammer it out in a year. So that wouldn't be an issue.

Thanks for all the confirmation guys, much appreciated. With times being a little tough for many its difficult to make decisions. Guess I should just follow my initial decisions and run with them.

Congrats! Glad to see you're leaning towards B. I'd love to be able to do that someday. I hope I will, but well, here I am, 20 years old, carrying an absurd amount college debt and taking time off of school to pay it off. I think that if you can just drop everything and go see the world for a bit, you're definitely doing something right in life.