Today, thanks to the wonderful ideal bite eco-living tip, I finally found the kind of website I’ve been begging other sites to post about. Beyond Grey Pinstripes is a pretty cool site about green MBA programs around the country and the world. Carmen has recently been looking for a green program to attend while I finish my Bachelors degree – our local school is in the top ten and carmen has considered going back to school, brainy girl that she is.

My adviser has been pushing me to go for an MBA after graduating but there are a lot of factors that keep me from seriously considering it.

1. More school?! Are you serious? It will have only taken me 7 years to get my Bachelors. Actually though, I took a break to move across the country to be with carmen, get a CMT (certificate in massage therapy), get some real-life “work” experience, and now work full time and go to school full time. I feel like I’ve been in school forever and will only have a crappy B.S. in Technology Management when it’s all said and done.

2. Holy crap school is expensive! I’m $30,000 in debt for undergrad alone and we just finished paying off all of carmen’s loans – and she’s been out of school for quite a while! Now I’m looking at $30,000+ more for an MBA AND I will have to continue to work full time while getting it. I feel like I’ll be dead before being able to pay for all this. Life sucks enough now just doing undergrad work I can only imagine it gets worse when you’re in graduate school. I keep hearing carmen’s horror stories from back in the day along with my other super smart friend at Virginia Tech. and neither one seemed to be very happy about being in grad school. It’s a lot to consider.

3. I don’t want to be a manager! *stomping foot, crossing arms and pouting* The whole MBA thing always flashes “MANAGER” like an annoying neon light whenever I think about it. But then I read about people with MBAs who are working in the sustainable industry who are far from being managers. Simran Sethi totally rocks it with her work on Treehugger.com along with her hosting gig at Sundance Channel’s The Green and occasional guest appearances on The Oprah Show. Also, almost everyone on staff at Terrapass.com has an MBA, they’re totally cool and also, not managers… I think I really need to think about what exactly someone with an MBA does. The only people I actually know who have MBAs are all managers and I don’t think I could do that. I want to be in the middle of the action, I’ll lead people but I don’t want to be so stuck in bureaucracy that it means sitting at a desk and attending meetings all day instead of getting my hands dirty.

4. I don’t entirely know what I want to be when I grow up! Blame it on genetics, but I take after my mother in terms of what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t even think she knows what she wants to be yet. To prove my point, here are things I have shown interest in in the past:

• Egyptology (the ratio of mummies to Egyptologists is not that competitive, plus, curses that kill you!)
• Forensic Pathology (still very interesting yet too germ-filled for one with OCD)
• Fly Airplanes (I would love to again but see #2 above – grad school is on the extra value menu compared to the cost of flying)
• Professional Archer (also with the expensive and very time consuming – no work, no school, no life, just archery. All. The. Time.)
• Library Clerk (boring)
• Massage Therapist (highly lucrative yet I’m a specialist and I was too unmotivated to start a business)
• Cashier at Whole Foods (HATED IT!)
• Land Surveyor (fun, dirty, no money)
• Computer Call Center Representative (learned a lot but got paid very little)
• Computer Programmer (fun but I run out of things to do and I like to break things and fix them more)

Here are things that I am interested in today:

• Green Building (I wrote an entire thesis on this for my degree and my dad was a carpenter so I’ve enjoyed construction my whole life. Plus, tools? Pretty.*)
• Breaking Computer Programs (I have a knack for breaking things, why not get paid for it)
• Technical Analysis (Fixing broken work processes to make things better)
• Research (I like to learn)
• Being on Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list (how cool would it be to make the list as someone who deals in sustainability)

I like everything too much and can’t narrow it down to just one thing. Actually, I think if I did I would just get bored. But really, my goal is to make Forbes and if I want to do that I have to get an MBA. There’s one big problem though, I have a problem with change. When I think about getting a new job, going to grad school, and/or moving to a different state my heart starts racing and I can’t breathe. Fortunately for me I have one more year until I graduate and thus have a year or more to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. The idea of attending school #17 doesn’t sound too bad though.

The more I think and read about it, the more interested I am in both carmen and I each getting an MBA just to up the statistics of women who have MBAs. The Aspen Institute wrote an interesting document about women and MBAs here check it out if you’re interested.

* for those of you who are geeks this should come to no surprise that I am referencing BTVS here:
DAWN: (worried) So, what do we do?
BUFFY: Easy. We burn the house to the ground and collect the insurance. (Dawn continues looking worried) Plus, fire? Pretty.
from “Flooded” Season 6, Episode 4