Just when I thought I was out…
When I finished my master’s degree in late 2011, it was again time to decide what to do. Staying put and maintaining the status quo seemed disingenuous to my graduate school admissions essay:
Once again I find myself in the audience. I know my passions and I want to jump on stage, grab the right instrument, and start to play. The Management of Technology degree seems to me the next “right instrument”. Learning how to stimulate technological innovation and creativity in an organization will transform me from the guy in the audience tapping his leg to the guy that can jump on stage and jam with the band. After years of sitting in the audience, I am ready to jam.
So for the past two years, I’ve been looking for the right stage and the right players. I still hear the voices of those that called me a lifer echoing in my head (probably because they still tell me, though now with an “I told you so” tone) and that’s probably why I’ve spent so much time and effort exhaustively searching both inside and outside the company for jobs. In the end, it seems I cannot avoid my destiny.
…they pull me back in.
Just yesterday I finalized my acceptance of a job with the Commercial Airplanes division. I will be working in that same building I visited over nine years ago, before I was even on the payroll. I will be working on ways to stimulate technological innovation and creativity throughout the organization, just like I said I wanted to do in my admissions essay. And the irony is not lost on me that, despite my ardent objections over the years, Luca and I will be neighbors in the great pacific northwest; home of dreary skies, horrendous traffic, and undeniable beauty. Perhaps we’ll resurrect one of our old traditions, or maybe we’ll start a new one. Whatever the future holds, it all started nearly twenty years ago with a live band at a block party.
The moral of the story: be mindful what you write, and never say never.