The end is near, now what

Last night I took my second to last final exam. One more on the 18th and I’m done, done with school! 🙂

Before I go any further with this post I want to say that last night’s exam of 125 questions in 90 minutes was a bit much. Everyone I spoke with afterward agreed that the class was interesting and engaging but the final exam left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Oh well, it is what it is (as a friend of mine always likes to say), I’m glad I did well in all assignments prior to the exam as I will definitely need those grades to balance last night’s debacle.

Now back to what I was going to write about. Nine days from now, I will be done with a degree I started in September of 2006 and it feels a bit surreal to be so close to its completion. Being almost done presents a whole array of questions which I will need to think about and answer in near future. Here they are in no particular order. Please share your recommendations for each of these as I’m fairly undecided on most of them.

1. Should I continue studying towards a PhD? It is something that has frequently crossed my mind over the past several years, but given that I would need to almost certainly attend full time and would take some 4-5 years to complete is very discouraging. In the field of Information Technology (IT) having a PhD is valuable in generally two instances:

On the other hand, should I decide to stay in Higher Education and work my way towards a position of executive IT leadership having a PhD can be very helpful. By the way, my current degrees include a BS in Computer Science, an MS in Information Systems and in a month or so an MBA in Management.

2. Working on advancing at current institution? So far I have been fairly successful along this path, but at times you reach a point where you become complacent and stagnant and I don’t ever want to get there. Is it better to be preemptive and move on or considering there is still room for improvement continue ahead?

3. Look for brand new challenges? New is often exciting, energetic, but frequently challenging and exhaustive. While “grass always looks greener on the other side” I’m aware that it often turns into nothing more than an optical illusion. How do you know that you are ready?

4. Start a new business? This has been a recurring question since I moved to the United States, but other than several consulting gigs never really followed up on it for some reason. Has the time come to act on it now, or is the current economic timing poor and should leave it for better times? I have options to start my own IT company or partner with some of my friends.

5. Teach a course or two? This would obviously not replace my current position, but would engage me in something new and could additionally improve my experience at the university. Over the past year or so I have been asked to teach Computer Science and MIS courses, but due to some administrative concerns I wasn’t able to act on these offers. Things should be different next semester and teaching a class after my regular work day shouldn’t be a problem.

Those are the main professional decisions I will need to make over the next several months and would really appreciate hearing from YOU on what you think I should do. At this point I’m leaning towards a combination of two or three of these opportunities, but haven’t made up my mind just yet.