On a wall in 妮可Berlowski’s office in the professional building at 沃基肖 Memorial Hospital, 是一件艺术品吗, created by one of her daughters. Eight large letters, written over blocks of color, spell out “I AM BRAVE.”
现在, going back to school for a graduate 学位 after a decade-plus in the workforce might not exactly be running into a burning building sort of brave, but it does take some courage, 一些肠道的坚韧, to dive back into the world of exams and term papers after so many years away.
和, in spite of her general fearless attitude, Berlowski will admit she felt more than a little anxiety when she about thought pursuing a Master of Business Administration 学位.
那会有很多工作要做. 和时间. 和金钱. 和 there was her family—a husband and two daughters, one embarking on a competitive volleyball path that would require a lot of back and forth to practices and games. 和 it wasn’t exactly like her job depended on it. She had already become a human resources manager—her actual title is director of total rewards and HR business intelligence for ProHealth Care in 沃基肖. Her life was full, personally and professionally.
But Berlowski likes to learn. Even back when she received her undergraduate 学位 from the University of Wisconsin in 2000, she had a feeling she wasn’t done with school. 和 in the years since she has sought out numerous and frequent educational opportunities—that piece of art on her office wall is surrounded by certificates. Still, when it was time to register, she hesitated.
“It was a very last-minute decision,” she recalled. The family was about to move, and home life was busy. “But my husband made the point to me—there is never going to be a perfect time. You just have to pick the time.”
她毅然决然.
“I had been so far away from college for so long. It was scary,” she admitted. 一个内向的人, she was apprehensive about speaking in class and nervous about, 好吧, everything that college classes would mean. “As you get further away from undergrad, you just can’t imaging taking another exam or writing another paper,”她说。. “The transition was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Texts, papers, it’s all been doable. 可管理的. 一切都很好.”
She chose Carroll for a couple or reasons.
She had acquaintances who had taken online MBA programs and knew those weren’t for her. “I needed an in-person MBA program,”她说。. “I know that about myself, I can’t learn that way. I need that interaction, person to person.”
The small class sizes and the flexibility of Carroll’s program were big sells, too. 直接通过, 这是一个22个月的过程, but Berlowski was able to take a semester off during the family’s move.
She’s learned a lot already—about marketing, about statistics and about herself.
“The biggest challenge so far? 时间管理. I’ve learned that I’m a bit of a procrastinator.”
She feels she has become a better communicator at work, and that she now fully comprehends the reports she gets at work from a data scientist on her team. But her biggest lesson may be that she is not the person she was all those years ago at UW. Her professional experiences have changed her. 她的生活改变了她.
“It’s been a confidence booster,”她说。. As an undergrad, she was a good student, happy to achieve GPAs above 3.0. “But now I have this thing where I have to get an A. The program has brought out my drive.” The day before her first exam, she spent all day at the Center for 研究生 Studies,研究. “I just have this strong desire to do 好吧. I really want to feel like I’m getting something out of it.”
“这对我来说太私人了. 这与工作无关. 我爱学习. I like being able to say I did it. I think about when I get it, how much that will mean to me. I mean, my parents didn’t have college 学位s. It’s just really personal to me.”
It’s about lifting herself higher, challenging herself and growing.
The lessons aren’t lost on her daughters, she said. “My daughters are smart, they get it.”
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