When I went off active duty with the Army in July of 2005, I thought that my days in uniform were over for good. I gave away most of my camouflage clothing, boots and other random items that people who haven’t served have a kitschy interest in. I also began working towards making the necessary gains that would ensure that my life would be defined by my post war years. After much searching I eventually found a job in project management for a construction company and leaned into it as much as I could. The job required me to travel all throughout the Midwest during the work week but I kept an apartment in Humboldt Park and continued to call Chicago home.
A Long Road Ahead: Applying to LGSB
I felt that with the combination of the Illinois Veterans Grant and the GI Bill available to me, I would be foolish not to work towards a master’s degree. I took the GMAT in November 2006 and right about the time I received my official results in the mail, I received information that would change my life. I was being transferred from the Individual Ready Reserve to active duty in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan and was required to report to Fort Benning, GA in just six weeks. I worked another three weeks for my company, packed everything I owned into a storage facility, and submitted my application to UIC’s Liautaud Graduate School of Business using their online process.
Fort Benning, A Place To Call Home
Fort Benning is defined as the home of the infantry since it is where recruits go for basic training along with Airborne and Ranger recruits. I have a love-hate relationship with Ft. Benning because it is where I completed my basic training and because the human brain has a tendency to paint the past with rose tinted glasses. The distilled truth is it is a place with a very serious mission to provide as realistic training as possible for young soldiers before they go to one of our country’s infantry battalions. In the current state of affairs, almost all are in the rotation for deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. The last time I was there in July 2002, it was hotter and more humid than I had ever experienced before. All that could be said about this trip was that it wasn’t as hot as last time. I had no regular access to the internet over the course of the next three months while stopping in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. But finally I landed in Afghanistan.
Accepted!
Ironically enough, my internet situation was better in Afghanistan than Georgia and I was able to check my email fairly regularly. My role was that of a squad leader of an infantry platoon and we split out time between a “large” base at the bottom of a valley in the Laghman Province and a small base in the mountains. We worked in support of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) effort that sought to provide stability for the Afghan populace by way of financing infrastructure projects in our region. There are 23 PRTs in operation in Afghanistan with the U.S. running about half of them. After about 5 months of walking up and down mountains, I was extremely relieved to receive word of my acceptance into UIC’s MBA program.
LGSB Was Perfect For Me
UIC’s program was perfect for me for a few reasons. First of all, afforded the luxury of the Illinois Veterans Grant, the majority of tuition for state schools is waived. The program also allows all six core courses to be taken online throughout the year. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign only allowed for a fall program start date and had no online or summer offerings nor does it allow transfers. If I had chosen to wait and go to UIUC, I would have had to tack on an additional year to my studies.
I matriculated into the program and cautiously signed up for one online class in the Fall, Marketing 500 with Professor Cherian. I also obtained a new job as walking aimlessly in the Afghan mountains had grown somewhat repetitive. I began working as the US Army liaison at the Provincial Coordination Center in downtown Mehtarlam. My role was to communicate, through an interpreter, with representatives from the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and the National Directorate of Security (an intelligence branch that is a carryover from the period of Russian influence but that the Afghans are comfortable with). So, for the remainder of my time in Afghanistan, I worked with one other American and six Afghans on coordinating a response to emergencies such as severe weather, the constant IED threat, and what we were going to order for lunch from the market on any given day.
Crocs or Bombs: Which Is More Important?
Professor Cherian’s class required the completion of a group project consisting of an entire marketing plan to pass the class. Since I had a bandwidth capacity only slightly more impressive than two Dixie cups and twine I decided to do it on my own. I chose Crocs shoes because I was amazed that the company went public and made a killing on selling rubber slippers that someone else had designed. It turned out to be a fairly large task and surreal to be typing up a report about Crocs shoes while being interrupted by a report of a roadside bomb discovered that would require sending many people to cordon off the area and ultimately defuse it. When I realized the people being sent to defuse the bomb were also going to be my ride home or the excuse to delay it, I sat back down at my desk to finish my SWOT analysis. All while the same four Bollywood movies are played in constant succession at full volume on the TV my American counterpart had decided was smart to purchase for the office.
New Excuse to Replace “dog ate my homework” for Today’s Student
For the Spring semester, I signed up for two more online classes, Microeconomics and Organization Behavior core courses. I was scheduled to leave Afghanistan in the Spring but the dates are always up in the air up until the day and minute that someone is screaming at you to get on the helicopter. I gave my professors advanced notice of the fact that my position was probably going to coincide with at least a few assignments and a midterm. They were extremely forgiving for my status and I realized that I had one of the best dog-ate-my-homework excuses in the history of academia; “I’m sorry professor, but my ability to deliver consistent school work is going to taper off during the next couple of weeks while I bounce from tent to tent and flight line to flight line on my way out of a war torn, third world country”.
How Many Students Can Say Their Econ Midterm Included F-15s?
I committed to taking my economics midterm in Bagram in what turned out to be, only in retrospect, fairly comical circumstances. The tent that my company of about 120 soldiers was put in was on the opposite side of the runway from the bulk of the base. This meant that the F-15s that took off every night in the wee hours would fly directly over me. It is roughly the equivalent of someone sneaking up to you while you’re sleeping with a jack hammer in one arm and an air horn in the other and waylaying on them both at the same time in order to wake you. Very soothing. I had to get the midterm done in Bagram before we flew elsewhere because I knew that my internet situation was only going to get worse. Military personnel are fairly touchy about people spending a minute longer than their allotted fifteen minutes on a pc terminal at MWR facilities so I had to pay for the service at the market in order to get a sufficient amount of time. The bandwidth was so low there that I couldn’t log into the system in order to take the test but my professor allowed me to download it and submit the answers within the allotted time rather than maintaining a constant presence. This created the next problem, finding a quiet place to work on the assignment on a base where bags aren’t allowed to be carried into many of the public areas. Fortunately, Bagram had a pretty nice USO facility that serves coffee and is open almost twenty four hours. I cranked out the exam and sent it off and didn’t touch my computer or access the internet for another two weeks.
Around the World But Finally Back Home
After stops in Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Ireland, Georgia and Maine, I was back at Ft Bragg. We were out-processed in about 5 days and I was on a plane back to Chicago. After a week of living at my parents’ house, 5 minutes after arrival of my decision and 6 days to formulate an escape plan, I found an apartment close to UIC and moved in. I put the finishing touches on the two classes I was enrolled in and signed up for two more during the Summer. After taking full class loads in the Fall and Spring, I am now on track for graduating in May 2009. I can’t say that there is any other program that would have meshed as smoothly with the crazy schedule and living conditions that I had to work with and I am extremely happy that I was able to matriculate at the time that I did.
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