Commencement '16

Last Mother's Day weekend I attended the commencement exercises of my alma mater, Howard University, here in our nation's capital. 

I'd thought the faces of over 2,400 new members of the real HU's great family would highlight the day, but much to my delight, the best part of the ceremony would actually be my very own mother (now the Dean of HU's School of Social Work) presenting & confirming her students' graduate degrees! What a way to kick-off the holiday weekend! The weather cooperated, as it always does for an HU graduation, & everyone on the yard, including my mom, simply looked great.

The camera really seemed to love her, as I'd later discover upon returning home to catch the live coverage on my DVR & she didn't flub any of her lines either, lol.

Oh & by the way, the 44th president our great nation stopped by as well... “I know you’re all excited today. You might be a little tired, as well. Some of you were up all night making sure your credits were in order (laughter). Some of you stayed up too late, ended up at HoChi at 2am (laughter). Got some mambo sauce on your fingers (enormous laughter)…" 

Now that's the Barrack Obama I've been waiting 8 years to hear from - maybe I won't give him such a hard time moving forward, lol. 

But all jokes aside, he really did deliver an empowering speech to the graduates, one that was relevant to everyone in attendance. A truly historic & monumental day on the Hilltop & I'm so very glad that I was able to take part. Now let me break-out this checkbook, I've got money to send uptown for some much needed infrastructure improvements over at the School of C!

Back to School?

Well... maybe. I'm considering enrolling in a program that will allow me to earn some sort of an IT degree. I was thinking something along the lines of a Master of Information Technology degree (with a special emphasis placed on homeland security management).

I swore years back, when I got my undergraduate degree from Howard, that I was done with school & always ran (full-speed) in the opposite direction whenever anything of the scholastic nature was proposed. But now I'm having second thoughts about that.

It's not that I feel I've hit some sort of glass ceiling or anything with regard to my current career as a policy writer, I'm just a little bored with what I do & quite tired of the bureaucratic red tape that slows the progress of many assigned duties. I guess I need something more interesting to bicker with appointed officials about, lol.

My background in both civil service & law enforcement appears to fall in line with the programs I've checked out thus far, so this is definitely the general area I want to focus on at this point. I'm interested in Mobile Telecommunications as well, but my experience in that arena is more hobby/investment related, so I'm hardly classically trained outside of the standard industry telecom speak.

Given the fact that I have no current student loans (nor have I ever had any), I figure it would be relatively easy to obtain financial aid, should I indeed decide to enroll. No clue if I'd be primarily interested in online courses or traditional classroom settings, but it's definitely something I'll be researching over the next few months.

There's also the question of which grad school I'd want to attend. Mainly my background has been in journalism, so I'm not very well-versed in the knowledge of which institutions turn heads with regard to IT/managent positions, so I'd obviously be rolling that into my research as well.

At any rate, hopefully the act of getting these thoughts out of my head & documented will spawn the additional motivation needed to get off my ass & look into my future options. Hell, nobody's gonna do it for me, right?