May 22

Oksana Midgett, MBA

by in Life of Arlo

Oksana and her diploma

On May 4th, the University of Alaska Southeast held its commencement ceremony.  After almost two years of hard work, Oksana finally received her fake Masters of Business Administration diploma.  Fake?  Yes, well, see… the document they handed out on stage was actually a placeholder.  She still has a couple more electives one capstone and one elective to go and won’t officially qualify for an MBA until the end of August…

Still, I’m mighty proud of her.  When she started the program back in 2006, it seemed like a great idea.  She had her day job pretty much under control and we could get free tuition through my university benefits.  A quick two years of evening homework assignments and she’d have three new letters to put after her name as well as a head start on the educational requirements for a CPA.  Unfortunately, we soon realized that the “free tuition” didn’t cover the inexplicable $400 “super tuition” fee that was appended to every class, and when her job’s workload doubled last year, she had far fewer hours in the week to tackle homework.

Me?  Thanks for asking.  I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft.  Sometimes, if she manages to keep all the plates spinning, I get to see her on Sunday evenings.

I wish I could say that we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  I’m only going to give her a small break at the end of August before pushing her to study for the CPA exam.  If she doesn’t do it now, while her study habits and time management skills are sharply honed, I think it will be much more difficult in the future.

Oksana walks

At any rate, I enjoyed seeing her walk across the stage at graduation.   The MBA at UAS is a distance-delivered degree, and there were only two other people from her cohort walking.  Somehow, they ended up near the very end of the line, and it took quite awhile before she was called.  But hey, after some pronunciation coaching, at least they did a pretty good job of not mangling her name!

My coworkers at Media Services were actually airing the graduation ceremony live over the internet and satellite and cable TV.  They were manning four cameras and a mobile video switcher on the running track above the stage.  Rather than spend two-and-a-half hours sitting in the crowd, I pulled rank and joined them upstairs.  I didn’t have any official duties, however, so I just wandered around taking disappointingly high-ISO photos with my camera.

Oksana waves

On Monday, after the graduation ceremony was over and my coworkers had packed up all their equipment, it was my turn to work on the project.  I took their live-edited video and created a DVD, a streaming video, an iPod video, and an mp3, and posted them all online.  Anyone who knew I was responsible for laying out the DVD covers could have guessed who would end up on the cover…

UAS 2008 Graduation DVD cover

Lately, I’ve been teasing Oksana about a study I heard about on NPR.  Apparently, women with MBA’s are twice as likely to get a divorce.  Twice as likely as what?  Well, I just looked it up, and I guess it’s twice as likely as their male MBA counterparts.

I guess that means our marriage is safe, but dammit, there goes my plan!  Just today, I received a serendipitous e-mail with what I thought would be the perfect solution: 

No test, No class, buy yourself Bacheelor/MasteerMBA/Doctoraate dip1omas, VALID in all countries

Bacheelor, MasteerMBA, and Doctoraate diplomas available in the field of your choice that’s right, you can even become a Doctor and receive all the benefits that comes with it!  
 
Our Diplomas/Certificates are recognised in most countries
    
No required examination, tests, classes, books, or interviews.    
        
** No one is turned down      
** Confidentiality assured    
  
CALL US 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK  
   
For US: 1-734-939-1410          
Outside US: +1-734-939-1410         

“Just leave your NAME & PHONE NO. (with CountryCode)” in the voicemail         
     
our staff will get back to you in next few days

No examinations, tests, classes, books or interviews?  Degrees that are VALID in all countries and recognised in most?  (I don’t really understand that, but whatever.)  Man, it sounded like the perfect loophole!  Nevertheless, I really don’t want to risk a divorce, so I guess the prudent course of action would be to make do with only one MasteerMBA dip1oma in our household. 

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