Design School, With an M.B.A. Sidecar

For two weeks, I have been riding the train downtown to the Institute of Design at IIT. Last week I had a Creative Suite bootcamp taught by graduate students, and this week I had orientation. Yep, I am going back to school. I am pursuing dual degrees: a Masters in Design and a Masters in Business Administration.

I will be going full time, which very much limits the amount of time I will be able to work. My decision to commit to this program started out intuitively (as most important things in my life do) and progressed rapidly to anxiety as I lined up the logistics, and now, after orientation, I am back to feeling confident about it.

McCormick Tribune Campus Center on Main Campus

About ID

The professors gave a seminar during orientation to provide an overview of how they field the field of design and IIT’s position within that field, and they described some projects they have been working on. Our dean is Patrick Whitney, a well-known design consultant . He keynoted the STC annual conference in 2005, by the way.

Here’s a quick list of other professors and their amazing projects, the likes of which I’ll soon be helping with:

• Anijo Mathew, an interaction designer who worked on Zero Zero, Art Loop
• Patrick Whitney working on projects in interest-based education
• Stan Ruecker designing for the future of reading.

I can’t wait to have better questions to ask these professors. I can’t wait to have a job where I’m actually expected to have ideas like this.

Why would I do such a thing?

All of my reservations about this decision can be boiled down to two worries, and I have answers to them:

1. I feel like I should be able to take just the time and get the knowledge myself. But content is not free, and this program is first-rate content. This is one of the best design schools. This is the delivery method that these top designers are choosing for their knowledge.
2. Grad school at a private school is so expensive. Penelope Trunk calls it an “extreme investment;” risky because the job market changes so much. But I have chosen a field, design strategy, that integrates those changes, and hopefully drives them. I’m going to learn methodology that is versatile enough to be applied to any field, from the people who are inventing it.

I checked in with myself repeatedly to make sure wasn’t choosing school as an escape hatch (another P. Trunk dis of people who choose grad school). But I’ve failed at two businesses, successfully launched one, and have another in the works. I’m kind of addicted to a lack of certainty and comfort. And the idea of school right now is not comfortable or safe. So that’s not what I’m doing.

Still, I want to keep looking at the arguments against grad school as I progress, and see how my experience is measuring up.

Reflection vs. sleeplessness

So, I’m facing 100+-hour weeks, and will have a legit reason not to blog.

Ha.

I’d like to make time for blogging, actually, because having time to reflect. Patrick Whitney mentioned the role of reflection in learning while discussing research he’s doing on interest-based education. I realized that’s what blogging does for me: it helps me reflect on what I’ve learned at work. Much of what I’ll learn may not belong in a blog about technical communication, but some of it will. I hope I make time for that reflection.