Blog Post #2 – What I Have Been Up to Since August

I graduated from the Drury University MBA Program in August. This closed a big chapter in my life: the chapter dedicated to formal education as a first obligation. I may continue my education further in the future, but for now, formal education as the primary time use in my life is complete. I am transitioning from the education mindset to the work mindset. I also finished up my internship at SignalPoint Asset Management. Welcome to the real world.

After college I had to start making some tough choices about my immediate future. I decided to leave Springfield and move to Kansas City. Springfield is a great town, and I enjoyed my college years there, but I wanted a change of scenery and to live the city life for a little while. I also think that there are more employment opportunities in Kansas City than there are in Springfield, part of which is due to the fact that the KC metro area has a population about 10 times greater than the Springfield metro area.

A word about Springfield: in addition to having more Chinese restaurants, banks, and churches per capita than probably any other city in the world, that town must also be the entrepreneurship capital of the world. It is a great place to start a business, and many of the businesses in Springfield are entrepreneurial ventures.  To see some examples of Entrepreneurs in Springfield who also happen to be friends of mine and fellow graduates of the Drury MBA Program, check out 417 Marketing, Midwest GSM, and Faith and Finance.  For new college graduates, there are few openings at companies to begin a career, and high competition for those posts. Kansas City has more companies that offer entry-level positions, and this was a factor in my decision to move.

Living in Kansas City has been great so far. I’ve been able to reconnect with many friends from college, and I’ve made new friends and contacts as well. One of my favorite things about city life is the variety of activities available, including cultural venues like museums, entertainment venues like the Power and Light District or Westport, and architectural splendor. I’m particularly fond of the many art deco style buildings, such as the Power and Light Building.

I’ve been looking into several career opportunities since moving up here, and I hope to secure a job soon. I am eager to begin working. It has been nice to have a little extra free time lately though. I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of reading, follow the news closely, learn new tricks on the computer. In addition to this personal website, I am working on another website project, both of which have contributed significantly to my knowledge of WordPress, web applications, and software in general.

Last Wednesday I attended my first KC Linux Users Group meeting (http://kclug.org). Ever since I started using Linux as a junior in college, I have wanted to learn from more experienced users and participate more actively in the Linux community. I definitely plan to attend their next meeting, which is on December 21. If you’re a Linux, Unix, or BSD user in the KC area, you should think about checking it out.

To close out this post, let me recommend that you consider switching from Windows or Macintosh to Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). Linux Mint is great for people new to Linux because it is intuitive includes Flash the proper codecs to play most media files right when installed. As soon as Mint Debian came out, I converted my desktop and laptop, and I will probably soon convert my netbook. Mint Debian is great because it is a rolling release and everything “just works” out of the box, as Mac users are fond of saying. Sometimes I use a distro like Fedora because I like the challenge and opportunity to fight my computer, but for day to day operations, I love Mint Debian. For more information on Mint Debian, follow this link (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1527).

Have a good one.