Its Official

I have some exciting news. While I received this news many months ago, I wasn't sure if I would be moving forward with my plans given the ups and downs of the recruitment season. Though I haven't yet decided what to do post-MBA, I did a mental regroup last night and this morning.

Actually, last night I was just mental more than anything else. The little hamster in my head was racing way too fast on the wheel - worrying about job prospects and figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. So I decided to go out and have a nice dinner and drinks to relax. In fact, dinner was quite tasty and I ended up stunning the hamster and the rest of me senseless with too much to drink. Enter drunken lunatic phase, during which I decided that I wasn't going to move forward with my original plans and continue to evaluate job opps.

Fast forward to this morning. Frightening as it may sound, I was thinking more clearly this morning in my sober and slightly hungover state than I have in a while. And I realized several things:
1) I am an employable individual. I have been blessed with a good education, am passionate about what I want out of life and the impact I want to make on the world, and am able to work with others well. [Insert Stuart Smalley quote here]
2) The opportunities to find a dream job will still be here, they aren't running away just yet.
3) The opportunity cost of not living one's life to the fullest is too high, as I won't be able to take advantage of the same things should I get reincarnated as a snail.

So the news? I'm studying abroad next quarter. In Tel Aviv, Israel. The flight is booked. Downsides - not having Chicago GSB resources at my disposal to look for a job, and having to delay the search by several months. Upsides - not having to deal with the freezing cold and hanging out in gorgeous weather, getting the experience to spend a good chunk of time in a foreign country and learning about a fascinating region of the world, gaining a degree of experiential learning that I could never get from a book or article, and the list goes on...

WoOt!