Once the IRC Section 351 DLC releases, a week or so later, Imélie is, once again, summoned into Juan's office but it was not about celebrating the completion of that add-on which, as per usual, used modular design. It was about something else altogether.
"Good morning, Imélie. I have something special to announce you"
"What is it, boss?"
"Our last UX lead left to work somewhere else. Not that I was unsatisfied with his work, but if his new job and/or employer was what was best for him, I can't blame him. You have some experience of what makes for good UX so you're my first choice to fill this UX lead position, pending approval from the CEO and the vice president of human resources. The time has come for you to assume new responsibilities and, as per usual for promotions to this level, you will be given an opportunity to review the job description as well as an appropriate lead time to either accept or decline" Juan tells Imélie while showing her the description of the UX lead position on a screen.
"All I can make out, as far as assuming new responsibilities, is project management. Right now, I'm lacking skills in some areas on the business side of project management; I'm sure I can handle the engineering portion of that job. Yes, it's going to be a major shift for me, but for it to succeed, I'm going to need more than just my UX expertise!" Imélie voices her concerns over the proposed promotion.
"What do you think is the biggest skill or knowledge gap you have right now?"
"There's the people aspect of project management, such as organizational behavior, that I don't understand as well as I would have the psychology of what makes good UX, and there's also the marketing aspect. You might have all the best practices in the world, you might have a properly defined scope statement as well as requirements that are well-defined, you cannot understate how much the human factor plays into not only UX but also working with other developers, full stack, front end, or back end. And, of course, other stakeholders that aren't directly involved in the development process. But that's the extent of what I know about project management in an IT context"
"You have a pretty good foundation, so I know you can make it work if these knowledge gaps are filled"
Salary, work conditions, task descriptions, these form the core of what she believed are the main items she desires to know most out of that job offer. But she can't help but think of things such as featuritis, which is one of the worst nightmares of project mismanagement that can ruin UX because, during the development process, feature creep can cause a software project to try to become everything to everyone, even though most end users will only use a small fraction of the features. In addition, feature creep can lead to other issues, such as "hacky solutions" which she knew all too well would make code maintenance harder should bugs arise. And the resulting "spaghetti code", too. That was a lot for her to think about that she would have to deal with if she accepted the promotion. But she had some questions:
"Speaking of knowledge gaps, will I have to fill them on my own dime, or the company will pay for additional education as required?" Imélie asks her boss.
"Make no mistake: if you accept the promotion, your future is going to be made of management positions, especially if you prove to be a capable IT project manager. The employer would then reimburse educational expenses according to this schedule"
Juan then shows her the tuition reimbursement schedule, which provided that, if an additional degree or certificate was to be earned, she would be reimbursed based on the grades earned, assuming coursework is taken for a letter grade. If courses were taken on a pass/fail basis, it's another reimbursement schedule that applies then.
Obviously, in the letter grade case, getting an A would provide a full reimbursement, upon presentation of the tuition bill and the unofficial transcript for the term the course was taken in.
"One more thing: if you decide to go the degree route, for every year of full-time tuition equivalency we pay for you must continue working for the same duration here after graduation; if you don't, you must repay any tuition reimbursed on a pro-rated basis" Juan warns her.
Juan's words weighed heavily on her mind; if the degree took three FTE years to earn, she would need to work there for an additional three years, or the company goes bankrupt, whichever came first. Because there was no guarantee that this company would still exist in six years' time.
If, for whatever reason, I resign, or I am fired, say, a year after graduation, I would need to repay two-thirds of the tuition paid by the employer, assuming the degree took three years to earn. But I will do the utmost to remain employed for as long as I possibly can given the volatility of our industry, Imélie ponders the implications of having the tuition paid by her employer, given the tuition reimbursement schedule, the salary increase from the promotion and all that, vs what makes sense for any additional education she plans on obtaining.
"I have one more question: what's the deadline for me to decide?"
"You have until the end of the week"
The lady takes in as much information as she possibly can so that she can make a better sense of what that decision entails. Upon returning home that day, she starts thinking not so much in terms of business skills as she plans on using in that new position, should she accept, but in terms of quiz bowl:
Here's my chance to relive my quiz bowl collegiate days, on the very team I played for four years as an undergraduate! Tulane is the only school left in this state that has any collegiate quiz bowl presence! I won it all for them last time, and, if I was playing quiz bowl as a Green Wave again, I know what that means: I'll have as many seasons as a quiz bowler as I can get out of my degree choice! And also given how little institutional support there has been for quiz bowl at Tulane when I was an undergrad there, I must be prepared to run the team at least in part, Imélie seems to be daydreaming with starry eyes, knowing that her other core constraint is that she needs to remain in the New Orleans region because of her job.
She begins her research of the current state of Tulane Green Wave quiz bowl in earnest. So much has changed since she last played for that team, so much can still change. From her recollections of past Tulane teams, often people joined it on a dare or otherwise because they feel like they had nothing better to do. Understandably, morale was low and, from what she can make out, several of them could graduate this year.
My employer gave me an opportunity for me to return to quiz bowl, it might be a little expensive for them, but considering what's available in town, Tulane Freeman part-time MBA is the best option. If I am admitted to Tulane Freeman, I should start doing outreach on social media regarding quiz bowl in the entering undergraduate class' social media groups immediately, and then reach out to the team coach as well, Imélie continues her reverie, while not having the faintest idea of where she stands at Tulane. She can't assume it would be the same sort of deal as it was for undergrad, especially not for a final MBA application round. If this works, Tulane has 3 seasons to either rebuild its quiz bowl infrastructure or win ICT/ACF Nationals. I am a girl of the state, a Cajun, through and through, and Tulane earned my quiz bowl loyalty because of what I accomplished there as a quiz bowler!
The world of collegiate quiz bowl is typically made of high-achieving colleges, and, for as long as she even played in college, often they were prestigious private universities or state flagships of decent academic caliber. Frankly, Tulane was so horrible when I last played for them that we never really needed to worry about colleges outside of the South. Vanderbilt, Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Alabama, South Carolina to a lesser extent were those schools at the top of the Southern collegiate circuit. Of course, even Tennessee or Emory could beat us, or rather, beat me but they needed 4 players to do so. It goes to show that I can only do so much on my own, and fingers crossed that we can actually get decent supporting players... what am I dreaming about? Imélie keeps living that reverie while she reviews the application process at Tulane Freeman as well as what trying to determine what she could use to build her case for getting her employer to pay for three years at Tulane Freeman on a part-time basis. When Sun enters that scene...
"I am offered a promotion at work; however, my boss thinks I need additional education to be able to assume the new responsibilities as an UX lead designer" she announces to her lover.
"Honey, I knew this was going to happen at some point" Sun cheers her up.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"And then my first choice is going to be Tulane, after all, this job prevents me from moving around. I'll be the first to admit I don't actually know that much about the business side of project management, but from a strictly engineering standpoint I can function just fine. While they pay tuition, it's going to cost them quite a bit"
Speaking of which, I think my best bet is to earn the MBA/MGM dual degree; it will not cost them more than the MBA on its own, because actually earning both simply eats up all my electives in year 3, but I can always talk about how the MGM, or masters of global management, component will make me a better UX and, by extension, a better front end development lead. For better or for worse, UX is front end-heavy, and the MGM will allow me to think more globally not only about business practices but also about UX and what that implies for front end development, Imélie keeps thinking while realizing that any of the other concentrations offered aren't going to be of any help for the new position, or at least not as much as the MGM.
The next day, she is going to her boss' office, thinking about why it was Tulane or bust in her mind. Yes, she's a late applicant, but that doesn't deter her in the slightest. I must not mention quiz bowl at all in front of my boss. My boss will not like me if I told him that there actually is way more than professional benefits to what I am about to tell him! she thinks, while making no attempt to hide her nervousness.
"Come in!" Juan instructs her.
"Good morning, Juan. I have thought about it last night. There's one condition for me to accept the promotion: I would accept it but only if I have assurance that the company will pay for the MBA/MGM dual degree at Tulane Freeman. It's actually a two-for-one deal in that I'm getting an education that will benefit me in different areas of the new job, and that it will not cost extra over the MBA alone" Imélie continues, with her face showing her anxiety.
Juan then proceeds to open an email she sent before the meeting with the tuition plan and the curriculum under the MBA/MGM dual degree, as well as the benefits she believes she will get from each component. To his eyes, it was clear she thought it through, and he then forwards that email to both human resources and finance departments as a request for continuing education funds.
"I assume you plan on applying if we accept to pay for it if admitted?" Juan asks her confirmation.
"Yes"
"If you apply, I will accept to submit a letter of recommendation, but you will need to write the actual letter yourself; I will only need to fill out the forms and put my signature at the bottom"
It's tough... for that sort of managerial positions it's not easy to find people willing to fill this kind of jobs, since a lot of competent engineers tend to not be very comfortable in managerial roles. Imélie is right, however, in that managerial roles require a different skill set she acknowledges she misses components of. Like the last UX lead: he might have been willing to listen to the engineers on more technical details, but he was much more adept at the business side of UX than the technical aspects. Imélie, on the other hand, is a little unrefined from a business standpoint but I am fully confident she can learn the missing business information without any complications. From a technical point of view she is very "full stack" in her thinking, Juan starts thinking about how Imélie will differ from the person she could replace, and whether it will be worth the price she quoted. He knows that most of the continuing education expenses claimed by the engineering department related to training on specialty topics in software engineering, which is typically reimbursed in full, rather than for an advanced degree. And yet the answers from HR and finance come quickly enough...
"The expenses we are willing to pay will be limited to the tuition, pursuant to the reimbursement schedule; also, you will be on your own for tuition shortfalls, books as well as other educational materials" Juan just parrots the answers from the memo written by HR.
"Yes, that appears acceptable to me. And then I will accept the promotion. Just email me blank letterhead please" Imélie asks her boss.
I am confident that I can get at least 3.0 and hence my employer will pay for at least three-quarters of the degree. Because, in the end, the portion of the tuition being reimbursed is equal to term GPA times net tuition (that is, after any scholarships, if applicable, are applied) divided by four. Worst case scenario: I'm paying about ten-something grand per year, net, in three installments. Good thing I am not a shopping maniac like other professional girls my age! Time for me to start the application process for Tulane once I return home! Imélie then thinks about how common it is in the MBA admissions world for letters of recommendation to actually be written by the applicant. And how she should refrain from talking about quiz bowl even though she knew, deep down, that Juan would undoubtedly talk about what makes her a good fit for business school if he didn't ask her to write it herself. That, in her mind, included traits that a good quiz bowler would possess and are also useful in graduate school.
Plus she also needs to update her CV, too, so that it would reflect her promotion, in which case it's the first document in the application checklist she has ready. Especially since all she had to do otherwise was to remove the objective, given that she last updated it at year-end, and there was no new accomplishment that was, in her mind, worth putting on it since.
And yet, somehow, she is absorbed in the writing of these documents, one being the letter of recommendation that she will then send back to Juan, while making sure she proof-reads, as well as ensuring that it doesn't read as if she wrote it herself.
Then comes the personal statement, where she puts the contents of the case she made to her bosses to get them to agree to making the reimbursement schedule apply to the MBA/MGM program she plans on attending. But the letter of recommendation was about what makes her a suitable candidate for graduate school, while the personal statement was about the why go to graduate school. So she adds another layer of double-checking: the need to avoid redundancy.
On top of checking for language, specificity, and other things; she feels like any imperfection on her application, no matter how small, can jeopardize her scheme. I am NOT going to let my quiz bowl and career dreams die because of a small and stupid mistake I made on a letter of recommendation or on a personal statement! And the GMAT, too, but I have no idea of where I stand! Imélie starts feeling more stressed out about what could cause her scheme to fail before she even returns to Tulane. Even so she wonders how her work experience stacks up to recent Tulane part-time MBA admits, and whether MBA/MGM is any different from the regular MBA in that respect. She suspects not since the choice of tacking on the MGM is made almost two years into the program.
"Four down, one more to go!" Imélie exclaims upon finishing what she deems satisfactory documents on which she worked all night.
"What do you mean, four down, one more to go? Sorry if I'm asking it without knowing the context" Sun asks with only a cursory glance at the personal statement.
"There are five items on my checklist for returning to school part-time, you saw one of them, my personal statement"
"What are the other three? You said you had four items done"
"The CV, the unofficial transcript, the letter of recommendation. My boss agreed to write one"
Once she goes to sleep that night, she starts dreaming of her quiz bowl roadmap for her first season, what the early stages of a rebuild could like. The best-case scenario would be that she would be able to form a foursome of freshmen undergraduates that had some experience of quiz bowl in high school for various schools, irrespective of where they went to high school, in which case they would be the B-team and they would compete at ACF events together as a Division II team. And she would be on the A-Team. The latter is the one thing she seems to take essentially for granted no matter what, given Tulane's context, because she knows that quiz bowl outreach is difficult at best. Especially when they have access to all that nightlife even without access to bars.
She would also dream that her past quiz bowl accomplishments at Tulane would at least give her some respect among the rest of the quiz bowl team; of course she doesn't expect much from Tulane's scouting or outreach, especially not when it comes to graduate students. Why is it that schools like Chicago, Ivies and MIT, Stanford seem to have some success recruiting graduate students to play quiz bowl and Tulane always seem to have undergrads playing? Has Tulane even gotten a graduate student playing quiz bowl at all during all these years? some ghost of Sadie circled around her dream like a vulture after an opposing team ate a neg five.
She also dreamed of having a say in the strategic decisions made by the team as it relates to who enters which tournaments, and under what labels, or, if the roster comprises five or six players, in which case only one team enters tournaments, substitutions. The very word seemed to trigger some memories specific to player substitutions during major quiz bowl tournaments, even in dreams.
Oh God, substitutions. Although schools fielding more than one team, both at the high school and college level, don't usually do substitutions, as a Venomous Agenda we gained an infamous reputation at my first HSNCT participation for being a team that relied heavily on substitutions to win games. In the end we finished 24th on our first appearance. And even as far back as my first trip to the state championship in high school, which was also my first quiz bowl tournament, I was substituted in and out a lot, and, going into the HSNCT that year, I expected the coach to proceed according to this rule: "I start the game if the opponent is weak in M&S, Marcia otherwise" back then, so it led to me starting the opening game vs Boston Latin; the coach initially believed the Wolfpack to be weak in M&S. As a Green Wave it was just not feasible since the roster size didn't allow us to sub players in or out. But in my high school days, in both the quiz bowl and mathletic worlds, the team's name was much better-known than the high school it represents as far as the Venomous Agendas are concerned. In a quiz bowl context, the name Venomous Agendas will conjure the image of five or six players wearing purple and green that will seize any opportunity to effect substitutions and will do so systematically to throw off opponents, Imélie had this oneiric torrent of memories coming back, and she dreams of the Green Wave squad being just the right size to effect mid-game substitutions so that it can throw opposing teams off and maybe turn the tide of a key game in a tournament.
However, she knew based on her experience at the HSNCT that "subapalooza" coaching, that is, heavily reliant on player substitutions, especially based on attempting to take advantage of matchups, was a risky strategy even in the best of times.