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2005-04-03 20:27 UTC Exam time yet again

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Exam time yet again

When I quit uni ten years ago for my first startup, I thought I'd had my last exam... But now exam time is rapidly approaching again. Only a single course this time around, and an easy one at that, but I still need to read. And a week afterwards it's at it again with the two last modules of my MSc before my dissertation.

I started studying again part time in May of 2003, and so far I've found it quite enjoyable. True, I'm hopeless when it comes to delaying everything until right before I need to hand it in, and it's a lot of work, but it's interesting as well - at least in the case of the course I've chosen in order to actually learn something new, as opposed to the few I've picked just to take advantage of my work experience.

In fact I've more or less decided to go on studying once my MSc. is done. I've not quite decided whether to go for ran MBA right away, or taking a BSc in finance or economics first. But in any case I'm likely to end up studying for the foreseeable future. Not so much because I actually see an immediate need for it careerwise - I've got enough experience that I've never had to defend not having a degree before, and once I get the MSc that will put the chance of that to rest effectively anyway. It's more a matter of expanding my knowledge of areas related to what I currently work with.

For the last few years, my main focus have been billing systems and e-commerce, and there are large gaps immediately outside my field of responsibility, for instance when it comes to accounting and reconsiliation, and business forecasting. While I certainly don't want too much in depth knowledge about it, some courses would help me understand the concerns of the people I deal with on a daily basis better.

Another option I've been thinking about is taking either an LLB (British law) or part of one, in order to have a significantly stronger foundation with regards to the legal aspects of what I currently do. Would beat having to run stuff past legal all the time :)

But for now, it's exam time again, and I'm mostly writing this just to have an excuse not to read the most boring textbook ever. It's actually not that bad, except that it's about e-commerce and distributed computing, and from what I've seen I know many of the areas discussed better than the textbook author, so it's mindnumbingly boring (and quite annoying whenever I have to read through stuff that I know is inaccurate).


About me

E-mail: vidar@hokstad.com
Skype: vhokstad
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I was born April 21st, 1975, in Oslo, Norway. Since 2000 I've been living in London, UK. I'm married.

I'm working for Aardvark Media as Director of Technology. I'm also currently on the board of SpatialQ, a startup in the GIS space, and an advisor to Skoach, a startup doing a time management app for people with ADD.

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