OK, it's finally done...I finally put in my notice of resignation today and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me. I wasn't planning on giving my notice until next Friday afternoon and I'd written the first draft of my letter last night, but I realized that I would have to move my notification up earlier this morning. One of my coworkers whose last day is this coming Friday told me this morning that he had a hunch I'd be asked to take over the management of his former project and, once I thought about it, I figured I'd make sure I got my resignation letter tight just in case it went down.
About an hour ago, my Deputy Program Manager stuck his head in my office and said that he wanted to talk to me, so I scrambled to print out the letter and put it into my portfolio to take in the meeting with me. He started out with some talk about my other project and then told me that he wanted to present me with the opportunity to manage the project that my other coworker had mentioned. When he asked me what I thought of that, I told him that it sounded like a great opportunity, but that I couldn't accept it because I wouldn't be working anymore past July 16. At that point, i explained that I would be leaving to matriculate at Stanford and, to my surprise, he was completely excited for me. I had been dreading the moment that I'd give notice for the past month because I thought this guy would say that I'd wasted his time over the past 5 months that I've worked under me, but all he kept saying was how excited he was for me and how this was a great move that I'd be making for my career. One of my other fears was that he would tell me that they didn't need me anymore past 2 weeks from now, but, instead, he told me that he appreciated the 8 weeks of notice that I was giving him to find a replacement for me and said that it was fine for me to work until July.
Whew! I feel more relieved now than I have since the day I got word that I had gotten into Stanford. Now, I just need to set up a time to talk to the CEO of the company so i can break the news to him and I'll be able to fully relax. Now that it's all over, I don't even know why I was so nervous. I work with good people and I should have known that they'd be happy for me, but there still may be others who will take this the wrong way and think that I'm being disloyal to the company...oh well, at least I know that i'm being loyal to myself.
Yesterday, I got an email from the Admissions Office at Stanford saying that they had hired a company to do background checks of all its admitted students for the Class of 2006 to verify the information that they had put in their applications, including information about one's current employer. Apparently, these background checks are going to start today and go until the end of May.
This is problematic because I wasn't planning on putting in my notice of resignation until June 15 and I'm worried that the search company's inquiry will alert the HR people at my company that i'm on my way out. It's not like I'm trying to hide it, but I want to make sure that I give my notice at the right time to avoid any weirdness in my work environment over the next couple of months until my last day. I might just turn in my letter of resignation in the next week or two so rumors won't swirl around about my impending departure...I figure that it would be tacky for my company to find out from an outside source that I will be leaving soon.
On the other hand, should I even be worried about how tacky it would look? I'm going to be leaving to attend one of the top business schools in the world and, if people get salty about my resignation, part of me thinks that it more of a negative reflection on them. This whole thing has me stressing out and I don't even know why....I know that I'm going to be in Cali starting this Fall, so this should just be a simple formality. Dang, I've got a lot to figure out in the next few days.
I just got out of a meeting with my personnel manager and now I'm feel all kinds of guilty. Since I transitioned to my current role in January, he has gone a long way toward giving me a lot of opportunities to learn things through new tasking and he's been trying to give me the skills that I'd need to become a good Project Manager here...the problem is that I'm going to have to put in my notice sometime in June and I'm afraid that he'll think I was wasting his time with all the tutilege that he's given me. Also, when I accepted this new position back in November, I hadn't gotten into business school yet and I comtemplated deferring for a year so I would be able to give them company at least a year of my time in this role. Once I got the call from Derrick Bolton, I knew that I wouldn't defer and the clock started ticking. I'm leaning toward giving a months' notice on June 15, but I'm not 100% sure if that's how it'll go down yet. I just want to make sure that I don't burn any bridges and close any doors to a possible return to the company after graduation. Something tells me that people around here might feel somewhat betrayed by my decision to keep this under wraps for all these months that I've been getting prepared to take on a more substantial management role in the company, but this is the best way that I could come up with to handle it. I know that business school is the correct move to make for the advancement of my career, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with leaving a company that I've really enjoyed working for over the past 3 years.
I just got an email from Stanford telling me that I wasn't moved to the semifinal round for the General Motors felowship in their Partnership for Diversity (P4D) Fellowship program. This diss along with the earlier diss from Goldman Sachs means that my fellowship search crapped out. Ford is another one of the sponsors of the program that offers a summer internship guarantee in exchange for full-tuition sponsorship, but they were looking for a candidate with a hardcore engineering background and I don't think that my software engineering background was hardcore enough. Basically, i'm looking at a big ol' loan for my first year now, but I'm sure that it'll be worth it when it's all said and done. Damn, this sucks! I'm really kicking myself right now for passing up on those full-rides from the other schools that admitted me, but I'm sure that these feelings will go away once I get out to Cali and start doing my thing.