Abby, my girlfriend, wished me luck as I left home Friday morning for an early drive down to CMU. After a 40 minute drive from San Bruno to Mountain View, I was ready to show the NASA security my passport. They said I only needed a driver's license. Inside, I expected things to look a little more impressive. Besides a gigantic hangar bay, everything else as far as I could see looked like a suburban university campus.

I pulled up at the Building 23 and went inside. About 50 other students had already arrived, sipping on coffee and having breakfast. It felt like a new company info session. The agenda was funny: A few talks here and there, followed by playing with Legos and some catered lunches. I could already sense where some of the pricey tuition was being spent.

A few hours later, something magical had happened. After a few conversations encouraged among the students, there was a very positive air filling the room. We were still slowly discovering our purpose in that room, but we all knew we were going to leave with something more than we came with at the end of that weekend.

Overall, we spent about 24 hours together that weekend. About 30% of the students were remote and had to fly back to their homes and families on Sunday. The part-time program allows remote collaboration as a way of participating in the program. The Lego game had been a way of discovering our own weaknesses when acting as a part of a team: things slow down, but end well after a few tries.

The events of those 24 hours were way too many for me to talk about in this blog post. Bill Portelli, the CEO of CollabNet gave us a talk. Dr. Martin Griss, the director of the Silicon Valley campus, had us playing with Legos. We went out to the Castro street of Mountain View for dinner with the faculty. I ended up having a few pints of beer with Dr. Stuart Evans, when our group went to the Tied House Brewery to celebrate the first night. He had just returned from England and I started chatting with him about my brief trip in London and Edinburgh. To my surprise, he was very knowledgeable about Persian culture, even compared to the average Iranian. Just when I was fascinated by his friendliness, charming English accent and exciting background with entrepreneurship and high-tech startups, he started talking about Hassanloo village, an archeologically significant site in Iran. He seemed to know a lot about the food and culture, and a few things about the language as well. I know that my family and most of my friends would describe running into someone that knowledgeable quite a rare experience. At the end of the night, I couldn't be any happier to be looking forward to my first course that he teaches: Elements of Software Management.

The experiences of this weekend were too overwhelming for me to reflect on in just a few paragraphs. But the big observation I made when it comes to your personal growth is that no matter what the cost is in time and money, just do it. You live only once!

More about me: I'm an Iranian-Canadian. I immigrated to Canada when I was 17 with a strong background in Math and programming. I received my bachelors in Computer Science with a minor in Psychology from University of Waterloo. Very early on, in my first year of college, I found myself to be somewhat of an entrepreneur. I learned how to write database and UI code from the scattered knowledge of a few friends. I wrote a Social Networking that I named "darxtudio.com" back in 1999. It had forums, photo sharing and user profiles. I signed up 150 of my friends, but didn't have enough skills at the time to scale it.

Since graduation I have worked at various companies either as a consultant or a software engineer. Two months before I started my graduate program in Software Management at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, I was still a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft in Redmond. I was thinking about taking the next step in my career, but wasn't quite sure what it would look like. I contacted a few universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, CMU and Berkeley, for more information about their programs. About 30 days before the very last admission deadline, Dr. Jim Morris from Carnegie Mellon called me on the phone. I was very pleasantly surprised to be contacted by someone whose textbook-standard search algorithm I had studied in college. He encouraged me to apply, and my mind was already set.

I got over my procrastination and finally wrote the GMAT exam, very successfully despite my apprehention and the very short notice. My advice: "Don't be nervous. Just do it. Now! Start with the online practice exam."

At the same time, I started listening to the other voices in my head. I applied to a few startups in Silicon Valley and before hearing back from Carnegie Mellon, had an offer from Adify. Moving to California isn't a requirement of the program, but I wanted to make the commitment an integral part of my next two years. You may be wondering if everybody in this program is financially supported by their employer. I'm not, because of the transition. And I'm proud of the fact that I'm supporting myself in my personal and career growth. I'm a firm believer that if you put growth first, success will follow.

I have a lot more to share with you, but I need to manage my time to attend to my job and studying duties as well. One major skill you learn in this program is how to be successful at playing multiple roles. On that note, please come back to read more of my writings later.

Just remember: You start going forward only when you take the first step.