The Year I Skipped Saturday
Would you sacrifice today for a better life tomorrow?
Back in 2017, I skipped Saturday.
Not one Saturday. Almost all of them.
I was winding down my time managing an online high school program, and I was trying to get into grad school. I’d agreed with my team to try to develop 10 new courses, redesign our public website, migrate to a new learning management system, and hire about 40 or 50 new teachers.
I was planning to leave in a year, and so was my second-in-command. Everything had to be done before then.
But beyond work, I needed to figure out the next step for my own life. I had to take the GMAT.
I was a history major, and I hadn’t taken a math course in about 7 years.
It was going to be a long year.
For the first half of that year, this was my typical Saturday.
Wake up. Shower. Get to the office by 8:30.
Take a 4 hour practice test.
Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my desk.
Look at resumes for a few hours.
Update my application tracking spreadsheet.
Leave around 2:00 or 3:00.
Go to the gym.
Repeat next Saturday.
Between all the new classes, I did around 300 job interviews that year. Somehow, we got everyone hired. We got the new courses developed. We revamped the website. We got a new learning management system.
And somehow, I got into grad school. It just took longer than I expected.
When I took the test in May 2017. I got a pretty unremarkable score. Slightly below average and well below good. Nearly a perfect score in English. Math was another story.
I thought I could enjoy the summer, but instead the process started all over again. This time, I took the GRE in November. Easier test. Not much better score. The clock was ticking. Applications were due in early December.
Sometimes you just have to take the shot.
Then, months of silence. It was torture.
Do I study? Do I give up? Do I apply again next year?
In a last ditch effort, I decided to take the GMAT again. I figured I might just go to a lower-tier school, or maybe wait and apply again the next year.
My test was on March 3, 2018. About 14 months after I started studying.
Then, suddenly, 2 days before the test, I got a phone call. I was in.
My scores didn’t improve much, but they did improve enough to get me a better scholarship.
And finally, I was on my way to the University of Notre Dame.
When I look back at that year, sometimes it doesn’t really seem real. Did I really skip Saturday? Not quite, I calculated it, and I spent around ⅔ to ¾ of my Saturdays in the office that year.
I missed a few social events. I took a lot of math tests. And I slept with a stack of vocabulary flash cards next to my bed.
But it didn’t kill me. And it didn’t even make life that unbearable. Somehow, you learn to adjust.
The most surprising part of it all was that change takes a lot longer than you’d expect. It didn’t really take a year to change my life. It took longer.
On Superbowl Sunday in 2016, I did a phone call with my friend Adam about getting an MBA. I didn’t graduate with my MBA until May 2020. And then I spent the next 5 years working at JP Morgan Chase until fall 2025.
So, how long did it take to change my life?
A year without Saturdays? 4 years of thinking about, applying for, and attending grad school?
Or 10 years of moving from education, to business school, to banking, back to education? (I’m currently doing work for an education startup)
Sometimes life is slow moving forward and fast looking back.
If you’re thinking about changing your life, don’t wait. You don’t know how long it will take.
It might take a year of work. It might take 10 years.
I’m not saying you should give up every Saturday. The world has enough productivity bros telling us to work harder.
But I do know one thing. In 10 years, you probably won’t miss a couple Saturdays.
And you could do a lot worse than a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at your desk.
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