How did I get here? Where am I, anyway? Most of my classmates and I went into summer relieved to be out of classes for a bit and excited to put our newfound skills to work. Internships, we predicted, would vindicate our decision to attend B-school and set us straight on a sparkling new career path. Some people go to business school because they like their current career, but they feel they need the credentials of an MBA to make it to the next career plateau.

For most of my friends, however, the decision to attend B-school was more an attempt to answer that great unanswered question, "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

The trouble for MBAs is that unlike med school or law school, business school prepares you for nothing specific. It's a "how" thing, not a "what" thing. At the same time, B-school is a vocational, not intellectual, pursuit. Leaving the workforce to pursue an MBA produces an onerous feeling that you darn well better put that training to good use.

Faced with recruiters who had little artistic vision (they say things like, "that music major really looks like a future marketing exec to me"), many of my most beloved MBA pals landed jobs very similar to the ones they had before B-school. Internships proved more a reminder of what people had left behind than a promise of things to come. (For a really great perspective on what it was like for my friend interning at Microsoft, please see Gavin Shearer's blog.

A few of my classmates fell utterly head-over-heels in love (I wouldn't be shocked if one guy I know tattooed a multicolored "MSN" butterfly across his chest) with their internships, but for the most part, they were a letdown. Some folks learned new things, but felt they'd had a 12-week job interview for corporations they aren't sure can inspire them over the long term. Others reportedly played a lot of Internet poker when their employers couldn't give them enough stimulating work, no matter how much the interns requested it.

As loyal readers know, my internship was very different from those of most of my classmates. I got a sweet gig as an entrepreneur-cum-safety net: the WRF/Gates fellowship. It was like being given a chance to play a business-themed video game all summer. I tested some of my skills, got better at different levels, and learned new tricks with some practice, but I haven't yet completed the game. I don't even know how many levels there are. I know where some monsters lurk, and I am glad I selected "multi-player," because I don't know how well I'd have fared alone (my team consisted of a computer scientist/MBA, an aeronautical engineer, an electrical engineer, and me). I'm nowhere near the "business-plan competition" round, but I've heard it has a lot of flaming hoops to jump through.

My team looked over a lot of technologies and ultimately wrote a plan to commercialize a solar-panel project under development by a Boeing subsidiary. We met with an array of people in the alternative-energy industry and a handful of potential customers. We also got to go to a huge solar-energy conference in Portland, Ore. I learned tons about the day-to-day frustrations and exhilarations of planning a new energy venture.

Some days, the stars would align and my teammates and I would feel as if we were on the track of something game-changing and important. Other days, it would seem as if we had no possible chance of getting anywhere with our naively machinated plans. That's the life of an entrepreneur, I guess.

I thought that my summer internship would psych me up to start my second year of business school, that actually applying the new things I've learned would invigorate me to hit the books even harder in year two. Mid-summer, though, my motivation waned. I mused about quitting the MBA program halfway through, totally scrapping my plans to be an entrepreneur. I flirted with the idea of going back to work again, or maybe writing that novel I had put off. I hit full existential-crisis mode in August.

It's not that my internship wasn't interesting or educational or fun. It was all those things, and I intend to learn much more as my team and I refine our plan and bring it to various competitions later in the year. I'm certain I've gained some entrepreneurial acuity from the WRF/Gates process. Starting my own company will likely be easier now than it might have been, but I don't even know that I want to create a new venture anymore. Next level, or game over?

You see, I am a woman of a certain age. Okay, I'm 27, but it feels as if I am fast approaching a certain age. Many of my friends are meeting potential spouses, buying houses, getting married, and starting to produce offspring. These life items are barely blips on my radar, much less in the five-year forecast. Though I know one cannot plan certain milestones and events, I do believe one can design a life that precludes them, and business school might be the ticket to such a life. In order to utilize my MBA training well, I'll likely have to go back to working long, draining hours. Starting my own company, in particular, means I might be putting a well-rounded personal life on hold indefinitely. Business school: does it provide a valuable educational experience or help us avoid life's nagging questions?

Sometimes people assume that I chose business school because I didn't care about starting a family, but I do care. It never occurred to me before starting my MBA program that in answering the question, "Is B-school for me?" I was by answering, by proxy, the question, "Am I willing to wait to commit myself to my personal life?"

I've made choices that feel best for me, but "best" doesn't always mean "good." There are a lot of questions you should ask yourself during -- if not before -- embarking on the MBA path, particularly if you're single and female, but also if you have workaholic tendencies you employ to, say, avoid other things in life. You know who you are.

And I know who I am. I don't yet fully realize what B-school will mean for my future, whether my internship experience was helpful long-term, what my life will look like after I graduate, or whether it might be a job, a family, or a spiritual quest that would fulfill me best.

Still, I don't feel lost. The second year of business school, I hope, will point me not only toward what I want to do next in my career, but also help me learn how to how to balance life's many possibilities and manage risk.

Instead of shying away from commitments around school, I've actually taken a part-time job this year with the UW Technology Transfer office in addition to my full-time class work. Will I go crazy? Perhaps. Remain dateless? We'll see. Stay challenged? You bet. Land on the path toward becoming who I want to be when I grow up? Here's hoping.