What would you do if one of the most prestigious schools in your field offered their Masters degree program online, at a fraction of its on-campus cost?

Would you apply, even if it meant giving up nearly all of your weekends and weeknights for two years?

What if it boasted some of the most challenging curricula in the world, a program ranked 12th globally and 9th in the US, where graduates brag about "getting out", rather than graduating?

In January 2014, Georgia Tech brought its Masters in Computer Science online as the OMSCS, developing full video lectures, interactive forums, and "disruptive educational technologies" to offer the program to a wider, always-available global audience.

Long a proponent of the power of educational technology, I applied and was accepted, largely thanks to the decade of experience I'd gained as an software engineer following my undergraduate degree in Computer Science.

Critics watched and waited, wary of earlier online programs that had failed to deliver on their promises. Others worried that it would an online program divorced of the content of graduate education. too challenging without the support of instructors, mentors, and other students. Even at reduced cost, early adopters would be accepting the risks of a developing program, even one created by an organization like Georgia Tech.

This weekend, as I walked at McCamish Pavilion in Atlanta, GA to accept my diploma alongside 170 other students in the second cohort of the OMSCS, I reflected on how wrong the critics had been. Earning this credential, with the "rights, privileges and responsibilities appertaining thereto," was both one of the most demanding and rewarding experiences of my life. I earned the distinction of graduating from this world-famous institution and its program, a pioneer of a future I believe will be dominated by highly-available education and hybrid physical/online courses.

Leading up to graduation, and on the final day of two years of study, I finally visited the physical campus of the institution. On a tour lead by Dr. David Joyner, a pioneering instructor in the program, excellent human and creator of the Educational Technology and Human Computer Interaction courses, I learned the school's fight songs and taunts ("What's the good word? To hell with Georgia!") and was awed by the 130 year history of the school on display through its many buildings and traditions.

My achievement, however, was not without sacrifice. I lost entire nights, weekends and holidays to meet the program's demands, developing interactive AI capable of solving Raven's Progressive Matrices in KBAI, implementing and testing multi-layer perceptrons and algorithms for supervised and unsupervised learning in Machine Learning, needfinding, prototyping and testing interfaces in Human Computer Interaction, implementing feature and edge detection, HDR and filtering in Computational Photography, or developing a fully-featured language-processing and grammar suggestion site in Educational Technology. All while working full-time as an engineer, purchasing a home, changing jobs and accepting two promotions (and the responsibilities that come with it) from my current and wonderful employer, TUNE.

All told, by my rough measurements, I authored nearly 300 pages of prose, ranging from meticulous assignments to open-ended research spanning the diverse fields of modern computer science - computer graphics, healthcare, big data, machine learning, computer vision, autonomous vehicles, interactive intelligence and HCI. I wrote more than 100,000 lines of code in a handful of languages and frameworks including Python's Flask and Java's Spring MVC. I designed high-availability database systems, back-end stores, APIs and UIs. I was expected to be, and acted, as an expert in Computer Science applying my experience and the course material to a specific problem in the field.

In the second year of the program, as I had in my undergrad, I again worked as an advisor and mentor, TAing for Computational Photography and Educational Technology. I used my experience as a student and engineer to support my peers, who were themselves developing novel techniques for improving EdTech and generating real contributions to the field, including conference papers. All at a distance - over the Internet, using the computer-supported collaborative-learning (CSCL) technologies of the OMSCS program.

If an aspiring engineer asked me whether they should pursue an advanced degree, I wouldn't hesitate to encourage them to participate in the OMSCS. I'd share words of caution about the incredible demands of the program, but I'd extend them the same support I felt from my family and peers while I was in the program.

At the conclusion of the Dean's New Alumni welcome, Zvi Galil, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing, shared:

“Georgia Tech’s reputation rests primarily not on the difficulty of our classes or even the research of our faculty. No, what’s most important aspect is the quality of our graduates and the contributions they make to the world. I know you will continue to make us proud.”

And I will. As the first refrain of the fight song goes:

I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an engineer—

A helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva, hell of an engineer.