Q: “Is an MBA worth it?”

A: Yes, though it’s worth a whole lot more if you know exactly why you want it and what you intend to do with both your time at school and the degree after you graduate.

Here’s the challenge with an MBA: only about half the education takes place in the classroom… and from my experience, people are generally clueless about the other half. To get the most out of business school—maybe any grad school, I’m not sure—you need to be able to anticipate this other half… and this requires being able to see the future. Fearlessly.

If you’re going back to school, then you must be anticipating a move up in your career. (If you aren’t, then why are you expending all that time, money, and energy on the degree? You can already do your job!) This means that, looking forward, the way in which you will apply your knowledge upon graduation will likely be different from how you apply it today. Anticipating the difference in how you use this information today and how you will use it in the future represents—I think—fully half of what a business school education should be. It simply does no good to train yourself to become a well-educated doer when what your team expects you to do is become a well-educated manager.

But if you are afraid of that next step on some level—and especially if it’s on a subconscious level that you don’t feel during the day (but that maybe speaks to you at night, like mine seem to do)—then you’ll be holding yourself back and won’t be able to get the most out of the education. So yes, get the degree… but also take the time to shift your perspective. Commit to it, own it, and keep at it until the fear goes away, and all you are left with is the desire to do and the awareness of what it’ll take.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.