Our question to the current MBA students: Think back to last year, before you started the MBA program: if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Here are their answers (feel free to ask your buddies for more tips & tricks!)

• Don’t worry too much if you feel overwhelmed at the start. The rest (P3 onwards) will be much better.
• Get used to using iCal or Google calendar to run your life
• Interact as much as you can with the second years, we won’t be around for long
• Don’t worry too much about grades. Focus on networking with people. You will get an internship/job 90% because of networking and 10% because of your grades
• Although the program is busy, get involved in as many extra-curricular activities as possible – you won’t regret it.
• Your Grades will be no greater than 85 even if you study better than God. So focus more on Networking.
• Make friends with the BCC and MBA office. You’ll need them much more than you think.
• Make sure to take the time to stay connected with friends and family. Finding time can be challenging but will pay huge dividends.
• You won’t have time to do everything you want to do (especially during P1/P2), so make sure you know all your options before making any commitments.
• Attend as many sessions by guest speakers as possible. They provide a breath of fresh air and are often inspiring.
• Time management is key. If you can do that, you’ll sail through it and don’t worry too much about grades.
• Make sure to see friends and loved ones in June/July, you won’t see them much after that. You will acquire a great new set of friends/family though so it’s not all doom & gloom.
• Take the courses that you think are useful and don’t care about grades. Most of employers don’t even ask to provide transcripts.
• Bring a windows laptop in order to use many excel features you’ll need. Not impossible to get by with Macs but can be painful.
• Talk to all professors one on one at least once. You will learn more from talking to them personally than you would in class.
• Start networking early, and take the initiative to build up your career. Talk to the BCC, your profs and your cohorts…you’ll be glad you did. Absorb as much as you can and expose yourself to as many diverse components as possible. Finally, remember to take time out with your loved ones, friends or just chill by yourself.
• If you haven’t done so yet, LEARN AS MUCH AS YOU CAN ABOUT EXCEL!
• Take advantage of the Dean’s Fund and go on trips to interact with as many outside companies and schools as possible.  You’d be surprised how much your education stands up outside of Vancouver.
• Meet people, get out of your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself – everyone is just as nervous as you!
• Go to MBA Prep even if you know everything just to start meeting people.
• Be rid of your pride and judgement, you learn so much from every single of your classmates!
• As much as you can manage – take 1 day off a week to do something for yourself that you enjoy, even at the start. Some weeks it won’t be possible, but even 4 hours can save your sanity and will actually make you MORE productive in the time you do work. Go for a hike with friends, a bike ride, a nice meal…something to balance out all the work!
• If it’s been a while since you’ve done a lot of number crunching, take the time to refresh your skills!
• Get to know all your classmates- you never know who has what skills, work experience or network that you’ll want to get connected to.  In the years to come no one is going to care what your grades were, they’re going to care about and remember how you treated others.
• Learn to cook if you don’t already know how to.
• Recognize you will not be able to do everything, prioritize ruthlessly, and try to remind yourself of the big picture (e.g. choose a networking event over taking some assignment worth 0.01% of a grade from “good enough” to “amazing”).
• Once you learn how to cook (see advice above), buy a freezer and fill it with portion-sized healthy food before school starts so you don’t eat fast food all year