As I sit here on a glorious Thanksgiving weekend – 4 days off school, and only one assignment due next week! – I realize that somehow we’re 5 weeks into the core… It really feels like only a few days ago that I was sitting in orientation, wishing to get started on the work.
At the same time, I feel that I’ve learned so much! I’ve learned about the subject material, of course, but also about the less tangible things that we’re supposed to learn – how to work in teams, how to let others be the leader (not an easy thing in a group of people where almost everyone’s used to being in charge!), how to manage my time, how to prioritize…. I could go on forever.
I was asked recently by someone who was considering their MBA what my reason behind my choice was. I wasn’t sure how to answer him, initially. His reason was legitimacy: he wanted to feel recognized in the eyes of the world and his peers. I can’t help thinking that he was considering it in completely the wrong way.
If you want to do an MBA for other people, whether it’s to make them happy, or to improve how they see you, you may get into the program, and you may do very well in your classes, but you won’t truly experience the MBA. It’s not just about the classes – although, don’t get me wrong, the classes are immensely important! – it’s about the people, and the personal learning, and the wealth of intangible skills you will gain.
As with an undergrad, there’s a good chance that many of the details we learn here will get lost in the long run. Chances are, I won’t remember how to do a profit maximization function 10 years into the future. And if my main goal was to learn minutiae, I might find this disappointing.
But my goal is learning transferable skills. Maybe this is because I come from an Arts background. With an English degree, you don’t learn a lot of practical skills, but somehow it’s supposed to qualify you to work in the ‘real world’. And the reason, I think, that employers care about a B.A. spent studying useless languages and poetry and Shakespeare is not because they want you to demystify Shakespeare for them, but because you’ve shown the ability to work.
An MBA is similar in a lot of ways, I think. One of the major themes of the core is integration: how every department in a company affects every other department. Another theme is teamwork, and learning about how you work in teams with an incredible variety of people.
In my experience so far, the MBA is not a formula or a recipe for prestige, money, or success (though in many circles, I’m sure it helps…) It’s a learning experience, and to truly succeed here, we need to stay open to every experience it can throw at us.
