On the MBA life (Michaelmas edition)

So… Time happened, and it basically made the past 3 months completely disappear. I am (unbelievably, already) 3 months into the MBA program at Cambridge. How did this happen?! How did everything go by so fast?! What have I even learned so far?!

I can’t answer the first two (more philosophical) questions, but I can take a stab at the third. 

Lessons from a 3-months-in MBA student:

1. Time is an illusion; MBA time doubly-so (to paraphrase my favourite author and *ahem* fellow Cantabrigian alumnus, Mr Douglas Adams). An hour in Management Science seems to last FOR-E-VER, but an hour at a formal hall or in exam just fly by. The first week of the term felt overwhelming and strangely unbearably lonely (because you’re actually the loneliest when you’re surrounded by strangers), but the last few vanished in a blink, because, cheesy as it sounds, those strangers had become friends.
2. Turns out that remembering how to ride a bike is like remembering how to ride a bike. I haven’t gotten on a bicycle since I was a kid, so was relieved to discover that it’s as easy as the saying says it’s supposed to be. (I was especially thankful not to have to re-learn riding a bicycle because my bike education was brief but very painful: I accumulated an assortment of bruises of various sizes and colours all the way from my ankles to my knees during the week that I decided I would master a two-wheeled bicycle. I must have been one resilient 7 year old, because if I kept falling off bicycles now at age 30, I’d just give up and call it a day.)
3. I’m in a diverse, international class of more than 150 students and this term took core classes in business analytics, accounting, corporate finance, organisational behaviour and management praxis, but the biggest learnings that I’ve had have been internal. Whether they’ve been validations of things I’ve sort of always known about myself or completely new realizations: I’ve learned a lot about myself as a team member, manager, leader and follower, and it’s all come from my classmates. I have the ability to be more creative, assertive, diplomatic, hard-working, laid-back, structured, tactful and strategic than I gave myself credit for. Not all of these learnings are new or shocking, but I’ve had the unique opportunity to test myself in unchartered waters with a completely new set of people, and it was interesting to see the results.
4. Studying is easier than work. This observation is definitely a function of where I worked before the MBA, because the MBA course is unequivocally intense, but 9-5 classes? Project work after classes? Study group meetings? Late night revision? I was able to take it all in stride because it was still less time and effort than what the peak periods at my current job were like.
5. Everyone is braver, smarter and kinder than they realise. My classmates and I made the journey here for different reasons and from different backgrounds, but we made that huge and critical choice to be here. We all left well-paying jobs, loving partners and/or children, the security and comfort of our homes and cities and countries and what we knew and loved, in the pursuit of the MBA. Everyone has interesting things to say, and different perspectives and experiences - you’re basically never at risk of your ego growing too large. If you ever feel like you’re starting to become big-headed and need a dose of humble pie, just talk to the person next to you – anyone, at random – and wait to come to the realization that everyone here is exceedingly intelligent, and most of the time, in different ways than you are. Everyone has something different to bring to the table, and that something is usually pretty darned impressive. And as an MBA class, we’re kind, which is perhaps the class trait that I value the most. No one is out to make sure their grades are better than everyone else’s; everyone collaborates. Different students ran study tutorials for the entire class to get everyone up to speed in the various classes, people posted their class notes online; any information that one person got from a professor was immediately shared with the larger group. It’s humbling to consider which classmate missed the birth of his child to be in this MBA program; which classmate is a bona fide rocket scientist; which classmate had never done finance a day in his life but still shared his corporate finance notes with the entire class because he had taken diligent notes throughout the term and knew that not everyone made it to every class.
6. And finally, an on-going lesson. I’m not sure what to title it: Long Distance is Hard? Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder But is Not Pleasant to Go Through? Patience is the Most Under-rated Virtue? To say it’s been difficult is an understatement, but it’s an understatement that will have to suffice given the lack of any word that captures the magnitude of how hard it's been. The unpolished, unvarnished truth? It’s difficult when you’re apart from your partner in life. It’s difficult feeling lonely. It's difficult  – it's heartbreaking – knowing that on the other side of the world, the person you miss is feeling even lonelier than you are, and that it's because of a decision that you made, that you wanted to be here, that you wanted to do this. It’s difficult not being able to reassure that person, in person, that the more people you meet without him, the more you realise he is your favourite human being in the world. It’s difficult living your life, making new friends, and having new experiences when all the photos and emails and instant messages in the world can’t make your new experiences come to life, can’t make your new friends more than faces in a photograph. It’s so difficult that I haven’t even let myself feel the full extent of it, because I wouldn’t be able to keep moving if I stop and feel the sadness, the guilt. I have no solid learning for this one; everything I do in this realm is trial and error. Some things work, and some definitely don’t. But if I had to pick a lesson: it would be, ironically, to do this with someone you cannot live without. Do long-distance only with someone that you love with every fiber of your being. It’s what makes it difficult, but it’s also what ensures that you will come back together no matter what: because you can’t not.

Will soon be saying goodbye to Cambridge for a few weeks. Michaelmas term, it's been a crazy ride, but I’m out!