Five Lessons Learned

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Our Community Consulting team huddled around the phone, each of us staring blankly at the PowerPoint presentation we prepared for the nonprofit organization we had been assisting over the past 10 weeks. One team member rushed in at the last minute as she returned from a "Women in Consulting" forum she helped coordinate, while two other teammates wouldn't be available for the teleconference because of recruiting events on campus. I had another meeting scheduled immediately after our presentation, and the conference room [actually, a lecture hall we received permission to use] was booked solid for the rest of the day. Did I mention that I was running on about four hours of sleep?



One of the greatest strengths of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, the cornerstone of its approach to the MBA curriculum, is the opportunity to apply classroom and industry experience to myriad real-world problems; the Community Consulting Club is one example. Full-time and evening MBA and BBA students are grouped with local nonprofit organizations to address a medium-scale project. If that's not your cup of tea, there's always the Southern Club, where you solve a social problem by, uh, hosting a pig roast in the atrium. The opportunities at Ross outside the classroom run the gamut, which may also serve as the school's greatest weakness -- particularly for those who clearly have an aversion to uttering the phrase "No, I can't." I'm a card-carrying member of that organization!



On that note, I'll share my First-Semester Lesson Learned #1: Just say no, bro [or sis].



It's very, very difficult for any first-year student to plan ahead for 14 minutes, let alone a full semester. Although I had hoped my phone would have some sort of alarm that sounds when I reach critical mass, it appears AT&T (T) hasn't found a large enough subscriber base interested in that feature. The holiday break couldn't have come at a better time for all of us, as I reckon that others feel pretty swamped as well: the Executive Lobby at Ross during finals reminded me of some kind of zombie film.



Easing the Burden

Whatever stress and anxiety that results from this crazy experiment, however, provides an opportunity to advise prospective students on how best to prepare for the experience. I've been fortunate enough to serve alongside my classmates in a student ambassador role while also trolling the BusinessWeek.com message boards. I was so grateful for the extensive amount of help I received from current second-year MBAs during my application process, so the least I can do is make the experience a little less tense for someone going through the same grueling process I encountered only a year ago.



Alas, for some of us overcommitted folks who wish we could just run around and plan WhirlyBall excursions all day, three massive, smelly, unavoidable elephants also occupy the room: Sleep, class, and work. We actually pay quite a bit of money to go to class [really!], and companies like students who go to said classes and learn something. Each task requests -- nay, demands -- your full effort, and it turns into a messy situation when you're expected to give 100% to a dozen different activities. [If anyone has found a way to exert 1200% effort, please let me know.]







Fortunately, my body has adjusted to the standard six-hour sleep regimen, and professors, as well as fellow students suffering through the same plight, often give some leeway when you haven't read every detail of the morning's case study or need an extra hour to crank out a team problem set. We're all adults here, and each of us knows how much of each task we can sacrifice and still contribute. Integrity and commitment are of high importance, especially in classes that have a major team-based component, and students are required to exhibit some form of self-governance to ensure all team members contribute equally. For our Community Consulting team, for example, we determined that two team members had contributed a significant amount to the project, and in return for excusing their absence from the presentation they briefed us on the details of their efforts.



Of course, one time-consuming activity that should rarely be sacrificed is nap time. There's an underground campaign to have a "sleeping room" installed in Ross's new building, which will open in January, 2009, so we don't have to curl up on a couch in the high-traffic lobby to catch a power nap.



First-Semester Lesson Learned #2: Sleep. Your body will stop complaining if you do.



After our midterm break in October, my schedule ramped up because of more intense course work and a whole slew of additional activities. I tried to compensate by sleeping less. Well, my body would have none of it, and I spent the next two weeks attempting to fight off a nasty cold. This epidemic seemed to sweep the entire cohort: The coughs and sniffles echoing through our lecture halls increased at least threefold.



Making Statistics Fun

While they're considering a quarantined rest area, however, I strongly recommend that they create a sleeping room for the professors as well. Their efforts to make the material relevant and applicable, in the midst of balancing their own time with families and research, certainly bear fruit. Hyun-soo Ahn, for example, achieved the near-impossible by making statistics fun. By incorporating East Coast rap and talking about how P. Diddy "sold out" into a lecture on sample analysis, and by joining students for a last-day happy hour, the prof comfortably identified with our social trends while generating plenty of laughs. Sreedhar Bharath, himself a former MBA student, worked us to the bone with his exhaustive finance problem sets, but by the end of the term our section was grateful for his desire to make us challenge Ross's rep for being "a nonfinance school."



Not all our lecturers employ the same approach to engaging with students, however, and with a cohort as unique as Ross's, it's inevitable that students will be divided on their opinions of the teachers' efficacy. Nevertheless, it can't be denied that my teachers have been more approachable than any I've had before.



First-Semester Lesson Learned #3: Professors don't just want to meet students during office hours; make time to get to know them better.



You have to admit, the professors do a fantastic job, even with the students' attention span mostly focused on the summer internship recruiting season!



I mentioned briefly in my previous entry that I had a "discouraging" experience during my travels to Washington, D.C. I was actually in the area as part of the Emerging Markets Club's "career trek." During our one-week hiatus between Fall A and Fall B, multiple student organizations sponsor career excursions to various parts of the country. While some of my classmates were scoping out the real estate and financial-services landscapes in New York, others were headed west to Silicon Valley to visit companies in the high-technology sector. With my oh-so-extensive [read: nonexistent] knowledge of the development-consulting sector, I decided that a trip to the nation's capital was in store.



A Harsh Reality

Although our visits were productive, I got the sense that an MBA alone wouldn't get me in the door: Many firms required previous development experience. We career switchers in the room were reminded of a fact that is easily lost in the "MBA culture": Those three letters are not a skeleton key that grants potential entry into every company that exists. It's a harsh reality for anyone who made those opportunity cost calculations at their old cubicle desk before taking the plunge, but for me it was also a "well, duh" moment. I had visions of my dad smacking me upside the head while pointing at his perseverance, even after he lost his job and worked at a fire extinguisher store to keep the family afloat.



I consider the multiple second-year MBAs I've gotten to know [in the most random ways, too: honky-tonk bars we visited during the Net Impact conference in Nashville were like catnip for the conversation junkies!], and I imagine they came to a similar realization about their job prospects, and their need to persevere, at some point last year. It's not so much that they've lost their sense of idealism; rather, they have a dose -- a very potent dose -- of reality mixed in with their desire to be world-changers. They realize that the effort of simply getting a degree isn't enough to get where they eventually want to be, nor will it open all the doors along the way. And for this wandering, stubborn first-year, the importance of their words of wisdom, and presence in general, is beyond measure. I regret not getting to know more second-year MBAs earlier; after all, they'll only be here for four more months.



First-Semester Lesson Learned #4: Become a second-year MBA groupie. Just don't make them think you're stalking them, O.K.?



Kate, a second-year MBA and one of my mentors, offered this advice during a coffee chat several weeks ago: "Don't forget why you're here." It's almost as if she was able to peer into my conscience and decipher exactly what I needed to hear. With the setback in D.C., my attention being pulled in all different directions, and the recruiting process in full swing, life at Ross was a blur these first four months. As I write this journal from my parents' house in South Dakota, fresh off a batch of finals and away from the Ann Arbor rat race, I've had more time to process Kate's words. And I'm saddened that the passion for pursuing a tangible approach to eliminating poverty, the very reason I came to business school, has been somewhat replaced by an effort to simply survive and land a great summer internship. Call it a semester-life crisis, if you will, but it comes at a time when I still can reorient my sails. And that's perhaps the most important lesson I learned.



First-Semester Lesson Learned #5: Don't lose sight of the big picture: Remind yourself every day why you're doing this, and pursue the activities and relationships that will take you there.



Each student has his or her own reasons, and I hope the next few semesters will provide opportunities for all of us at Ross to help one another down the winding paths.