First Day of Bliss

It’s officially over. ¼ of my degree is done. Finished. Over. Can you tell I’m excited? As you know my now, I’m really enjoying my MBA experience and I am learning a lot. But… three months of non-stop studying, reading, meeting, papering can take its toll. Last night, after two finals on the same lucky day, my husband asked me what I learned after three months. I started telling him about all the knowledge I received. He said, “No, I don’t mean that, I just want to know if there’s any lesson you learned”. I have to admit I wasn’t sure what to say initially. Then I realized that the most valuable lesson I took from these fourteen weeks is to change your teams as often as you can. It might sound counter intuitive and inefficient, but it really helped me get to know a lot of people in my program and learn a lot about different work styles. Working with different people allowed me to go outside the comfort I had with my old team and adapt my work style to the personalities in my new team.

An extension of the lesson I already mentioned is what became my number one rule in working with teams: designate roles within the team. The way I see it you have two choices: play it by ear and just wait for the two, three weeks or whatever time you have assigned for the project and hope that everything will work out, or establish roles from the beginning. This way everybody has a defined responsibility and carries his/her own weight in the team. The one thing that any MBA student hates is having to pick up the slack for one team member that is on permanent holiday or always busy with various commitments. Plus you can’t hold anybody accountable for responsibilities they were never assigned. My various teams and I learned to spend the first meeting discussing the teams’ expectations, goals, and individual responsibilities. This way everybody was on the same page and we were able to spend the remaining time focusing on the project.

As I said though, my one-month of bliss is here. Yesterday was “glued to couch” day! I did nothing productive, wore pajamas all day long, watched TV, and checked my e-mail. (Yes, I had to check my e-mail, I couldn’t help it.) It feels strange not having to be anywhere right now or having to work on a project. But I’m going to enjoy it immensely. Monday will be a different story though. I’ll have to start operation “house de-mess-ification”. There are tens of pairs of shoes lying around, clothes that I haven’t seen in a month, and notes, books, post-its, everywhere. You can see part of it in the attached picture.

Once the mess is gone, I can focus on my plans for this break. One of the things on the list for this month is doing research for a business plan competition my team and I are participating in early next year. Then I’m working on getting some internship interviews, catching up on books that I bought in the past couple of months but never got around to reading, and finally, my husband and I are going to Cabo for seven great days of fun and R&R. I’m really hoping four weeks are going to be enough for all of this.