What You Didn’t Expect to Expect from Business School

The months leading up to business school are filled with events and programming to help you set your expectations and know where you are headed and how to prepare accordingly. It is through these episodes that you feel equipped to know how to pack, what courses to take prior, and what places are the coolest and most exciting to live at.

What it does not prepare you for is what proceeds to set your expectations in the rudest and most uneventful manner ever. Highlighted below are a few.

You did not expect to have to seem smart all.the.time. Yes, you were aware that you were entering one of the top-ranked programs in the world and that the people you’d surround yourself with would be of above-average intellect, but in the delusion of expecting a safe space to ask ‘dumb’ questions (as there are apparently no ‘dumb’ questions in business school) you quickly recognize the harsh judgment that follows this transparent dumbness and how you must always be ‘on’. A single slip-up can cost you your entire personal brand.

You did not expect to feel average, and as a result of it, insignificant, a majority of the time. You can do everything, literally EVERYTHING, and it would still not be enough — hit the gym at least 4 times a week, finish all your reading for all your classes, get dinner with classmates and be up-to-date with everything pop culture just enough to sound informed at social gatherings — and there will be absolutely nothing special about you.

You did not expect that you would struggle to feel accepted when that very feeling is what drove you to school in the first place — you felt so accepted that you wanted to gift that feeling to other people — but now you’ve forgotten what it feels like entirely. You did not expect to flip through Instagram stories and wonder why you weren’t invited to that one inconsequential party with people you barely even know and think to yourself that this trend of toxicity needs to stop somewhere, but probably not with me, probably the next guy — and suddenly you’ve fallen prey to the system and realize that so has everyone else.

You did not expect to have fallen into a vulnerable stupor with someone you thought you could trust by virtue of the supportive environment you had envisioned, only to have that same person turn around and flip your perception on its head. You’re in class the next day, and they’re talking about micro-aggressive behaviour, and you wonder whether he’s absorbing this content and relating it to his own — but probably not, because everyone chooses to be both the hero and the victim of their own story. So, you feel bad for him and silently pray for the people who will work under his leadership and those who may be forced to witness similar forms of gaslighting.

You did not expect to find best friends in such a short span of time, people you genuinely miss when traveling to other parts of the country so much so that you video call them and introduce them to people in your non-business school world, because they are now integral parts of your life. You did not expect to hesitate to ask for help, because everyone at business school is so put-together and somehow you feel the need to appear self-sufficient — but that mental barrier is so quickly broken down by the same people whose Instagram stories you envied and whom you thought rolled their eyes at you that one time you asked a lame question in class. You did not expect that every single person feels the exact same way, just in different shapes and forms, and how during split-second run-ins in the bathroom and Zoom waiting rooms confused about whether the recruiter forgot that we had scheduled a meeting, we connect briefly, and that is enough to make you feel protected by the idea that everyone is on a similar journey.

Nonetheless, the manner in which your expectations continue to be destroyed and built back up again, over and over again, makes you think about the Zuckerbergs and Bezos’ of the world, of how lonely they must feel in making decisions that impact billions of people across the world, of how their own expectations of being in positions of authority and responsibility must continuously be shattered and reconstructed, and you find yourself empathising with them. You think of how we all chose to be here because we want to do good, be good, for ourselves and the people we care about, that it almost doesn’t matter what you expect to believe today, because it could be miles apart from what you choose to believe tomorrow.