What You Didn’t Expect to Feel at the End of Business School
Graduation season is upon us, and as you ponder the last 2 years of business school, you can’t help but juxtapose the person you came in as, and the person you have become along the way. Considering the highs, the lows, and the in-betweens, you wonder if the way you’re feeling is how you had always expected to feel.
You had expected to know the exact definition of a hedge fund and to be able to draw inferences from a financial statement through a single glance. You had expected to get better at handling difficult conversations, in saying ‘no, I did my share of the group assignment, so I’d prefer if someone else took this part,’ and to no longer get emotional while dealing with conflicts, waiting to run home and cry on the floor of your closet, calling your mom for advice and feeling 12 years old.
You had expected to know how to use chopsticks flawlessly, to know what your favorite wine is and not just say ‘any white wine’ to a confused bartender on a warm summer afternoon, and to know exactly which silverware is used for which course during a meal. You know those differently sized forks and spoons laid out symmetrically at a formal dinner where you are expected to cross your legs and chew quietly and talk about looming recessions? Yeah, that silverware.
You had expected to learn how to play golf, tennis, and squash — all three because just one isn’t impressive enough for someone who went to business school. You had expected to read the Wall Street Journal twice a day and listen to all those podcasts by those influential world leaders to have enough talking points at those formal dinners with all the silverware. You had expected to have more time to do more things, to eat more good food, to meet more good people, to live more good life. It’s funny how it’s just never enough, so we make do with what we have.
You had expected to fall in love. Between balancing financial statements and balancing school and life, you hoped to find someone who balanced you out. It isn’t too much to ask for, but in the midst of all things business school, this simple request gets entangled with other priorities. And so, you accept the love that the universe has to offer for this moment in time, and wonder that if this was any other environment, how different things could have been.
You had expected for everyone to have high-paying, respectable, enviable-by-non-business-school-people jobs. The kind of jobs that would make us feel financially secure, to buy that big house and send our kids to grand schools, to give each other nice gifts and travel to places we’d always talked about. The kind of jobs that would make 2 years of hustling worth our effort, the kind of jobs that would make us feel limitless.
Nonetheless, you feel grateful for the network that you have now entered into and brace yourself for part deux. You must work doubly hard — once, to get to where you want to go, and twice to prove your worth as this person who has now graduated from business school. In addition to meeting the expectations the world has for you, you think about the version of you from 2 years ago and what she would think of who you are today. It sounds exhausting and defeating and incredulous, but you remind yourself that this is the reason you are here.
You had expected to leave as a completely and wholly evolved individual, an all-knowing being ready to take on the forces of the world beyond — but you have so much work left to do. You have so much left to explore, so much left to learn. You have come to accept so much, yet you have that much farther to go. No, you don’t have to be friends with everyone and not everyone has to like you. No, you don’t have to have an opinion on everything remotely related to business, and sometimes you can just listen and let someone change your mind for you. Yes, you can transform in a way that you never thought was possible, but the idea of you transforming even more as life throws more such experiences your way, enthralls you.
Over 2 years, you have built an appetite for the world beyond business school, and are ready to devour, with the correct fork gripped in your hand. Eat the world, my child; you’ve earned it.
