MBA Chronicles: When I Grow Up, I Want To Be....

It's been a year since those dreadful days of writing essays for business school applications where I'd been asked over and over again what my personal aspirations were. I remember having had to take a step back and think what I want out of life. All I know is that when I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. Well, we all did at some point. I don't know what killed your astronaut dream, but for me, it was when I realized astronauts had very complicated toilet habits. That, and the risk of suffocating yourself with your own gas.

Then I wanted to be a dentist because in my young eyes, the state-of-the-art, hydraulic dental chair was an amusement park ride that came with a free toothbrush. I abandoned my dream of poking around people's mouths after 2 molar extractions.

Then I wanted to become a teacher because just like every normal kid, I coveted that teaching stick of power. I had my complete teaching set: a little blackboard, white and colored chalks, an eraser, my dad's broken eyeglasses, and a small stick that I used to point at either Barbie or Cabbage Patch, asking it to recite the alphabet. I always sent my dog to detention.

I remember playing with my parents' broken stethoscopes but I never wanted to be a doctor. Tagging along hospital rounds every Saturday, visiting sick people, was enough to get me depress at seven years old. But it's cool to have physician parents. You'd know big words like ciprofloxacin at age 9 and show off with phrases like "damn, my sternocleidomastoid hurts."

I realized there's not much difference between now and then...25 years later, you still don't know what you want.

MBA Chronicles: Snippets of Wisdom

If you have classes from 9AM to 14:50PM everyday and you only get to have one 30-minute break, the person who asks a stupid question at 14:49 deserves to be suckerpunched. Lesson: Do not be this person.

If we pay a euro for every useless and irrelevant comment in class, we might be able to pay Greece's debt in a year.

"You won't die while doing your MBA. But you won't live, either." - Gagan

Making friends in your MBA is all about finding the right fit. You can't force yourself into groups you have nothing in common with; it's like trying to fit a square into a circle. Lesson: Be the circle, don't be square.

The philosophy of the bell-curve grading system: if you think you're doing bad, just pray that 5% of the population are doing worse than you.