My Story: From Yale and McKinsey to Harvard Business School & A Novel Road Trip

In my mind I had this huge fear built up of—I don’t know, maybe what MBAs were like in the eighties. I wasn’t sure if HBS was going to be warm and welcoming or extremely competitive or douchey—I had this huge fear. I think a lot of people who come to HBS think, “Maybe I got in by accident.” But when you get there, you realize ‘I’m not the smartest person in the room, but I’m also not the dumbest,’ and it’s a huge relief. Unless you’re a truly horrible student who never shows up, you’re going to do okay. Class is much more about how much effort you want to put into it and how much you want to learn from your classmates. Everyone’s really happy to help each other with stuff.

There were some people I judged too quickly. You just bucket people into some kind of category: either they’re a finance person, or a nonprofit person, or just—so insane. It was eye opening for me when I realized that I was flat-out wrong. In the first few weeks of school, everyone’s scared of a lot of the same things, and no one’s sure how much they can open up at first. I think judging people then was sort of foolish.

HBS is busy in ways you can’t imagine. In my first year, I got about six hours of sleep a night. I’m guessing that’s pretty average. I was really involved in the design club. I was trying to figure out how to make MBAs Across America happen. I do freelance work, and I’m sort of working on my own thing. I also procrastinate quite a bit. Really disciplined people were probably better at juggling things. You can also do the “work-hard-play-hard” thing, if that’s the experience you want in business school. There were people who went out a lot, and I can only imagine that they slept a lot less.

The idea for MBAs Across America came out of a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t even remember which of us said it, but somebody suggested, “Why not do a road trip and work with small businesses along the way?” It was one of those weird synchronized moments where we all thought, “Wow, that’s actually a really powerful idea.” We started meeting regularly, reaching out to potential sponsors and getting feedback from all kinds of people. It just sort of built and built and built. Now we’re two weeks in, and it’s actually happening.

Our first location was Detroit, and a guy named Kirk Mayes, who runs an organization that’s dedicated to revitalizing the area, gave us a driving tour of one of the worst hit neighborhoods. He told us an incredible story of passion and dedication and absolute commitment in spite of all the obstacles. We were almost moved to tears.

This trip has made us ask ourselves how we’re going to make a difference in the world after we graduate. It makes you look inward and ask if what you’re going to do with your life could be worthy of whatever investments have been made in you. I was an annoyingly precocious kid, and I thought I had my life plan figured out in high school. Having experienced big changes between then and now, I think I’ve embraced not having such concrete aspirations.

Do not go to business school unless you have a real reason that it’s for you. Don’t BS your essays. There are a million people applying to these things who are all Googling for advice or paying consultants. This is anecdotal from my experience alone, but I can only imagine that admissions committees would rather hear from a real person than a formula. If you’re having trouble writing the essay—not out of normal writer’s block, but because you literally don’t have anything sincere to say about why you want to go—then maybe that’s a sign that you’re not ready, you know?

I’m totally aware of how lucky I’ve been to have the experiences I’ve had. There are a million other people who are totally qualified to have them. I’m most thankful to my parents for making all the ridiculous sacrifices they made. I’m thankful to my friends for being weird in the same ways that I am. I think it just makes sharing things in life that much more awesome. You feel like you’re not alone—someone else is in on the joke with you.

DON’T MISS: Wharton vs. Harvard Business School or My Story: From a Dot-Com Bust to Harvard or MBA Startups: Harvard Trio Takes Pub Trivia to the Apple Store

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