A Second-Year’s Reflection On The MBA Journey

For us second-year students, there is only a term and a half left in the MBA. The two-year, six-term journey is coming to an end. 

BUSINESS SCHOOL RELATIONSHIPS BEGIN FIRST AS CLASSMATE RELATIONSHIPS

Twenty-five percent of the journey still remains, but perhaps because graduation logistics must be planned early, or because people along the way have already started saying goodbye — some moving for work, some going to another campus for short-term study, some taking a leave of absence — or simply because everyone is tired, the initial freshness and enthusiasm have faded. The sense of daily rhythm we’ve built over more than a year is being broken, replaced instead by recurring thoughts of things coming to an end.

As adults, we know all too well that two years is a short time in a long life. Yet this brief chance to step out of reality and return to school has allowed us to relive the youthful illusion that time is a relative concept — that though we have only spent two years together (and not even that yet), we have already become deeply imprinted in one another’s lives. You and I exist in each other’s past, present, and future. No matter how far time flies or how far apart we are, the moment we see each other again or hear each other’s voices, memories will cross time and space to return us to those two years as classmates.

That’s because business school gives us what may be the only chance in adult life to get to know one another sincerely. Part of the reason is that our connection begins first as classmates. The social labels that define us outside school may be useful context, but they don’t define our relationships here. Even though we’re “mid-career” EMBA students whose titles and achievements should carry weight, once we’re back on campus, a senior VP and a rising junior one can still argue over a case assignment or team up for board games. Our shared identity as classmates and students transcends the roles we play in society.

Another reason is that most of us don’t work in overlapping industries or direct business relationships. The transactional networking that dominates industry events is therefore muted here. Even if one classmate is an LP and another is in PE, the overlap in assets, sectors, and regions is rarely close enough to yield immediate mutual benefit. Yet our worlds are still connected enough that understanding each other’s work remains mutually enriching. Many of my closest relationships formed simply through these professional conversations that evolved naturally into genuine connection.

BUSINESS SCHOOL NETWORKS VERSUS WORK NETWORKS

Before business school, I used to think that relationships which couldn’t be converted into short-term professional value were inefficient — low-ROI socializing with little relevance to career development. I even questioned the worth of business school itself, assuming that work relationships built over time were far more valuable professionally.

In truth, they are two completely different kinds of networks — each shaping personal growth in different ways. Workplace relationships are defined by reciprocity and transaction: every role inherently determines a relationship’s purpose, power balance, conversation topics, and boundaries. There’s little room for spontaneity, which is why work relationships rarely become personal unless intentionally cultivated. They’re invaluable for professional advancement — they determine what information you can access, the quality of your teamwork, whether projects succeed, and whether influential sponsors back you during promotion rounds.

Business-school networks, by contrast, are rooted in shared learning rather than work. Even though the MBA is career-oriented, it is, at its core, still a school. Its relationships are those of classmates, not colleagues. Their impact can’t be measured immediately — that’s perhaps a weakness — but they’re not purely utilitarian, and that gives them limitless potential. Unlike professional relationships, they aren’t constrained by present circumstances. In business school, we can choose to become startup cofounders, recruit teammates, seek investors — or simply become confidants who share our most vulnerable selves, our fears, doubts, and insecurities. Miraculously, these choices aren’t mutually exclusive.

At the same time, business-school relationships differ from earlier student friendships. In childhood or university, our social development was secondary to our self-development — we hadn’t yet figured out who we were, let alone how to relate to others. By the time we reach business school, however, years of study and work have given us a more stable sense of self. We (hopefully) understand and accept ourselves. So when we enter a setting like business school — one that deliberately encourages new human connections — it becomes an advanced training ground for interpersonal growth, helping us uncover kinds of relationships we once thought impossible.

RELATIONSHIPS IN EMBA VERSUS FULL-TIME MBA

This also forms one of my reflections on the difference between EMBA and full-time MBA programs. EMBAs are mostly part-time, with older and more experienced students. I understand why full-time MBA programs are more popular — they better suit earlier-career needs and a “do everything early” mentality. Yet the EMBA has its own advantages. Most EMBA students have a decade or more of experience; many have gone through multiple life stages — marriage, family, leadership. Full-time MBAs, in contrast, often have under five years of experience and are still early adults, some even hoping to find a life partner through school. As individuals, EMBAs tend to be more mature, and that allows me, as an EMBA student, to observe and engage with a diverse group with genuine openness.

Before entering business school, I hadn’t realized how fragmented it could be — people with similar backgrounds tend to cluster, especially in large full-time MBA cohorts. My full-time MBA friends feel the same frustration but can’t change it, becoming passive participants in a culture of social division. To me, this contradicts the very mission of a business school. If even world-class institutions can’t bridge social and cultural barriers, where else in the world will people from different backgrounds truly get to know one another?

The EMBA environment is better in this respect. Partly because our class size is smaller — no single group is large enough to have critical mass. Partly because experience and maturity make us more intentional about openness. And partly because of program structure: full-time students may share the same mindset, but constant comparison and competition — plus the pressure of recruiting — make it hard to truly relax and connect. In that context, genuine openness is rare.

IMPOSSIBLE FRIENDSHIPS 

I’ve written many times about how close my learning team is. The six of us — truly “love at first sight.” From orientation week, when we were randomly assigned by the school to be a team that would share our first-year MBA experiences together, we were asked to share personal histories and values, and we found that we could all be completely ourselves with one another.

What surprised me most is how unlikely our friendship appears from the outside. Across industry, gender, race, upbringing, even age, we couldn’t be more different. If the old me had to bet, I’d never have guessed that these people would become my best friends in business school.

It reminds me of the 2022 novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, where Sadie Green and Sam Masur’s friendship begins by chance — Sam injured in a car accident, Sadie’s sister fighting cancer — they meet in a hospital game room and bond over video games. A nurse, hoping to aid Sam’s recovery, encourages them to keep meeting. Years later they both move from L.A. to Boston, crossing paths again in Harvard Square. Business school is full of similar serendipities — chance encounters that bring people together for two intense years of shared life.

Sometimes we choose to create opportunities for ourselves and trust the butterfly effect that follows — that’s perhaps my favorite way to define business school now. From that perspective, the most important part of an MBA is how the admissions committee selects a group of strangers whose chemistry will ignite. It’s not a perfect analogy, but the admissions office is like the game’s creator, and we, the students, are the players.

Beyond my six-person team, I’ve also discovered many friendships that seemed impossible at first. Classmates I initially found unremarkable later moved me deeply with their life stories, struggles, and philosophies. I’ve learned not to rush to judgment. Like Ted Lasso says — stay curious, not judgmental. I thought I was already good at that, but business school has shown me there’s always a higher level of grace in how we relate to others.

BECOMING A BETTER FRIEND — AND PERHAPS A BETTER PERSON

By now it’s clear that the greatest gift business school has given me is people. Friends who are different yet deeply understanding; memories of wasting time together in classrooms, bookstores, ice-cream shops, bars, restaurants, trains, airports, hotel lobbies; those nights when everyone was exhausted but still unwilling to say goodnight.

And it’s not just people — or even just friendship. There’s something unnamed beyond that.

Few places give adults the space to openly show vulnerability — to share painful pasts, family struggles, confusion about the future. For me, business school filled many of the social voids of adult life.

Like many others who studied abroad, I was fully socialized in China before 20, then moved to the U.S. afterward. My identities over the past decade — a Chinese international student in the Mountain West, a new immigrant working on Wall Street — both placed me outside the social mainstream. Surrounded by homogeneity in the Mountain West and the high-pressure, fast-paced culture in finance, I learned to stay on the edges, cautious and observant, rarely voicing strong opinions or showing personality.

Even my visa categories tell that story — F-1 student, then H-1B worker. My legitimacy in America was defined by study and work; outside those roles, my social identity felt incomplete. Unlike most people, I had no local family, no childhood friends, no family network. That absence freed me from obligations but also left my social development somewhat suspended — my relationships with local people centered on work, and my personal connections are still mainly driven by similar backgrounds (I know people in the Chinese community well), not more broadly.

Business school changed that. Through these “impossible” friendships, I realized that I could connect deeply even with people utterly different from me — bridging not only cultural divides but also differences in upbringing, industry, and worldview.

Every relationship is like building a bridge. I used to think I could only do my part — that connection depended on whether the other person met me halfway. Now that I’ve learned to build many kinds of bridges in the last year plus, I’ve also learned to walk a few extra steps toward the other side, and to see things from the other person’s perspective. Thanks to this change in my mindset, sometimes we no longer need to build a Golden Gate Bridge; a small arched bridge over water is enough. As a result, there are now more people in the world I can cross it with.

On this journey of learning to be a better friend — perhaps also a better person — I feel deeply grateful for my MBA education, having experienced it (almost) all.

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Author Vera Shi, a second-year Wharton EMBA student, is vice president at a global alternative asset management firm and investment bank focusing on private equity investing.

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