Flashback

Having earned my undergraduate degree from UGA, I have a sense of sentimentalism and almost déjà vu being back on campus for my MBA. But even more than that is the amusing dynamic I’ve noticed as a part of a full-time program. My friends, it’s high school all over again.

Obviously not in the curriculum and course load, but certainly in the social sense, the experience is a retro one. Starting out as a first-year this August, I felt like a high school freshman. I was excited and nervous and didn’t really know what was going on. No matter what the most put-together, outwardly confident people projected or claimed, they were in the same boat as I.

If first-years are freshman, then second-years are of course the seniors. The 11-month students are somewhere in between. Don’t be put-off if high school was hell. It’s like Disney Channel high school. The seniors help the newbies find their classes, and go out of their way to be nice to them. The second-year students are a great asset for learning the right courses to take, how to handle assignments, etc. They’re also the starting point of your MBA network.
. The classroom dynamic has a high school feeling to it too. We all have our close-knit groups of friends and our unofficially assigned seats. We have the students that know the answer to every question, the students who think they know the answer to every question, and that one student who brings the whole class to sharply inhale when he’s called on – you never know what will come out of his mouth.

In a class of 56 it’s only natural to have groups within the aggregate, but I have to say that, as a class unit, we are a collegial one. Maybe it’s the high school cheerleader in me but I truly have a unique fondness for these classmates of mine. Even the ones who aren’t my favorite, I can see in them the value they are adding to my experience here.

To me, the social aspect of this graduate program is the most important. Yes, the courses are great and I’m learning a lot, but there are so many ways to learn accounting, financial statement analysis, economics, etc., besides attending a full-time MBA program. It’s the human interaction that I value so much, be it with professors or classmates or other staff members. In such a technologically advanced environment, where people type more than they talk to one another, the value of any face-to-face experience is growing exponentially .