Tomorrow is my last exam for the second qtr of classes which also means the end of my 1st semester of MBA life! So for people who might be considering an MBA (or anyone else for that matter) here are the key things I found for managing (for the 1st 4 months anyways) MBA school thus far:
-Make time for things besides school- Given the insane workload, it would be VERY easy to spend all day and all night doing homework. However by the same token, if you just focus on school school school, you WILL get burned out. To prevent this, for me anyways, this meant taking an hour out of my day to go to the gym and get a workout in. I can’t tell you how good it felt to get away from academia for a bit and blow off some steam with some weights. It also let me come back to school-related work with renewed vigor. So be it the gym, playing some hockey, getting some Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in, whatever…Taking a break helps!
-Prioritize your projects schedule- Because we had some many things coming at us every day, I found it really useful to create a “to-dos” list with associated due dates on my computer. That way I had a visual list of what I needed to do for when and therefore could plan my time every day accordingly.
-Participate in class- This is super beneficial for 2 reasons:
1. You get EASY marks in class for raising your hand and saying something. (sometimes a lot of marks at that!)
2. If by chance you need to ask your prof a favour, he/she will actually know who you are therefore be more inclined to help you out.
-Communication skills are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!- I really can’t stress this enough. Good communication skills makes so many things for you and your peers 1,000,000 times easier. I’ll leave it at that. Please be a good communicator. Thank you. :-)
-Network, network, network- I spoke about this in an earlier blog post but it’s worth mentioning again. Get to know as many people as you can in the industry you want to work in.
-Be nice to everyone- You never know when you’ll need to make a big business deal with one of the other future executives in your class. ;-)
-The Rotman MBA education is as rewarding as it is challenging- As you guys know, I busted my butt pretty hard this semester and despite lots of drama and stress, I’m really happy I have soaked up as much as I could. Yay for learning!
And with that, I am off to get 1 more exam done, then off to Punta Cana (thank you mom) until school starts up again in January. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year and see you in 2012!!
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