Business school is like boot camp
In college I spent a year abroad in France, where I met my friend Cory. Cory was also doing a year abroad and had spent three years in the military before college. We got to know each other in a history class where the only grade we would receive was based on one oral exam at the end of the year where we could be asked about anything the course had covered--more or less everything that had ever happened in France in the last 250 years. Cory and I spent a week together before the exam, cramming 250 years worth of dates and battlefields in our heads. It was excruciating, but every time started I ranting about the French education system or got teary from our lack of sleep, Cory would put me in my place. “Knock if off,” he would say. “This is nothing compared to boot camp.”
A week later, after (barely) passing our exams, Cory and I and a group of friends hitchhiked 20 km outside of town to hike up Mount Ventoux. It turned into the April hottest day on record for the last ten years, and there was no real path to the top—just sharp rocks and heavy thickets of thorn brush. I ran out of water immediately since I’d only brought a teeny tiny bottle of water in order to make room in my backpack for the big bottle of wine I was planning to open at the top. “Stop whining,” Cory told me as I threatened to turn back. “This is nothing compared to boot camp.”
Cory and I kept in touch and years later when I got into to business school I remembered that he had started his MBA just a few months earlier on the West coast. I called him to see how it was going. There was a long pause. Then he said, “It’s worse than boot camp.”
Depending on your perspective, business school may not be worse than boot camp, but there is no denying the similarities. Both focus on developing your leadership skills. Both leave you with an incredible network of people you will know the rest of your life. Both involve a lot of testosterone (yes, I said it!). And most important, both are devoted to breaking you down and building you back up as a stronger, better person.
