The MBA Experience: Nourishment Options – Just Don’t Eat your Classmates

Marian Reed

Anyone looking to lose those last five pounds should give b-school a try. Even if you have enough time to sleep (which you won’t), you certainly will not have enough time to eat. Bananas and crackers are your new best friends and those multi-course meals that you used to prepare for your friends are but a distant memory. Sounds like something you should sign up for, no? You may be comforted to learn that there are alternate forms of nourishment to help sustain you during your MBA experience.

Most people associate B-schools with burgeoning managerial and leadership professionals. While these corporate-centered career targets are the end goal for the majority of my colleagues, this assumption does not give full credit to the MBA experience. It is not only a process, it is a game – a game that you play with others and yourself, across multiple tiers of interpersonal interactions. And once you start playing this game, you will find that you have no desire to stop.

Copenhagen Business School nourishes the MBA experience

But how is this game nourishment? Intellectual curiosity and your competitive spirit need to be satisfied during your MBA experience, and like hunger, these needs are very demanding. B-schools do not only provide business education; they provide a rich feeding ground for developing leaders. At Copenhagen Business School, where I am studying, we are nourished by thought, enriched by our interactions and sustained by a competitive and fruitful classroom experience. The fourth term in the accelerated one-year journey is gearing up and we are sustained by bonding with and even competing against our elite classmates.

I knew that I would have to juggle multiple tasks and prioritize 99.99% of my time, but I am pleasantly surprised by how much enjoyment I get from my classmates. In Copenhagen Business School’s class of 2014, there are less than 40 MBA candidates, yet we represent 17 different countries. The global perspective you get from this classroom diversity is indescribable. You are constantly treated to a new viewpoints and unique anecdotal experiences – this helps to feed your curiosity, construct an evolving perspective and expand your view of the world in general.

It is not all fun and games, of course. Copenhagen Business School’s MBA program not only requires that you have the intelligence to handle a complicated workload and the drive to succeed in your personal mission, but it also requires the hands of an artist, the tenacity of a bulldog, the Zen of a yogi and the winged feet of Hermes, which will hopefully deposit you in bed before 3.00 am rears its ugly head again. You might not recognize yourself at times – how can anyone be so productive while also being so aggravated? But you will find the will to thrive during your MBA experience, and you will be more than willing to rise to the challenge. Just don’t forget that you have to send a dozen emails before bed, and that you are, in fact, living your dream.

Songs that helped to inspire this post: 'L.E.S. Artistes', Santigold, 'Once in a Lifetime', Talking Heads, 'One of These Things First', Nick Drake, 'Six Months in a Leaky Boat', Split Enz.

About Marian Reed

Marian hails from Philadelphia, USA and spent the last 12 years of her life working for the Linguistic Data Consortium, an organization that supports human language technology (HLT) development. She has a background in marketing and has helped to direct, formulate and enact strategic marketing goals in a highly diversified, niche market. She is currently an MBA candidate at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). You can contact Marian in the comments section below, where she will be happy to advise members of the TopMBA.com community on MBA program selection, the application processes and how to prepare for the MBA journey.

Marian has personal interests in food production, the seafood industry and astronomy and spends a large portion of her free time traveling, networking, cooking, reading and/or writing.