How to Get Ahead During the First Term of EMBA Study

Your new cohort are the people you are going to be spending a lot of your time with over the duration of your degree, so it’s important to build up a positive relationship with them, not just . If your EMBA takes place on weekends, then you will likely be sleeping in the same hotels as your cohort, eating your meals together, attending lectures together and, if that wasn’t enough, socializing at the same networking events with each other.

As such, you should make networking a priority in your first term in order to get to know them. Building a good relationship with your cohort will also provide you with a support network for when you feel stressed or overworked. Everybody is going through the same experience as you and can relate to the issues that you face in day to day EMBA life.

Make the time to talk to members of your cohort individually during the first few weeks of study. Find out about their professional background and a little bit about themselves personally. Engaging with people outside of the lecture theatre shows that you are approachable and sociable – both key attributes in business.

Although advanced lesson preparation is advantageous, don’t focus all your energy on your degree. When undertaking any professional commitment, it’s important to achieve a work-life balance in order to maintain some degree of sanity. Time management is a big part of finding a work-life balance.

If you’re studying an EMBA, you will likely be juggling a degree, work and personal commitments around your hectic schedule - so don’t feel bad for taking time out from time to time. Although most EMBAs will run networking events for you to attend with your cohorts, this is not a viable substitute for a social life.

Networking events still require you to maintain a degree of professionalism, no matter how many cocktails you have consumed, so it’s important to make time for yourself away from your degree to let your hair down. When you are working out your time management, plan nights out with your friends, evenings in with your partner and days out with your family. Constant focus on your degree could result in stress and tiredness which is ultimately detrimental to not only achieving EMBA success, but also work-life balance.

A healthy lifestyle can really help you get ahead of the competition on an EMBA program. As part of the work-life balance, a healthy lifestyle consists mainly of three main elements – adequate sleep, a nutritious diet and plenty of exercise. If you incorporate all three into your lifestyle, then you will very likely see a marked improvement in your work.

Living healthily puts you in a positive frame of mind. Eating your greens increases concentration levels (handy for particularly complex statistics lectures), exercise releases endorphins which lift your mood and having eight hours of sleep a night fights fatigue during the day – so no more yawning at your desk or falling into a fitful sleep as soon as you get home from work.

While it’s true that a demanding schedule makes finding time for the gym and cooking healthy food difficult, it can be achieved with time management. If you set aside two nights/mornings a week for exercise and prepare your nutritious meals in advance, then maintaining a healthy lifestyle won’t seem so time consuming. In fact, once you’ve felt the benefits and seen how it effects your work, you may want to make your health a paramount factor in your time management schedule while achieving EMBA success.