Hardest Parts Of Being An EMBA

University of Virginia's Mayra Rocha

University of Virginia’s Mayra Rocha

NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS BATTLE TO KEEP PACE

Like time management, academic rigor was another shock to many of the Best & Brightest EMBAs. Some, like UCLA’s Christian Dunbar, likened it to a “new language” where “debits don’t mean debts and credits don’t mean credit.”

The learning curve was particularly steep for nontraditional students like Jennifer Meller. An M.D. and owner of a medical practice, Meller admits that her only interaction with Excel before B-school had been when she had to “assemble a guest list when I threw dinner parties.” Entering Wharton’s EMBA program was a stunning turn for Meller, who says, “Adjusting to all of this newness at this stage of my career and personal life was a real challenge.”

The University of Virginia’s Mayra Rocha, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, endured a similar wakeup call. A true poet, Rocha was weighed down by the pace of the courses, the volume of work, and the difficulty of the curriculum. “I did not have any background with numbers and jumping into graduate-level statistics, finance, and accounting was not an easy task,” Rocha says. “At times, I know it would take my classmates two hours to do an assignment and it would take me three times longer. I had to go back and learn the basics as I was learning the advanced business courses.”

Such struggles were exacerbated for Wharton’s Gene Gard by the variation in how some classes were taught and evaluated. “There are some classes that are assessed in a very linear fashion,” Gard says. “You will have a final exam, it will be most of your grade, here are the last three years’ worth of finals, every question has only one right answer, have at it. The amount of time spent studying is strongly correlated with the outcome. Other classes are not this way. There are classes I spent lots of time on, yet my ideas just didn’t resonate with the professor (or the TA). At first it bothered me, but over time I realized that learning was what really matters, not relentless pursuit of the best grades.”

A TIME OF GREAT REWARD … AND REGRET

U.C.-Berkeley's Mark Gorenflo

UC-Berkeley’s Mark Gorenflo

Like their full-time cousins, EMBAs also learned that maintaining a cohesive team was among the hardest parts of the B-school experience. Students are not only teaming up with highly successful leaders, but also peers who are accustomed to doing things their way — and getting results. According to UC-Berkeley’s Mark Gorenflo, a former nuclear submarine commander, successful teams are often held together with a mix of diplomacy and openness that’s tempered with accountability. “We really need to get to know our group members’ strengths and ensure that each of us does our level best for the benefit of the group, even as we figure out who is really best at any given task,” Gorenflo says. “That entails really getting to know your group members on a deeply personal level and figuring out how to divide tasks when we don’t come to the group with functional assignments (as one would in any real-life work environment).”

One advantage that executive MBAs have over full-time MBAs is their ability to quickly implement what they learn to their jobs. But as some EMBAs bitterly discovered, their employers were not necessarily ready for new ideas. For one thing, their best practices may not be a natural fit for their organization. Even more, an MBA has little relevance to front-line staff who’ve witnessed new ideas add complexity and uncertainty to their day-to-day jobs. That was one of the hurdles facing Michigan State’s Joshua Sanborn. “The most difficult item to understand for me is that all of my perceived ‘slam-dunk solutions’ may not instantly be accepted by my company just because I’m suddenly an EMBA,” he says. “It’s hard being patient for the right moments, especially when you want to quickly implement all your newfound knowledge.”

Though EMBAs sacrifice to make these right moments happen, they come with a cost: regret. The University of Texas’ Mark Shen explains that the hardest part of B-school for him was the “guilt about not spending more time with family and at my job.” Georgetown’s Ellen Davis admits to being haunted by “this incessant feeling that there was always, always something I should be doing at all times.” While EMBAs intuitively understand that they need to make tradeoffs, USC’s Ellen Wu was still bothered to know that she couldn’t “give 110% to everything,” particularly her family.

Still, all recognized that the EMBA was a necessary step to grow and advance their careers, and that to pursue it they would need to take risks and embrace ideas that challenge the status quo. For Cornell University’s Tavarres Brewington, that is both the most frightening and most rewarding part of the business school experience.

“The hardest part was challenging myself to think outside the box,” he says. “It is important, but not always easy, to get out of your comfort zone and consider new ways of doing things. This was uncomfortable at times, but necessary.”

DON’T MISS: THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST EMBAs FROM THE CLASS OF 2016 OR EXECUTIVE MBAS SHARE THEIR BIGGEST BUSINESS SCHOOL LESSONS

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