Goin' a lil' crazy

If you follow me on twitter and/or my other blog (which I'm sure you do, because I don't see how else you could know this blog existed), you would know that two months ago, I moved half a world away from everything I knew and everyone I love to join B-school.

During Orientation, I was gullible enough to sign up for something called a Izzy Dizzy relay, a fascinating activity where a team of 4 or 5 people essentially run a relay where they have to take turns to place their head on a baseball bat held to the ground, walk around it ten times, and then run to a point and back. Everyone thinks, as as they watch others walk around the bat, and then sway to the other end of the field, that they'll be able to do it just fine - there's no way they'll get so dizzy that they fall to the ground. Then it's their turn and you see them fall to the ground almost as soon as they straighten up from that cursed baseball bat.

It's the same with business school I think. You hear from all your Second Years how crazy and intense it gets, and you believe them, but a part of you is always sure that you'll cope just fine. You did consulting after all, or you worked for a start-up, or you did banking - you know what it's like to have long hours and crazy schedules.

But you don't. Not the way business school makes you learn. There are classes, and there are career events, and there are clubs that you must sign up for because prospective employers must see you as a holistic personality, and there are social events where everyone thinks they're back at a college frat party, and there are people to get to know, and teams to learn to work with, and an apartment to clean, and meals to be cooked, and just SO MUCH TO DO and not enough hours in a day.

You speak to your family, and they tell you what's happening back home, and they tell you not to worry, and you can't explain to them that you will forget what they told you two seconds after you end the call, because that deadline two hours away must be met. You want desperately to speak to your friends back home, but when you do, you have no idea what to say, because it's hard to explain the intensity of what you're going through without sounding like a whiner. Your fellow FYs ask you how's it going, and invariably the answer is "it's going" or "swimming" or "so far so good" or just something that indicates you're surviving. 

Then a SY you bump into in the corridor asks you if you regret quitting your job, taking that huge loan, and joining school again yet, and you look at him and realise that you know what, you don't. Because while this is intense, and you're going to have no sleep whatsoever for the next four months at the very least, if then, you're also learning a lot - about people, about subjects you've never studied, about what you need to do to get that dream job, and about yourself. And you wouldn't give up that experience for the world.

And then it strikes you that damn, this is just the second week of school. How am I ever going to get through this?

And now I really must go work on that presentation.