This past Wednesday when I left my class in Financial Accounting I had a sheer anxiety attack. It was not a panic attack yet, as there are no half-term finals for at least another 4 weeks. But it was really very scary. This was not based only on my feelings of inadequacy from the class in Accounting, but had a cumulative affect from both quantitative classes I had this week. The other one is Judgment, Uncertainty and Decisions.
As I was sitting in these classes I could not grasp the ideas explained by instructors. Granted that the material in Decisions class has become more complex and more difficult for comprehension: Probabilities, Statistical Distributions. I was really thinking whether I had tried to bite too much by going to business school.
On Sunday I spent all day working on the problems for Decisions Making class. I eventually was able to understand the concepts and applications of Normal Distribution, its inverse, Binomial Distribution which I missed in the class. I almost got a feeling of relief when I gracefully solved the first few problems for my homework assignment. Then I looked at the problems on other statistical probabilities that I had to solve and at the clock, and realized that I just would not have time to read that material, leave alone to try to solve the problems, ’cause it was already well after midnight. And on Monday I have a class in the evening, and after the class I would have to spent at least some time preparing homework for Financial Accounting on Wednesday, as I will also have to do on Tuesday.
So my anxiety is not going away. I am wondering more and more if I will be able to pull out this MBA stint. The main issue is that it takes me considerably more time than probably to many others in my MBA classes to understand the material. And the pace of studying is very fast, given the time left from work and family commitments.
I was reading about this kind of anxiety in a couple of books that I read during my preparation for MBA earlier this year:
- Ahead of the Curve, by Philip Broughton, ISBN-10: 1594201757
- Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA, by Peter Robinson, ISBN-10: 0446671177
The former is a very recent recount of Harvard MBA experience, the latter is from about 20 years ago, describing the Stanford MBA student’s reminiscences of his way through the business school.
Both of the authors happened to be poets. They both managed to make it through these programs, and this served as encouragement to me when I was still deliberating with myself whether I should go to the MBA program. But of course, it is one thing to read about someone else’s anxiety attacks, and quite different to live it through on your own.
Both of the authors were, naturally, in full-time programs. But I am not really sure whether doing part-time MBA is any easier, because of the job, and in my case additionaly – family with two kids.
Anyways, if you are considering going to business school and have reservations about the rigor of the MBA academics, read both books. It will give you some new perspective if my lamenting is not enough for you :-(
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