Lessons Learned from Starting my MBA in a Pandemic
By: Nathan Rogers
Tags: Lessons Learned, Business School, Thoughts And Feelings

March 5, 2020 — I got a phone call from a Houston-area number. I had been in an anxious headspace all day, and struggled to stay focused. As soon as my phone lit up, I jumped in my chair and stepped outside to answer. “Good afternoon, this is Nathan,” I answer, trying to mask the nerves.

“Hi Nathan!” A cheerful voice greets me. “This is Jessica from the Admissions Office at Rice Business, and I wanted to let you know that you have been admitted to the full-time MBA program for the fall!” The news hits me instantly, and it leaves me stunned.

“Wow…” is all I can say as I start to feel myself getting emotional, leaning against the wall of the stairwell.

The pursuit of an MBA was a long, lonely road. As a first-generation college student and son of a Filipina immigrant and Navy veteran father, I had focused a majority of my life to achieving, getting an education, and advancing my career, but at that point in time, I felt listless. I felt myself floundering, unsure if my current field, digital marketing, was where I wanted to stay. I wanted an MBA as an opportunity to challenge myself and pivot. I felt that I had suddenly lucked into a new horizon, with a ticket to entirely re-imagine my life and career. The future never looked brighter.

Then came the rapid transition to “work from home.” New cases of COVID-19 across the country brought a sense of panic and uncertainty. The conference that my fellowship program was hosting in Seattle, went virtual. The visions of my Houston MBA life, complete with Thursday night Partios, drinks with classmates, and networking events, started to fade as Zoom info sessions started to flood my calendar. My wife, Lauren, and I agonized over the risks of uprooting our lives in the middle of a pandemic for what would look like a virtual MBA experience.

Nevertheless, I sent my deposit and confirmed that I would be attending Rice in the fall.

The fall semester was dizzying with the workload and the endless string of events that made the rest of the year feel like a decade. Now, with two terms completed, and with my last term of core classes almost done, I’d like to share some of the lessons learned from starting my MBA in the middle of a pandemic.

It’s time to change our assumptions of being in control.

I came into the MBA at Rice thinking I had a plan and where I wanted to go, and assumed that once I started business school, that there would be a clear path to follow. I was flat out wrong.

I was overwhelmed by the flood of information, the case studies, the problem sets, and was struggling to keep up. Opportunities that I was excited for coming into business school left me with rejection emails. The difficulty of school mixed with the impressive accomplishments and performance of my peers left me with a deep sense of impostor syndrome. Even with hybrid classes, the severe diminishing of social activity made me feel frustrated I couldn’t connect with my peers and left me socially isolated and longing for old friends. Many days, I often wondered if I made a mistake. What I had envisioned for business school and my actual experience were far apart.

But in the midst of uncertainty, came other opportunities and new things to explore. I signed up for a program that enabled me access to a mentor. I worked with a leadership coach. I competed in the first ever racial justice case competition. I found other ways to connect and get involved that I’m not sure I would have under “normal” circumstances.

I had these expectations, thinking that I could stay in control of what was in front of me, only to encounter things that forced me to adapt. Most of us want to think that we’re in control, but that was never a trustworthy assumption, even before 2020. Something I kept telling myself in the wake of the pandemic was, “if it wasn’t this, it would be something else” that would force me to adjust. For those who like to control things, it’s time to finally accept that we’re not fully in control.

2. Get comfortable with ambiguity.

The decision to go to business school felt unclear, and I hungered for peace of mind throughout the whole process. I didn’t know what life in Houston was like aside from what other friends shared with me. There was no assurance of what the job market would look like for internships, or even what the classroom experience would be like. I had only my current situation and the opportunity to study at Rice.

In case studies for business school, you only have the narrative, the decision at hand, and a series of exhibits of charts and financial statements, leaving you to untangle the knots and start making sense of what’s in front of you. Sometimes the information isn’t perfect, and you’re always wanting more information or wishing you had one specific piece.

Here’s the kicker: you’re not going to get that information. And you still have to make a decision. The “risk” is never zero.

As I’ve gotten involved with the entrepreneurship and innovation space here at Rice and in Houston, you learn a framework of getting familiar with problem spaces, testing assumptions, and gathering insights. My mentor is an entrepreneur and has shared with me the multiple reworkings of the assumptions he and his co-founders have made. Everything is a work in progress, and you have to learn how to embrace the ambiguity.

3. The most important decision is the next one.

I’m defecting from the idea of having a 5–10–20 year plan. The pandemic definitely altered everyone’s plans for last year and this one, but it’s also made me stop being so future-oriented and start putting my attention at what’s present. I know that I have deliverables due next week, a conference to attend to tomorrow. When I get home from studying on campus, I have some catching up to do with my wife as we walk our dog. As a famous figure said once, “Let tomorrow worry about itself,” I can only say yes or no, do or do not, and then see what that decision leads to.

This is a hard lesson learned for a somewhat Type-A person landing in a world where you have to have information, be decisive, and show your work in how you’ve de-risked a venture. Those things are still important, but there’s little to no payoff from agonizing about the future.

I leave with some meditations from the end of Candide by Voltaire. The main character, after suffering a chain of disastrous events in Europe, meets a man who is supposedly a great philosopher of the land. He approaches him, and asks what the purpose is of all this suffering. The philosopher responds with an allegory that humans are mice on a ship sent by a king, and the king doesn’t care about the comfort of the mice, and then he slams the door. Then, the main character meets a man who has devoted his life to simple work. He tells the world-weary protagonist, “we must cultivate our garden,” giving him a call to action to focus on the decisions, capabilities, and opportunities at hand.

It’s tempting to think of grooming a whole forest, to conquer a whole mountain of the future or to focus on some big idea. Sometimes the best thing to do when you have so many things ahead of you is to focus on one thing at a time.

Let’s work on thing at a time, maintaining our focus, and taking that next step. And when you look back, you’ll see how much you’ve done.