Minsk to Mist

Me in my early 20s – have just completed Year 3 at the uni, and enjoying celebrations with my friends.

The last few posts have been covering different aspects of my online MBA journey in the UK – from the selection and decision-making process to the gap between the expectations and the reality (funnily enough, that’s one of the ideas you get to study in the very first MBA module!) – all the way to what you can do if and when things go sideways. Now that I have started my second module, let’s take a helicopter view of my experience and think of what I would recommend anyone who is just pondering on whether to embark on the same journey.

No matter how much time you feel you are ready to allocate – double it

If you are considering an MBA, chances are, you are a busy professional with unpredictable schedules, demanding clients, co-workers who need more guidance from you than you are ready to provide and a big backlog of important tasks you can never get around to. Or perhaps you are a business owner, and your baby (that is, your company) relies on you in everything. If you have to combine all of that with raising a family, doing life admin, keeping yourself fit and healthy and trying not to end up in a lunatic asylum, it is already A LOT!

Now, imagine, your life is also enriched with hours and hours a week of reading materials, academic papers that make you question your ability to read at all, written assignments, tutorials and extra deadlines. Terrifying, huh?

Well, perhaps, if it is terrifying, it is a good thing. At least you are being realistic and trying to make a fair judgment of whether you can ditch a couple of hours of sleep daily.

Shop around, considering what really matters FOR YOU!

While I love the quote ‘Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom’ by George Washington Carver, this wonderful metaphor should not keep you under illusions – education is still a business. Even those universities who keep their MBA courses competitively priced and whose management and professors truly care about their students, still need to make money.

And if you look at that process as a customer in the first place, you will start understanding what is it that you want to get from it.

Is it a supercool name on your resume?

A network you can tap into to scale your business up?

A boost for your career at an enterprise where people without an ‘MBA’ after their name are not up for a promotion?

A UK degree that you can get in the comfort of your own home and without sacrificing your job and your pay?

There is no right or wrong answer here. There are answers that work or do not work FOR YOU.

Read all the materials you get very carefully! (I mean it)

One of the many things I like about the British culture in work and studying surroundings is the tendency to overexplain. People come to Britain from all over the world, so you cannot assume they will think the same way you do or that something that is obvious to you would be just as obvious for someone with a completely different background.

This is why it is so important not to assume and to focus on reading any materials you get. Any assignment description, any guidance on how to use learning materials, any induction texts and videos. They might sound a bit on the nose sometimes, but do yourself a favour and keep watching them. When you start digging through those materials, you don’t want to find yourself in a situation when you are clueless of what is expected from you.

And if you still didn’t get it…

Ask questions. LOADS of questions

Figure out what sort of questions should be addressed to your tutor, your student support team, the IT team or the library service – and ask whenever you are in doubt. Or even if you are in doubt as to whether you should be in doubt.

If this is your first time studying in the UK, check with your former compatriots

Reading stories of Belarusians studying in the UK was surprisingly informative and helpful. The reason I recommend sticking with your former compatriots on this subject is that they have the same base context and the same original experience of studying in your native country – and they are the best people to highlight gaps that would be specific to you. As a Belarusian, I might take for granted something that could shock, say, a person from Argentina – and vice versa. If you share a context with someone, chances are, you both will be puzzled by the same things.

So what’s next?

We are very lucky to live in the 21^st century for many reasons, one of which is the variety of social lifts and opportunities. Yes, we are still not there yet in terms of equal access to opportunities, but at least we have it better than the previous generations, whose only social lift was a ‘proper marriage’. Nowadays, we also have hard work, education and many more.

The downside of it is that you don’t exactly know how your path to success is going to look like. Unlike our parents, for whom getting one degree in their early 20s and then working for the same company for decades was the definition of success, we don’t really get such a clear and fixed plan.

Getting an MBA may or may not lead me to something greater than I have ever envisaged for myself. But for now, I am focusing on the journey rather than the destination. It already expands my horizons, brings me out of my IT bubble and introduces me to people and industries I would not have gotten to know otherwise.

I am yet to find out if I ever get to put those three letters – MBA – after my name. One thing is certain, though: at least it’s not boring.