Yowza… Duke
I was just talking to someone about this the other day.
I think this was the first time I really realized how awkwardly out of place I was in my life. I know it was a great opportunity, and it did give me the experience of a lifetime, bit it was here that I noticed how different I was.
How much I didn’t fit socially into this paradigm of “business.”
There was an obsession throughout with the ranking of our program. As a group, we were spoken to about it several times. The questions had come up enough that it was necessary to address us as a whole.
And you know, I couldn’t have cared less what our ranking was.
I knew the experience was far beyond any other program available. And indeed, part of why our ranking was so illusive was because there was nothing to rank us against.
In that time, no school offered a program like the Cross Continent MBA.
During the course of study, at about the midpoint, a professor of ours decided to use our ages as part of a class demonstration.
It was then that it became widely known a 23-year-old student was part of the cohort.
Actually, there were two of us.
Later in that residency a group of students went out for dinner together. There was a birthday celebration to be had; someone was turning 30. Just after he reveled the milestone birthday, the next words from his mouth were, “Yeah, and whoever that fucking 23-year-old is in our program…….”
He was stopped by the person sitting across the table from him who said, “You’re sitting next to that fucking 23-year-old.”
This was my first real encounter with this person. The next one would be when he spilled his drink on me.
Months later, I’d have someone sit in front of me this time, and tell me I was brining down the average age for the program, a critical metric in how school rankings overall are calculated.
I was so young. I was so insecure. These attitudes towards me threw me for a loop.
I couldn’t see how small spirited these comments were.
It crushed me.
And now, as I approach my own 30th birthday, I can see so very clearly how truly amazing it was for me to be traveling the world and learning about how people different than us conduct themselves in a business interaction.
I was ahead of my time, and I spent a lot of these days listening and following, something I had Not done much of until then.
And I can see where I was frozen, where I allowed for my own internal struggles - mirrored back to me through my peers - to get in the way of my excellence, and where these same feelings kept me from standing up for myself.
I wish I had believed in how much I had to offer, how valuable my experiences indeed were.
I remember loving the class everyone hated enough to try to get it removed from the curriculum.
This is one of those experiences that is still teaching me about myself.
And I’m grateful it happened. And I’m grateful for the people who made it possible.
And I'm grateful for the classmate who told me I was immature.
It was the best feedback I've ever been given.
I received deep blessings in being able to attend that program. It’s one of those moments of my life that I feel I snuck into, or even stole, like it wasn’t really mine to have.
But then I think how all the best moments of my life are this way, moments I feel unworthy of, moments of pure, radiant grace.
All my love,
Nat