Impressions vs. reality - The Darden experience

As I enter into the fourth week of the MBA program at Darden, I wonder how has the experience has been so far. Before coming to Darden, I had talked to a number of current/ex. students about their experiences... how things work at Darden etc. Therefore, I came to Darden with a fair amount of preconceived ideas/expectations.

While it is good to find what you expected, it is actually very interesting to find things that you didn't think of or you thought will be different. No matter how much you pre-think about what all challenges you might face in a new place, especially an MBA school, you'll always miss out on the granularity of how things might turn out. This goes back to an interesting story that one of my classmates told us about the time he went for scubadiving for the first time. Before taking the plunge in the water, he used to think that scubadiving should not be that big a challenge. But when he got to know on the spot that he had to breathe the air out of his lungs to go down into water, it presented several complicated challenges to him. Moral of the story - In life, one always comes across challenges when doing something new but you got to breathe the air out of your lungs and take the plunge. What a strong message!! I have been blown away by this.

Anyways, for me there have been several good and not so good surprises. Personally, I didn't realize what kind of challenges the case study method would exactly present. There are two aspects to it that I didn't think a lot about before coming to Darden. First, being an international student, it gets really hard to contribute to some of the subjective/nebulous discussions in the class. Second, having no background in a subject (e.g. Accounting) doesn't help you a lot in getting those brownie points in class participation.

So, I'm hanging in there. Trying my best. Need to learn so much. In the first few days, it was disheartening if a class passed when I couldn't contribute something. On such days while on my way back home, I would curse myself for not thinking fast enough or not raising my hand or not being confident enough. But eventually I realized that I need to look at the positive aspect of it. The days when I cant contribute are obviously the days that I learn the most. I know it doesn't help my Class Participation points but seriously, I mean seriously - is life only about it? I think learning is much more important to me right now than proving that I know stuff. Atleast thats one of the objective I set for myself before coming to Darden.

All other things are just rolling fine. It just takes someone coming from India to get accustomed to Baseball, Foodtball, Softball and the endless list of games and their metaphors being used all the time. Some Darden specific terms - "in the box" and "networking" make to your ears a gazillion times during the first few weeks. I am surprised to see how much support Darden provides to International students. There are just tonnes of resources to help International students. Its amazing.

Well, the exams are around the corner. Maybe I wont get a homerun on that but I am just ready to punt it in the fourth down. I guess that will make sense to y'all. :)