Vitamin MBA – Managing Expectations
Vitamin MBA is my attempt to help applicants work through road blocks to success that may include self-doubt, anxiety, procrastination and generally feeling overwhelmed by this process. I now present you with a dose of “Vitamin MBA”:
Happy Bunny recently wrote about extreme frustration with the essays. I have little doubt that these thoughts and feelings resonated with many of you out there. One thing that I have found helpful when trying to manage through frustration, is setting appropriate expectations for this process. If you expect to set aside a Saturday afternoon and whip out a cool set of drafts, you are bound to wind up perplexed. If you you expect that with focus and preparation, the process will proceed smoothly, you will certainly end up frustrated. This is a truly challenging, often frustrating, anxiety provoking process that does not have a clean, clear path. You need to understand that you will go through many iterations, you will rip up many drafts, you will revise and back track and perhaps spend days working a lot and producing little. You should know and believe that at the end of the process you will end up with something great. However, absolutely exect it to be an arduous process, or you will be setting yourself up for failure. Sometimes preparing yourself for hardship makes the actual hardship easier. If you gear yourself up for all of the hard work, you will probably be driven to work harder and be less upset when hard work does not always bring the immediate results you were hoping for. Hang in there – you WILL get it done!
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