Social Struggles of an MBA

Balancing school, work, social life, and family

An MBA is a huge time investment — earning this degree will take up a lot of your time. In order to succeed, you’ll have to develop some serious time management skills. This can come as a huge struggle at first, especially to folks in part-time MBA programs who are working and taking class at the same time. The challenge doubles if you also happen to have a family to take care of and spend quality time with.

Sameer Saran of TopMBA recently outlined Ten Time Management Techniques for part-time MBAs. They include:

Write it down: There are tons of things to do as a part-time MBA, meetings to attend and small, easily-missed requests or tasks. So, in order to stay on top, write down each and every task that needs your attention. Use a tool like Google Keep  to help you.

Prioritize, as much as possible: The management side of time management is that not everything needs your attention right now –so, prioritize. Not just in your head, order the tasks in your list. Again use tools to help you with this.

Don’t do what is not important: Don’t try to do everything. You have goals and targets to meet for your MBA, so focus. Don’t waste time doing what is clearly not going to help you reach your goals.

Don’t overdo it: Only put in the effort needed, not more. Your time can be used more productively elsewhere. At the beginning of my career, I used to get frustrated after spending days on a presentation or document that was meant to show technical data but nobody really cared if the left side margin was a little more than the right side margin on the page.

Relax, take a break when not at your peak: The most important of my time management techniques in my point of view. If you’re tired or stressed out, it’s hard to be productive. So, take a break from working and studying, and do something fun, engage in some kind of sport and recharge your batteries before getting back to action. You’ll be able to achieve more in the same amount of time.

Finding the right internship

After adjusting your new home, your new schedule, and your new coursework, you can start worrying about other things, namely your future. Alright, I kid, I kid. Don’t get too stressed out about it, but an MBA internship is a huge point of stress for business school students.

As we’ve stated in previous articles, internships are the real deal for MBAs — three-month trial runs for companies where graduate students gain real-world experience by working on major projects with paid professionals in actual industries.

Succeed in your internship responsibilities, projects and goals, and there’s a good chance you’ll be rewarded with a job. According to quintcareers.com, several studies show that organizations that offer MBA internships strongly prefer hiring their interns.

One study that found that not only did employers say they hired more than half of their MBA interns, but they also paid those they hired a higher salary than other new hires. Another study of employers who offer MBA internships found that almost three-quarters said they first interview previous MBA interns for new positions before opening the position to other candidates. A third study of MBA candidates found that almost 90 percent of interns were offered full-time positions with their employers, further stating that the internship helped them make key networking contacts and find a mentor.

If you’re stressed out about the prospects of you MBA internship, check out our “Guide to MBA Internships” for more insight. So while MBAs face many social struggles, the benefits of the life-long friends you’ll meet and the professional network you’ll create makes pursuing the degree a worth while (and valuable) decision to make.

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