What I learned during my MBA

q Reverend TC returns to the TBW for one final sermon

By Vince Cavasin, Prodigal TBW Columnist

FEAR NOT, FAITHFUL READERS! The technocrat has not abandoned you! Rather, he has been on exchange in Montreal, observing life and working quietly on this, his final farewell, his swansong, his (as one might say in French-speaking Canada) pièce de résistance!

It has been a curious semester, full of perspectives both painful and sweet; in the final analysis, for me, anyway, it’s been a fitting end to the long, strange trip we embarked upon almost two years ago. In this final column I want to share some of the more important things I’ll be taking away from bschool, in hopes that maybe I’m not the only one who smirks at the trivialness of financial statement analysis and the 3Cs in the grand scheme of things.

(You didn’t actually think this column was going to have anything to do with technology, did you?)

Anyway, here’s what I learned during my MBA.

Business school isn’t about finance or marketing or economics or management or any teachable technical skill; it’s about learning to work with people to make things that seem impossible happen. It’s about learning from those people how to broaden your own problem solving skills, to think more creatively, to be able to meet any challenge alone or as part of a team. Sometimes it’s about learning to meet a challenge that is the team.

Bschool leaves (purposely or as an oversight, I’m not sure) unmentioned some of the most important lessons we as future leaders need to learn. The explicit technical lessons and the implicit teamwork and problem solving lessons are important but their importance pales in comparison to the ethical truths that all leaders need to figure out for themselves. The definition of integrity is the subject of endless debate among philosophers, but ultimately what you believe isn’t nearly as important as the consistency and conviction with which you believe it--because if you attain true consistency and conviction in your beliefs, they will be right.

And along with all these implicit and elusive bschool lessons are those that sometimes seem to be contradicted by the MBA’s constant full-speed-ahead pace: the lessons learned from time wasted. For me, these MBA lessons came while lazily sipping wine at a sunny sidewalk cafe in Montmartre while the rest of Paris beckoned, unexplored; while wandering into the Leeds Gallery during my last day on UT’s campus while boxes sat in my apartment unpacked; while pausing at Montréal’s Avenue du Musée stairs late one drunken night to look out over the metropolis in half scale that I hardly got to know during my four months here.

I learned during my MBA that good friends are rare, and there’s something about knowing deep down inside that you have them that is inspiring at the darkest, most horrible moments. When you need them, good friends show up. They call. They write. Good friends are constant, they never go away, even if you’re out of touch for a while. But most important, good friends accept you when you’re your most twisted self with a shake of the head and a smile.

My MBA taught me that money definitely kicks ass, and lots of money kicks lots of ass--but also that life is about more than kicking ass. There are as many ways to define and find "purpose" and "meaning" in life as there are lives that possess them; the most important thing is not necessarily achieving them, it’s figuring out what they are for you and developing a life philosophy that allows you to find peace in your pursuit of them. Once you do, the rewards will overwhelm you.

My MBA did not teach me to write research papers and technology columns; I’ve been doing that for 14 years. What I did learn during my MBA that has been infinitely more important is the value of writing for myself, for the sheer therapy of it; chronicling the victories and defeats and depression and joy that unfolded over the most challenging two years of my life, in prose, in poetry, in rambling letters to friends and to me, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning when I should have been studying something academic. I hope those of you who haven’t done this give it a try some time; it can change your life.

Finally, these last two years have taught me that I am an optimist. It’s something I’ve never really thought much about before, and I imagine people would generally classify me, based on appearances, as a pessimist. But I think it’s a matter of definition: most people would define an optimist as someone who thinks that things are going to get better, or at least remain good, in the future. Like, "I will meet Ms. Right" or "I will enjoy my new consulting job, or at least the $100k per year that it pays me." But I don’t believe that this is the right way to look at it; I think I’m an optimist not so much because the mechanical aspects of my life will make me happier some time period from now, but because I know that the mechanical aspects of my life will change and evolve--for better or worse--over time, constantly, as long as I live, and that is fundamentally a good thing. Regardless of the positiveness or negativeness of individual events, I embrace the change that I know awaits me. Yeah, I’m an optimist.

So long, UT. May your lessons serve future graduates as well as I know they’ll serve me. u

Vince Cavasin, ’99, is an aspiring Francophone who can conjugate the verb être in three tenses, but is still often misunderstood by store clerks when he politely asks "parlez-vous anglais?"