Sitting in the business school amphitheatre, I can feel my heart rate speeding up. I look towards the door and contemplate a trip to the restroom to ease my anxiety.
Instead, I force myself to sit and breathe.
This is how I felt in every one of the hundreds of hours of business school. Despite preparation, familiar anxiety, beginning with my heart rate speeding up would inevitably creep in.
Listening to one of the other students reply to a question about the case study of the day, the anxiety would ratchet up.
“That’s not what I was going to say. Maybe I am wrong.”
At this point, I would start madly flipping through the case study, reviewing highlighted markings and looking for a gem of insight.
God help me if this was the point at which I was cold-called for an opinion or response.
Looking back over many years and a successful career in Management Consulting, the holy grail career after business school, gives me mixed feelings:
- pride for that girl, who made it into business school as a nurse and, as I now know, belonged there
- sadness that she felt her opinion was not as valid as the other students in the class, despite likely having prepared more