Fellow Classmates

The Game: Avoiding Enemies

It's prtty simple: you want to be successful, but you risk alienating others. What do you do?

At the risk of using trite analogies, business school is a Game. Whether you wish to call it a rat race or snakes and ladders, you will encounter more challenges and injustice than you would like to. But as you can imagine, life is unfair so get used to it.

What school does is teach you different tools that you can use once you graduate. It is thus in your interest to pick up complementary tools. These tools come in the shape of classes, theories and contacts. Most of these may become obsolete by graduation day, so make sure that you can detach yourself from them.

Friends may become foes, enemies may turn into allies, the key is being able to judge characters and personality traits. The same way that you must be able to detach yourself from redundant tools, you just may have to detach yourself from the people you befriend.

Sad, but true.