Episode 4: The school part of business school
On the death of intellectual curiosity, the purpose of education and the meaning of transferable skills.
Firstly, some context on Wharton's grade non-disclosure policy. The "policy" is not actually codified within the student body at Wharton, but instead is a shared contract that our peers sign-off on upholding. This means that although the school is legally required to issue us grades, we create a shared culture of not talking about them and we can choose to point to the culture if external sources, such as employers or parents or whoever, asks about your grades.
A uniquely Wharton experience is when a man tried to impress me with his GMAT score on the first date. He scored a 780 (which corresponds to the 99th percentile), a number that I cannot believe to be true due to every consecutive lack of critical reasoning he displayed after.
Regardless, grades predominantly matter in the intention of whether you want to merit academic scholarships and make money as a teaching assistant for the course. The general intent of the grade non-disclosure policy is benevolent: by not making grades the primary source of competition, students can stretch themselves into more productive learning experiences and discussions. And what is business school culture without seeing a gift as a source to exploit?
In my one complete academic year of experience, I can safely report that a rare proportion of people are genuinely interested in learning something new, particularly through the channel of school. This is very confusing to me because fundamentally, our tuition dollars are meant to sponsor the academic experience. Not only do people spend nearly 250K on school, but they prioritize the other experiences (mainly travel and aggressive hedonism), which can only drive the cost of education up.
One of my most positive experiences has been engaging with the faculty and with the academic resources of this school. At an institution like Wharton where the professors are forced into lecturing you from 08:30AM until 5:30PM in 90 minute intervals, I'm sure that these professors would rather spend their time doing their industry research or contributing to their entrepreneurial goals or talking to students who actually participate and engage with the material. I am notoriously one of those students with a psychological need to fulfill by being a "pleasure to have in class", because I've been taught to cultivate empathy for lecturers.
The common pattern within my classmates is to ride on the coattails of "fluffy" and easy classes, because why endure technical rigor for a letter on a transcript that nobody technically cares for? Yet it is precisely this drive for an "easier" academic experience that is simultaneously contributing to the slow death of intellectual curiosity. By choosing to only engage in information that's easy to understand, or that's something we're already very familiar with, or easy to test-on, I think we're losing a capacity for intellectual challenge. If we lost the capacity for intellectual challenge, then what are we actually learning about becoming future leaders? And if so, are we even being coached into becoming future leaders or is Wharton just pushing out yet another crop of wannabe "hassled executives who can't tolerate a press conference"?
It takes a certain level of existential honesty for the type A classmates of mine to accept that the incredible accomplishments that have coasted them to the school thus far will not continue out into the world if we don't try to actually invite and engage with more challenge. A classmate of mine once told me that my choice in doing three majors and an integrated product design program (which spans Wharton, Penn Engineering and Penn Design) was an exercise in masochism. She believes that the "Wharton name alone will open so many doors," and I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that we still exist in a world where such privilege can be wielded without proof.
Sure the Wharton name opens doors, but is it really going to get you through them? As someone with rampant imposter syndrome, I live in the fear of being exposed as an empty charlatan. And yet, this strategy seems to double down on it. I don't understand what these people mean. In what spaces of life and industry can you come from where the name alone is so powerful (and even if that name were Harvard Business School or any other), that you would not have to back up the talk with tangible outcomes and proof? There's perhaps some commentary to be made on how these predominantly white male-dominated spaces (finance, tech, "business", Ivy League institutions) have operated without proof of success or reliability for many years, which is all the more why I (who don't fit those demographics) feel the pressure to have to show something for my time here. Many of my classmates at the end of year 1 are asking what was it all for, and though most can claim growth in some way, there are simply no external markers to show for it. How can growth be real if it's something you just feel inside your head, without even a therapist to witness you in it?
It's especially counterintuitive if you think about how every class at business school is focused around deriving as much value as possible from investments. Wharton is deemed as a premier institution of finance, and specifically one that values "data-driven analyses and outcomes". But also how do you interpret data? What kind of data are people collecting to make the most of their experience here? It's counterintuitive to me that people who are this obsessed with "data" in every other aspect of their life are able to do the calculus that their business school experience is worth it without having something to show for it.
I also believe that individually, we're losing the capacity to have a beginner's mindset if we don't engage with the needlessly difficult stuff. Sure, systems engineering sounds tedious. Learning to code, even for someone who has eight years of coding experience, can be a drag. Even if school problems are "not real problems" or "toy versions" of problems we might encounter in the real world, why not invest the mental reps in practice? Why not actually learn from an environment specifically design for learning? Is that not what the point of school is?
(You know that I've reached the point of existential crisis when everything becomes a rhetorical question.)
I want to close by addressing the counter-argument: yes business school is all about network and community and building relationships. But even relational skills are skills acquired with time and practice and a large history of failure. Things are not meant to be easy or handed to us, and I am very suspicious of when they are. Even this network that we are allegedly building from puking out of each other's yachts and moping over jet lag at black-tie events has to be backed by either technical proficiency or genuine emotional intelligence that connects people. How is the hedonism culture building collaboration?
Maybe the point I need to accept, as indicated by the grade non-disclosure policy, is that without the pressure of the institution enforcing rigor, we have to create the output or application of our time here ourselves. We have to make meaning from the experience ourselves, and I wish I understood or even shared in that blissful model that permits the party-hards of my class to not worry about meaning or output or having "work" to show for their time here.