Living in "the box"

BBAs view the world in a way that differs from other students. It's not good or bad per se but it leads to certain outcomes that the BBAs, their professors, and others may not foresee. In this article I will be broadly characterizing and even drawing a caricature of BBAs; it won't be wholly correct but I am attempting to highlight how the behavior of BBAs differ from other students in the School.

While attending the Ross School, a standard BBA sees his or her life as a set of exclusive "boxes":

Anything that is in one box is generally unrelated to and even interferes with anything that is in another box. What does this tell us?

• Any time spent at Ross-sponsored events interferes with activities related to getting a job. Since students see job-related activities as important (no matter how mundane), they will not go to the event except in the most exceptional circumstances.
• What is learned in a class is not readily transferred to club related activities. This is because classes form their own self-contained world.
• What is said in a business class has little effect on what other events you might go to. Again, this results from classes forming in their own self-contained world.
• BBAs see their education as having two parts, the business part and the LS&A part.
• BBAs don't see social activities and school events as being related either to their ability to get a job or to their career.

A belief that is not represented in the above graphic is that the business classes are the most important activities in the student's life. Activities perceived as being unrelated to business classes are allocated far less time than others. However, for BBAs the "Other obligations" box does not shrink very much since the student views this time as inviolable. Further, the "Getting a job" box can grow nearly without bounds during the student's time here. Combine all of these observations and you get the result that time for Ross events and LS&A classes can shrink to mere shadows of themselves if growth of the others is left unchecked.

Let's contrast this with how MBAs seemingly view their lives:

In their world many more activities are directly related to their business education: classes, clubs, events, networking, and getting a job are all fairly closely related to each other.

• Students believe that information that is learned in one is, and should be, fairly closely related to each other. This means that the skills and knowledge learned in class should be nearly directly transferrable to what the student thinks they will do in their job.
• Students are more likely to go to business school sponsored events since these are closely related, and should be, to their classes and to getting a job.
• Students go to classes and participate in clubs because they think that these activities will affect their ability to get jobs.
• Students spend lots of time networking with other students (in clubs, during events, in class-related activities) because they believe that this will help them get a job.

The above descriptions are not perfect, but they should help guide the thinking of any faculty teaching a class or anyone putting on an event. Further, I hope that BBAs reflect on the above description and their own actions so that they are aware of the choices they make and their underlying assumptions. I am not hoping for a change in those actions; I just want the students to realize what they are doing and to end up making the choice that they are comfortable with and that is best for them in the long run.