The Urbane Homestead

Nobody cares except your mother

I've now started my very last semester of business school. From here on in, only easy, fun classes (i.e., nothing involving statistics or the time value of money). Surprisingly, I've realized recently that I've learned a lot in the MBA program. It's surprising mostly because I'm a big snob and I expected the program to consist of pI've now started my very last semester of business school. From here on in, only easy, fun classes (i.e., nothing involving statistics or the time value of money). Surprisingly, I've realized recently that I've learned a lot in the MBA program. It's surprising mostly because I'm a big snob and I expected the program to consist of practical knowledge that anyone could learn on their own, if they took the time to do it. That's true, of course: it's true of any kind of professional school, which, historically, developed in part as a substitute for life experience in the field. On the other hand, it finally dawned on me that academic graduate school is also a substitute for life experience in the field, but there the experience consists mostly of reading. Nevertheless, as I approach graduation, I realize I've learned to look at things in a new way, which is the real point and a good thing.

But that's not my point here. Throughout the program, many of my instructors have been in my age range. This is not surprising since I am currently in my peak working years and should also be at the peak of my career, like my instructors. I'm usually somewhat older than most, although not all, the other students, although, thanks to a good hair stylist, sun block, and good genes, there is usually someone who looks older than me in each class.

Nevertheless, it never fails: the instructor at some point makes a comment about how young the students are. Usually it's couched in the "I'm a lot older than you...." or "You're too young to remember...." reference to something from the 80's. Please, old instructors! Turn up your hearing aids and let me tell you a thing or two! There are many reasons that this is a really tedious thing to say and is bound to lose the attention of your audience, whatever their average age may be.

Cultural references are not necessarily age-specific. My instructor the other night didn't get a half an hour into his lecture before he brought up the movie "The Paper Chase," which he then qualified with "You are all too young to have seen it."  Whether or not many the students in the room were too young to have seen the movie in a first-run theater, there's incredible news: movies are now recorded and can be seen again and again, even after the writers and actors and director are all crumbled into dust!

But more than that, there's something fundamentally demeaning about assuming that people are younger than you. The implicit message is that there is something that the younger audience simply will not understand until they are told, or until they experience it themselves. That may be true, but it isn't any truer than the fact that there are things about being a woman, or a Jew, or a midwesterner that those who aren't in that group won't understand until they're told—and these are observations we would be very unlikely to make so casually.

Moreover, we can't know what someone else's experience of life is. We can't know how much or how little someone has learned in the time they've been alive. We all know people in their teens who seem unusually wise, because they've spent their time observing and absorbing. And we all know boring and shallow people who have spent their time on earth doing pretty much nothing.

I think people make comments like "You're too young..." or "I'm a lot older than you, so..." because they are having trouble wrapping their mind around the fact that every day they are aging and moving closer to death and farther from new possibilities. They feel surprised that they are as old as they are. It seems so sudden. Where did all that time go? Everyone seems to feel this way. I can't believe I'm middle-aged. My parents can't believe they're almost 70. My 6th grade friend can't believe he's in middle school already. What! 18/30/50/95 already! It seems like just yesterday I was....

Everyone on earth is subject to the passage of time and is taken aback at how suddenly they've gotten older than they used to be. That's why no one really cares how old anyone else feels. Surprise! We are all only worried about ourselves, not about you. "You're to young to remember...." is never, ever going to be interesting as a rhetorical device. Please leave your fear of death and regret about lost possibilities back in your office, and find something more engaging to talk about.

More good news

I  was able to actually answer all 40 questions on my statistics final—and even the guesses were educated ones! And as of now, the probability that I will ever remember a single statistics calculation is: zero.

Proof of the malicious intent of the cosmos

I can only conclude that the following activities are cruel and elaborate practical jokes, that prove the existence of an impish evil that lives only to make us doubt our sense of competence:

1. Statistics. "And then, take the square root of the hypotenuse of your left elbow, divide it by the number of  original colonies, find the result on the table on page 1,378 ('But the book only has 1,249 pages!'), and add it to the results of your advertising revenue calculations from last week. Voila!"

2. Yoga. "Now twist to the right side, slide your left hip bone forward and your calf muscle up, and straighten your right arm above your head, while you grasp your big toe and pull. Meanwhile, make the top of your head as flat as you can, drop your eyeballs to the back of your head, and remember to relax."

And there are more. Why do I subject myself to this? If it builds character, I will surely have the Charles Atlas, the Rolls Royce, the Grand Canyon of characters by the end of April.

I wish it really had been a dream

I'm enrolled in the U-M part-time MBA program, for some reason. I'm about halfway through; only a couple more years to go. I'm actually really enjoying the program. At home or at work, everything I do matters to someone else; when I'm sitting in class, the only person I'm responsible for is me. I can be whatever I want—even mediocre. I've learned to accept the peculiarity of finding an MBA program a great way to relax. And, also, this is such a different way of looking at the world from anything I've studied before: learning how accounting works is downright exotic.

My background in quantitative studies is weak and thin, in addition to being far in the past. I didn't expect to do very well in my Statistics class. Imagine my surprise when I got back a homework exercise with a big red 100 on the top (it's on the refrigerator now, of course), followed by a 95, and a 98! I must be a secret Statistics genius, so secret even I didn't know!

The other shoe dropped last night at the midterm exam. It went like a dream—one of those nightmares where you're taking a test in a class you never went to and didn't even know you were enrolled in, plus you're in your underwear. I opened the test booklet and three hours of story problems swam before my eyes. I took a deep breath and started going through it in a methodical way (in fact, I tried a few different methods), but the questions never turned into English. I was consoled by the observation that no one else seemed to be any happier than I was, and also by realizing that, even if I'm not learning Statistics, I'm learning a very important virtue: humility.