Anne Turchi: A Jump Into B-School (University of Washington)
"I'm taking this leap because I am shocked and amazed at the impact and growth that private enterprise has had on our culture, and I'm angry that the non-profit and public sector hasn't kept up."
My first risk was even considering business school at all. Six years ago I was an arty smarty undergraduate at Emory University with a mild contempt for our campus business school: a brand-new monstrosity that cast a long shadow over the adjacent rickety theater building I liked to frequent. I stayed far away from this long shadow, with its rumored remote-control mini-blinds, three-day weekends, and free keg parties. Not my thing.
After graduating, I entered a career I perceived to be on the opposite end, first as a social worker and later as a program director for a large non-profit (YMCA). I began to realize that maybe the public and private sectors weren't as different as I'd thought. I noticed the people I worked with were all, like myself, more passionate about the "cause" than about creating organizations that could serve their missions efficiently. Pretty soon I began to think that maybe, just maybe, business-trained folks might be able to deliver some valuable benefits to the non-profit world.
When I was admitted to the University of Washington, I took another risk and posted a message on the University of Washington's New Students' Discussion Board, my first experience participating in such a high-tech instant friendship tool. I tried hard to sound friendly and comfortable. Here's what I wrote:
Hi! I look forward to meeting everyone in a few weeks at Preview Day. I've spent the last several years working to develop arts and humanities programming within non-profit organizations. The next two years will provide me with a unique set of skills for this type of work. I have several friends who are currently in MBA programs; the more I hear about the good work that they're doing, the more excited I become.
I'm also a jogger, a volleyball player and a writer.
I live about 2 1/2 hours south of Seattle in Camas, WA. I'll be leaving behind my fianc? Marty, my dog, Huckleberry Finn, and my cat, Ira Glass, while I'm in school.
When I hit "send," my message did not fall in line with all of the other new MBA introductions. Instead, it created its own main category. The topics that people could now begin discussing included, "How to Get Your International Student Visa," "How to Apply for Financial Aid," "Meet your Future Classmates," and "hi" by Anne Turchi.
Because of this misunderstanding between the discussion board and me, I had no other choice but to "lose" my nametag when Preview Day finally arrived. No sense advertising the fact that I was the idiot who didn't know how to use a discussion board.
Preview Day was my first introduction to The Secret Language of Business School. People eagerly told me that they were involved in "programming" this and "supply chain" that, to which I just smiled and tried not to look confused. I'm in programming too: developing arts, literacy, and family programming for low-income kids. Every time someone said "supply chain," I imagined a person building a chain of linked paintbrushes, modeling clay, and other common supplies I purchase for my programs. Halfway through the day, I stopped referring to my field as "programming." I did this because my human services lingo was far outnumbered by computer geek lingo, and because the combination of "programming" definitions and contexts was starting to freak me out.
Preview Day did provide me with some clarity and insight into business school. Our sample class, current student panels, and campus tour led me to some general business school knowledge:
1. Economists are the poets and philosophers of the business world. While other people are running around determining how to make things more efficient, cutting jobs or programming computers, economists are saying Yogi Berra-like things such as this: "When it can no longer continue, it will end." In fact, all of economic theory (that I know so far, after one sample class) relies on the theory that things are exactly as they should be.
That's not to say that I agree with this worldview. My work with recent immigrants, teen parents, and homeless families has given me a slightly different take on positive vs. normative economics. What about things that should not continue, but will until we force change? I imagine myself with a group of economists, sitting in a coffeehouse, drinking lattes and discussing economics. I'm wearing my black poet's beret and smoking a pipe, catching looks of contempt from the humanities graduate students sitting one table over.
2. The rumors are true. Business schools do buy their students alcohol every other week. At least mine does. I think this is to prepare us for the inequality that exists in the world: our future businessmen and women can get the free stuff; theater and philosophy graduate students can pay for their own booze, even though they'll probably need more of it. Better to accept this now.
3. Business school will help me open as many doors as I choose. The University of Washington provides countless opportunities for its students, but the trick to a great experience will be jumping in, taking risks, and trying everything once. W.H. Auden wrote:
The sense of danger must not disappear
The way is certainly both short and steep.
However gradual it looks from here
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
I'm taking this leap because I am shocked and amazed at the impact and growth that private enterprise has had on our culture, and I'm angry that the non-profit and public sector hasn't kept up. I want to learn the secrets of finance that the financial superpowers use to stay superpowerful. I want to learn the tricks of marketing that have children washing their ADHD medication down with 64-ounce Cokes. I want to learn to plan the way a private business plans and structures, and take this knowledge back to the non-profit world so organizations I serve have a fighting chance to affect our culture in equally positive ways.
I have worked in non-profits where the executive directors decide on budget expenditures with, I kid you not, crystals and fairy dust. I've attended meetings where employees literally wrote their frustrations down on paper and buried them in a pile of sand in the center of the circle. So they could stop being frustrated. If I chose to work instead of entering a full-time MBA program, chances are that I would attain the same level of position within the nonp-profit world, but what difference would I have made? Wouldn't I just be operating the way I was programmed?
This September, I pack my bags and enter a new world. When I get there, I suspect I'll realize that it wasn't as different as I thought and I'll grow less Pollyannaish. I'll probably learn that the tricks and secrets I was looking for don't exist in the business world either: it has no more magical problem-solving fairy dust than the non-profit sector has. Discovering new solutions to old problems will take faith, hard work, and innovation. I'm psyched to give it a shot.
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原文引自：
https://forum.chasedream.com/dispbbs.asp?boardID=13&ID=135298
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