Promises to Myself

(page 2 of 2)

Sarah Baranowski
University of Wisconsin-Madison
MBA Class of 2009

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I went into first semester thinking I could put this same skill to work at school. I was wrong, supremely wrong. At school no one cares that you can align priorities with business objectives. (What business objectives?) The pressure to "do it all" is unavoidable. And I am smacked daily by a heavy dose of irony as one of my greatest assets as a leader works against me in a place meant to mold talented, driven people into, well, into leaders.

As I reflect on the first semester and look forward to the next, I know I need to retool my strategy for setting limits. I spent winter break thinking: What were the basic limits that I set in working life? What are the most important things to make room for? As a result of this reflection, I am committing myself to four promises for next semester. These promises may seem small. In fact, they are a shadow of my previous intricate formula for work-life balance. But they are a beginning. I am posting these promises to myself on the refrigerator in my kitchen:

(1) I will do strength training and flexibility exercises for 40 minutes every other day. It's a small but achievable supplement to my daily walking commute to campus. Likewise, I will make time to support my husband's exercise regimen, which fell apart along with mine last semester.

(2) I will take one day each weekend to enjoy time with family and friends and do anything but schoolwork. Exceptions are allowed, but never for more than one weekend in a row.

(3) Most important, I will tuck my kids in at night at least three times each week, because that's inevitably when the big topics get covered. (Mommy, will I die someday? Mommy, how far away is the moon?)

(4) I will let my grades suffer, if necessary, to meet these goals.

Learning Should Be a Pleasure

About halfway through the semester I found myself in an age-old debate with a second-year MBA student. He took the position that academic life is the best life. Why? Because at the end of every semester comes a massive sigh of relief—a sense of total relaxation and rest that he has only experienced as a student. "So in other words," I said, "The removal of pain is pleasure." And he said, "Yes, exactly." And I said, "I guess that's my trouble. I don't agree."

Now, I am reflecting on that conversation. I have to smile and concede that, yes, I have not felt this relaxed in a long time. I am finding pleasure in the small tasks of life—planning my son's birthday party, shoveling snow and breathing in the cold air, even cleaning out the fridge. You name it, I love it. But as I continue to reflect, I must say that I still don't agree with my second-year colleague. More precisely, I mean the entire learning experience can be, and should be, the pleasure.

Quality of learning trumps quantity of coursework any day of the week. That massive sigh of relief at the end of the semester is driven entirely by quantity, but it's the quality of learning that brings us the opportunities to meet the right people and to see better ways of doing business. Those small moments of insight sprinkled generously throughout the semester will bring me back for the next year and a half. Quantity, the staggering workload that students are not in position to question, has nothing to do with it.

Baranowski is an MBA Journal writer for BusinessWeek.com and a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's MBA Class of 2009.