Building Relationships In Boston

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We bonded over lunches, dinners, a whitewater rafting trip, a softball win against the partners, and our similar tendencies toward extremes: work hard, play hard. We shared tips, shortcuts, and insights we gathered from our case teams. We asked one another the silly things we didn't want to admit to not knowing. And, we leaned on each other for support and suggestions as we navigated through our casework, and the summer.

As the weeks rolled on, I started to get the hang of things and I began to feel like I was making progress (even if it was only a slow crawl) along the learning curve. By the end of the summer, with the help of my case team leader, I got the hang of the way the firm approaches cases, created slides that were presented to our client's board of directors, learned some shortcut keys on our custom software, and even learned some of the firm lingo.

Written in the Stars

My case team provided endless opportunities to push toward an answer, learn from one another, think through the outcomes of different approaches, challenge one another's hypotheses, pitch a hand when someone was being slammed, laugh at each others' quirks, and most important, to purchase swag (to celebrate team members' weddings, babies, and birthdays). Luckily, my case presented only limited opportunity—just two overnights in 10 weeks—to travel.

Overall, I really enjoyed my summer. The program was incredibly well-structured so that we got a view for the different industry specializations of the firm, interacted with people at different levels (from associate consultant intern to partner), and had the opportunity to share and learn from the experiences of our fellow summer classmates. There were formal feedback, review, and mentoring processes, each of which was logical, thoughtful, and taken incredibly seriously.

After my summer experience, which in many ways seems to have been written in the stars, I'm looking forward to returning full-time next fall. However, in the meantime, I want to enjoy my second year of business school. Something tells me it's going to be a lot less stressful than the first. I hope I'll have the wisdom to appreciate it.

Ellyn Charters is a member of the University of Chicago's MBA Class of 2010

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