Did I ever mention that the MBA was like a dream? Well, it seems like I'm finally waking up from the dream. Waking me up? None other than "Training in Miami"...!
Allow me to explain. Training is not taken lightly at Bain. The fact that they flew us all the way to Miami for a week and put us all up at the very expensive Intercontinental (Completely and utterly overrated... some might call it piss poor) shows their commitment to training. We worked for six days straight, usually past dinner. Anyway, with serious training comes serious thoughts.
Many would argue that working for the big banks (sorry, Bear Stearns) and consulting firms is like a continuation of the MBA. Your peers are fellow MBAs from similar programs. The life is sort of un-real with all the money and travel straight out of school. Everybody is smart and you always feel dumb. Speaking of this feeling, a PhD friend of mine tells me that Stanford has sessions to settle the new PhDs down since they always feel dumb among their peers. Point is, you feel dumb when you hang around smart people. Yet I digress: back to the parallels.
Bain training is sort of like brining you back to the MBA. Lots of learning in a very low risk environment. And yet, you are constantly reminded that these are the tools that you will need to be able to do well at Bain. Some may be left behind if the tools are not learned and performance is not good. Clearly, it's not an MBA anymore. This is serious business. The real world has always been harsher than the dream world.
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