rhyme wrote:
johnnyx9 wrote:
Funny you posted that link Kidderek, that BW thread is actually the exact thing that made me start this thread.
Interesting that there are four people already w/ greater than 3 hour relationship commutes. I may end up in a situation like that and if I do I'm not looking forward to making choices like, "Do I go on a spring break w/ my girlfriend and pass up a spring break w/ classmates?" Seems like there will be a lot of decisions where I'll have to balance quality time w/ girlfriend, and seriously getting to know my classmates and really developing a network.
Yea, I'm in that boat too - there is no question that Grad school + marriage is going to be an interesting and rather incompatible mix. We've already had some tension over random walk - "Why do you need to go?"... "It's a networking opportunity" ... "You'll meet peopel in class...." etc. I've pretty much accepted that I wont be able to do everything I want to do, and I'll have to engage in some form of triage. I'll be a part of TNDCs every week I'm sure, but I probably wont get to do the ski trip or the spring break trips.
On the other hand, if other couples there want to do them too, it seems feasible that we all go as a group. It's funny this comes up though as a few days ago I was talking to a GSB student and when I mentioned I was getting married she suddenly changed : "Oh, well then we wont eb hanging otu much. IT's going to be hard for you." I ask her "How do you mean?" and she replies: "Well, grad school is set up for singles... you are going to miss out on a lot." (By now I was getting angry - I already hate the feeling of maybe missing out on anything - and here is this girl telling me that my grad school experience is basically goign to suck compared to everyone else) ... it went on like that ... "Well, just be careful. Most people cheat on ttheir SO's" bah.
I'm guessing that the woman you were speaking with was extrapolating way too much from her individual experience. Just looking at the voting in this thread it looks like plenty of people are showing up with SO's, and I know people in b-school that are married and having a blast with school. One of my friends brings her husband to all her HBS events and he takes advantage of the networking too.
Also, having sat in on many classes at the schools I've applied to, I know b-schools aren't exactly overflowing with beauty queens and abercrombie guy models, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on some awesome two-year orgy.
I mean as awesome as some of these school trips sound, when you go to a school's web page and look at student-posted pictures they'll have like eight people in School X sweatshirts posing in front of the Eiffel Tower and half of them look like Bill Gates with oversized pleated khakis and big white sneakers, not exactly the type of crew I would normally choose for a vacation.
Okay, so my post is getting petty and superficial, but I guess what I'm getting at here is that I'll be disappointed to not make the most out of my networking opportunities by travelling and hanging out with my classmates all the time, but at the end of the day I'd rather chill on a beach in Spain with my girlfriend anyway so it won't be that big of a deal having to work on that balance.