How do you go from this?                 ———>               To this!

                          

Most of us MBAs have started our lovely internships by now. My first day went really well, until the moment when I was formally introduced to my cubicle. Cubes!! Maybe I’ve been in school for too long…but it felt so cold and foreign! I was instantly mortified and disgusted. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked in cubes before, but I’ve never had to directly identify one as my own.

Prior to school, I was a nomad consultant straight out of Undergrad and later worked either at home in my PJs as an independent consultant or in the gym as a trainer. To now formally confront this premium piece of 10×10 real estate that I had worked so hard for, I felt more insecure than relieved.

As MBA interns, we are at a disadvantage because we are hyped up by our prior work experience and the MBA brand, so we’re not able to camouflage ourselves with the Undergrad interns when it comes to performance expectations. I guess it won’t fly either way, since we are branded by this weathered look from the year’s worth of beaten in case studies, which promptly rusted away our oh-once youthful glows.

With one more year of school left and loans to be repaid, it’s no wonder that we put this great sense of pressure on ourselves to “make it or die.” But what really is “making it”? We’ve been taught to identify ourselves and our sense of happiness with labels- adjectives, titles, achievements, credentials, etc. Sadly, many of the labels are transient or meaningless. As I went through my past and present labels and happily assuming my new label from the internship, I wanted to make sure that I don’t become too dependent on them. I make my labels, not the other way around.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that labels serve as tools to help to discover and assess passions in life. If there’s a consistent story coming out of your collection of labels, then you have either found your passion or you are stuck (at simply what you’re good at or comfortable with).