Being a student in the USA is often seen as being an easy road. You have left school and are now essentially extending your educational career, rather than the old-fashioned method of getting a job.
However, being a student in 2022 is in no way easy. In fact, with more people than ever before attending university around the world, being a student is becoming more competitive. You and your classmates will likely be chasing the same jobs and trying to get the best marks on each paper – all while maintaining the external lives you have outside of the course.
Some courses are harder than others, especially those that may require you to work and learn simultaneously. However, you will still need to have the right attitude towards completing your studies. This can be especially challenging right near the end of the school year when you are completing exams or when you are learning via the internet and need to stay on top of your education.
One of the most popular courses online now is the Master of Business Administration – also known as an MBA. This course could help you get a job in human resources for a company, in administration, accounting, and marketing.
Although it’s a handy qualification to have in the world of business, it’s also a very challenging one to complete, and it entails a lot that students undertaking it should be prepared for. With this in mind, this article will look at some of the key challenges that you may come up against when you begin studying for an MBA.
Not Being The Boss
As odd as this sounds, when you begin studying for an MBA, you might have already had a role as a manager at a company. So, it can be tough to step down into being a student, as you may want to maintain being the boss. This could be even more challenging if you are studying for an MBA online in UK universities since you will be working remotely with your classmates and lecturers.
Working on a course remotely or online may also allow you to balance your commitments, such as being a manager of a business part-time, which is handy for those who want to continue working while studying. Still, whatever option you take – be it the conventional in-person college route or the modern online study way – it can be harder to slip out of a business or managerial role and into the one of a learner.
When you begin studying for your MBA, whether it is online or not, aim to be aware of how you are interacting with your classmates, and be mindful that while it is great to be the boss, it is sometimes great to let someone else take the reins, so you can observe leadership in another person and model yourself on it.
Staying Open
This sounds simple, but when you are studying for an MBA, you will need to keep your mind open to new ideas. This may mean working in a way that you are unfamiliar with as part of a group project or trying someone else’s business idea as part of an experiment to see how it works out.
Ultimately, an MBA is a life-changing experience, as it allows you to learn new managerial styles from multiple different people and experiment with other business goals. It can be all too easy for students to shut off and stick to their own ways, but this is rarely productive and can cause you to fail the course. So, to make the most of the experience as a whole, try to stay open to new ideas and viewpoints.
Being Dedicated
Suppose you are looking to undertake an MBA to better prepare yourself for the manager role at a company where you work. You may assume that such a course will be simple and will be able to slot around your other commitments. However, an MBA is not for the faint-hearted and will ensure that you will be busy for the duration of the course.
Even if you know you want the job that is associated with the qualification, it can be exceedingly hard to stay motivated and dedicated – it’s challenging after all, and many students find it hard to remain loyal to the course and achieve the best results they can.
However, there is help available, and any good college or university will offer full student support. If you are having troubles with motivation, don’t be ashamed to open up about them to your professors, tutors, or classmates, and never be worried about asking for help.
Testing Business Ideas
Yep, you will be asked to test business ideas at business school. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but for many students, this can be genuinely intimidating. MBA classrooms or online forums are a great place for business ideas to begin and incubate. But, as part of the course, you will usually need to test out some business ideas of your own.
Where is the concern here? Suppose that your multi-million-dollar business idea falls flat after you test it out. This can be extremely disheartening, especially when another student can make theirs work. This course is about learning to be happy with failure and near misses, which, if you want to set up your own business, is a good thing to learn when there is no money or resources on the line.
It is also a great place to learn and explore where your business idea may have fallen short, so you can access and expand on it. Do not be disheartened; try to see it as part of the course to become a better business person or manager.
Sharing Information
If you already have experience working as a business person and want to undertake an MBA, you will have to be completely comfortable sharing this information with others as part of collaborative work. You will also need to be prepared to answer questions about why you think a potential business failed and how you would prevent it from happening again.
In short, during an MBA, those with the experience of working in this area need to prepare to be comfortable with sharing their own experiences to enhance their fellow students’ learning environment. So, don’t be embarrassed about sharing stories with your classmates and learning from their experiences, stories, and ideas – it’s all part of the learning curve, and your education will be enriched by it.
