Of MBA’s and Summer Classes

My wife and I got our MBA’s together.  My wife graduated with honors.  I missed it by one class.  I think it was our second: Finance.  At the time, I just had this…THING…with numbers.  I knew I wasn’t going to get an “A,” so I didn’t.  The funny thing is that I don’t think the grade I got in any other class had anything to do with what I got out of the class.  

Several years prior, when I was still an undergrad, I was dating this really attractive, really cute, really interesting girl.  She stayed at school all summer, so, naturally, I decided to stay back, too.  I had an apartment, after all, and the lease I signed was for twelve months.  Why not stay for the summer?  I had a car.  I had a crib.  I had a lady.  What else is there when you’re twenty one years old?

Let’s try money.  Discretionary cash.  Spending money.  For the lady.

I got a job.  I worked at Best Buy.  I worked in the music department.  When I was in middle school, I had a column in the school newspaper: Rockin’ Ricky’s Turntable Times.  Seriously, that’s what I called it.  I did music reviews.  I wrote exactly two of them.  The paper only came out twice the year I had the column.  I used to save up my money all year long for our trips back to the US; we were living in Mexico at the time.  I think all my friend knew that I would come home with a stack of LP’s and 45’s after every trip back, so I sort of became known as the music guy.  I remember once in high school, when “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals came out, I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning just so I could record the song on some obscure radio show.  Tony wanted it, so I went above and beyond to deliver.  He didn’t ask; I just did it.  I loved music THAT much.  Working in the music department at Best Buy was a big deal to me.

To recap, I had a car, a crib, and a lady.  I had a job listening to music at Best Buy.  My parents were financing my living arrangements.  Life was good.  So as to not be a total mooch, I decided to show my parents that I was REALLY responsible and take a class during the summer.  MY summer.  I was THAT magnanimous.

That summer, I took a 200-level class that wound up changing my life.  It turned out to be the most important business class I’ve ever taken, bar none.  Well, there was a technology-related class that I took during my MBA in which I was able to convince the professor that seeing “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” had to do with business and technology because the extensive use of computer graphics would change the movie industry forever.  I was right.  I should have demanded extra credit to off-set that “B” in Finance.  Anyway, that summer I took a Psych class.  Specifically, I took “Child Psychology and Development.”  It changed my life forever.  I still use the things I learned in that class and the list of other classes that I took as a result.  The one Psych class introduced me to the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.  I racked up enough hours in HDFS to get a minor…too bad they didn’t offer one.  Regardless, those classes opened my eyes to fields of studies I’d never known existed.  Those classes became the foundation for my adult outlook on life, the Universe, and all the stuff in between.  That includes leadership.

Anyone who knows my wife shouldn’t be surprised that she graduated from our MBA program with honors.  Anyone who knows me shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t.  The point of the story, though, isn’t to confirm what some people already know about my wife’s and my personality.  One of the points of the story is that a grade isn’t going to tell you shit about what you’ve learned.  I didn’t get an “A” in the Child Psych class, but I learned more in that summer session that I could have ever dreamed possible.  The other point of the story is that you’ll never know how one simple choice, like the choice to hang out with that cute girl on campus that summer, might have lasting reverberations for the rest of your life.  You see, not only did that class change my life,  I married that cute girl.