Lessons from Ross B-School — Competition
Connecting me with Others and My Own Identity
I am a part-time semester away from completing my BBA at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. It’s been a long, hard battle, and I want to share how it feels to exist within the walls of a top business school at one of the top public universities in the United States in, out of all places, the bottom Eastern corner of Michigan. As a first-gen, Latina student who had no prior connection to the school, I question my identity often in the space. I leave competitive and well-connected, but I also feel insecurely average and ambivalent about my degree. I assume this experience is similar amongst minorities at other top universities, too. To any business student, not just minorities, how has competition changed your identity? I’m not the most competitive person, yet I constantly rise to the tasks here. I am burnt out and objectively successful for it.
Welcome to my Medium — and Ross
The Stephen M. Ross School of Business is seen as a well-funded play office in the middle of the Michigan campus. For us lucky enough to attend, it can be initially frightening yet highly opportunistic, which is why I’m reluctant to call this place “home”. I am proud to attend Michigan and love the classic Go Blue! spirit in the airport, but sharing my Ross identity gets exhausting inside and out of Ross and campus.
Welcome to my introductory Medium blog post. This blog will be a vehicle to reflect as I transition out of college into corporate and wherever else I go. I am graduating this upcoming semester with my BBA and a Minor in Writing — the whole reason I‘m ’inspired to write things like this. In today’s post, I want to explore the parts of my identity influenced and challenged by Ross, specifically how competition shapes my views of others and myself. It will be.. to put it bluntly…fucking real. If you think I’m describing you, I might be, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s fine to reflect on how we come off. It’s fine to reflect on what makes us, here at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Rossholes.
We have a reputation around campus for being Rossholes. It’s a dumb gag, but a surprising amount of boring, non-Ross people with nothing better to say about me will joke at the bar. I get mocked for my major during introductions. Dates ask me about my “coloring book finals” (it swept me off my feet to be belittled to Boss Baby, thank you). To respond about my finals: no, they’re just long, stressful, poorly written, fruitless — need I say more? I became familiar with the nickname on Reddit while researching Michigan, and since coming here, I have heard Rosshole or other Ross slander at least once a week, even from us on the inside.
I’m not sure what emotion triggered the nickname. Maybe non-Rosshole jealousy over disproportionate opportunities like all the networking events, career fairs, general campus resources… and plain Nepotism. Sweaty (finance term for try-hard) finance bros and nepo-babies who complain about their job prospects, working with parents versus beating the allegations, give groupies like me a bad name.
As one myself, I could see how non-traditional insiders would love to dish out the name to some of our peers. And yes, I dare to call myself a non-traditional insider despite my corporate sellout status. Existing on the inside doesn’t mean I’m brainwashed to act like a Rossified asshole (woah, long form of Rosshole). I handpick the opportunities I want and go on my merry way. I remember reading about it on Reddit pages before I came to Ross. Jealous, jobless people want to live in our world, but they can’t for whatever reason. Maybe they weren’t cut out for Ross, maybe they didn’t know about it, or maybe they didn’t make any Ross connections. Regardless, they’re not a part of the school I was siphoned into as a freshman.
For a while now, I have been craving a more long-form way to express my professional identity. Reflecting through writing is a part of my stress relief routine. I write in diary upon diary, or folders of pages documents on my computer: all about not feeling like I’m doing enough at school or work. Wanting to be better in how I act. Hoping I get jobs. Writing down information about myself and the people I meet in hopes that my skills and potential will shine with my charm. These preoccupations turned goals sound general, but my recent problems have grown in scope — and I am not a business strategist yet, try as I may.
And before you read the real and parodic parts of today’s entry on competition, I want to disclaim I am grateful for the opportunities made possible in part because of my Ross education. As a first-generation student, attending university was a constant dream and prepared me to start a career. I am thankful each day for my mother, scholarship donors, and others who make this whole experience attainable for me.
The title of “business person” is not hard to self-proclaim, but literally, the title is taxing to keep. If you want to be where I am or wonder how I got here, your competitive edge is probably your self-serving thirst for knowledge. I am also the type of person to anxiously plan my life through Google search.
As you rise through the corporate ranks, I find knowledge begins to trump competitive spirit. At my age, people want to see I am driven, consistently challenging myself. When I get older and wiser, people will look to me for business goals, solutions, and achievements, and expect me to do it again every week. You can’t reach the end unless you conquer the beginning; it’s the nature of competition. Business school is the beginning: a made-up, overcomplicated competition to prepare us for real work, when our decisions ride on real things. There’s no horseplay with money, shareholders, stakeholders, and plain reality.
When others look at me and my experiences, I hope I’m more than Ross or any other big-name affiliation. That’s how life has come to feel at this point. My LinkedIn is ogled by underclassmen referred to my page (thank you, Ricardo. I appreciate your admiration), and looked over by recruiters seeking the perfect candidate. I worry about the latter the most because I want to be a person rather than a resume or a transcript. My being is confined to a few pages; the same as a high school student entering college, wishing I was more than the portrait of a well-rounded student. Some people will say those with grit succeed, others will point out how you don’t need it anymore. My introductory advice, prepare yourself for tough competition before entering a place like Ross.
Why tf did I choose this?
I sometimes wonder — why did I choose this? When I applied, I was a starry-eyed high schooler looking at the school’s puddle of a website. I only had what I saw on my computer: a shallow puddle of information I became fixated on while applying to a collection of undergraduate business schools. So of course. I was led to believe Ross was the best business school for me, just as I knew schools like Michigan were the best. Big state schools like Michigan always stood out to me for their spirit and their rankings in almost every field I had been considering as a career. They appealed to my intense pragmatism toward college and career — even at age 18.
It becomes circular when you click through them so much to gather essays about your interest in the, maybe 10, details they give you about the school. The Ross website is straight and to the point, similar to how we are taught to be in business school. It lists short blurbs, quotes, and flashy numbers that quickly convey what a great school it is. With a top-ranking Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) program and many #1 MBA programs like Accounting and Management, the school appeals to students in Michigan, across the US, and internationally. Ross prides itself on the diverse thinkers and teams in their classrooms who are learning to build better businesses, hopefully seeking a more equitable future.
What I didn’t see during my online search, about diversity and equity, was that the demographics I was walking into were like nothing I’d experienced before. Coming from a decently mixed community and being surrounded by my Latin family, I wasn’t prepared for the space and its harsh lessons. Ross keeps up a blog of their own, and I wonder if they would ever feature me…beside the point. A post about the 2022 undergraduate admissions boasts 17% racial minorities combined, contrasting it with a 2013 statistic quoting 3%. It feels strange to contribute to a percentage, probably put on the board for prospective students to buy into.
It’s funny; I came into my first Michigan visit as a high school junior preparing to apply. I never considered business school yet, rather the high rankings displayed by the BBA program intimidated me. I paid particular attention to the rigorous, two-pronged admissions process complementing the minuscule Ross-specific acceptance rate. Unless you can make it into Michigan LSA (Literature, Science & the Arts, the standard), you won’t be considered for Ross. You have to turn in both applications regardless of admission, so the rejection stings for double the work.
However, it felt more like a beckoning challenge fit for the amount of work I put into college admissions. I wanted to apply to the already competitive Michigan, so why not let the hard work pay off? Competition was unlike me at the time, but Ross brings something out in people. I could finally apply all my drive to my guaranteed, corporate success.
Business students at Ross are presumably for the better. In this economy, we worry about keeping ourselves afloat before the betterment of society. No wonder…because all I hear about during class is inflation, companies failing, and how hard it is for everyone around me to find a job (unrelated to class but more important). Even though we might not get there right out of college, you could say some of us are already strong advocates for better business. I met a boy once who came to my room (on a non-business meeting), and he told me all about what an anarchist and non-establishment person he was. I asked him what he aspired to do, and he told me, plain and simple: marketing.
I’ve never laughed harder in someone’s face than that day. A joke from Raymond, my advisor for this paper, the anarchy sure does need some marketing.
Other business schools, like UVA, didn’t seem worth it because I wouldn’t immediately be a business student. I didn’t get the quick satisfaction of being guaranteed a $70,000+ salary behind a desk if I paid the price of four years. And on visits to schools like UVA, UMD, and virtual events for Georgia Tech, I stressed over eye-opening tuition and financial aid numbers. I physically felt the pressure of debt crush me a little more as my mom shifted in her seat to get a better view. I didn’t know what other fruitful career to pursue. I only wanted to be a teacher, and that felt like a destiny to be overworked and underpaid (even so, still something I want).
An acceptance to Michigan LSA was good to me, but it meant almost nothing compared to Ross. I’m a planner, and my other career choices would leave me starving in my dream city or living meagerly in a square state suburb. Neither sounds appealing, and my parents who support me, or don’t, in their respective ways expect a lot from the expensive piece of paper they’ve been waiting for.
To clarify, I don’t mean waiting in the sense that they’ve been saving up for my college. I mean I’m the first to go to a 4-year university and get a white-collar job. This is the finale of my upbringing, the last thing my parents are telling me to aim high and work hard for. College has always been in my picture, and my parents’ expectations of going to college include a high-paying job at the end. When I wanted to be a teacher, artist, or even a fucking marketer; my dad told me I‘d make no money. Though evidently biased against creative professions, He’s right. This is how I became so blunt. And so I landed on applying to Ross for the practicality of it all. The easiest game-winning strategy, I thought.
I didn’t realize how much it was for my parents at the time; that lesson has come with age and stress. I became more apprehensive about the choice I made and where it spat me out at the end of college. It never mattered how I really felt about business or business programs, they all led me to the same conclusion: business school is a safe route for me.
I am extremely lucky that this is the safest route for me. **I want to disclaim that I am, despite what my hypercompetitive and sometimes dramatic thoughts would tell you, so extremely lucky to be in the position I’m in.** I have tons of classmates who open up about their struggles in finding jobs post-grad or summer internships. Everyone is aiming for the same positions at Ross while still having nothing come to our inboxes. Past the point of working hard to get in, nothing is guaranteed to us except a school reputation to lean on. I left this endless recruiting race a while ago when I got my job. I am so fucking lucky, even if I don’t feel like it.
So to answer my original, cliche question of why I chose this? For the safe 9–5 job at the end with a side of what I’m actually into… Ross visitors and alum say you can pursue your hobbies after you make money (I honestly don’t know if they say that, I know they do that). That’s what I was getting into when I started here; I didn’t realize how much I’d confront myself throughout the process. I came in as what retrospectively felt like an observer. I didn’t know if business was for me, but I knew it was promising. It just required fitting in with the competition.
Girl,, so what is it like in there…
When annoying tour groups of bug-eyed high schoolers — who will statistically not get into Ross let alone the regular UMich LSA application — walk by our big orange building, they stand in complete awe. They’re right to do that; the building is huge. 179,000 square feet. To conceptualize this, I watched a decent amount of House Hunters in high school, and, if a ‘normal’ house people were wishing for before inflation was like…
I think that’s more than enough, and there are two more buildings belonging to the Business school besides the Ross building, so it totals more. The competitive (highly comparative) spirit in me says this isn’t even the biggest business school (and we should aim to do better next quarter!). OK, it actually might be the biggest if you add the three, buuut it's not listed as the ‘Most Beautiful’ in any of the rating lists I found!! By comparison, MIT Sloan is over 200,000 square feet and beautiful in an industrial revolution type of way (so I read). Keep up the good work, Sloan-ers!
More important than the square footage, you must know the big building is named after a big man by now: Stephen M. Ross, a UM Ross undergraduate alumni, real estate mogul, and. He has donated almost $500M total to the school. In 2004, an original $100M for the business school, then $200M later to, again, the business school and also the athletics department (drive down and see his athletic complex on State St), and most recently some for UM’s Detroit Innovation Center (pretty cool thing tbh, I take it that’s a passion of Stephen’s). Even cooler, he owns the Miami Dolphins.
The building’s exterior is the same obnoxiously bright colors as the team and encapsulates the grandeur of corporate America into a glass academic complex. Just like your brand spanking new collaborative corporate offices popping up across the US.
During my time in corporate America, I found the freebies distract you from the monotonous day-to-day where you sit at the desk, type in Excel, stare at blank walls wondering if you’ll ever be happy, be on top of those Q3 earnings, laugh with coworkers while getting water, and shitting on the clock (all jokes FULLY intended, Mr. Dimon — let’s catch up some time).
Freebies and amenities the Ross SOBs (schools of businesses, or u fill in the blank) put in our hands, so that we can be somewhat mentally stable when we land our perfectly cushy jobs in investment banking at the banks with two first names (who was Morgan Stanley anyway?), enjoying life in a high-rise, New York Big 3 consultancy or Big 4 accounting firm (the only place to go from Big 10, of course), or — in my case — working a stable corporate job where I will make modestly (a lot) more than my research or med-school peers yet not as much as the jobs I listed before this and that rubs you the wrong way type of job. God. A fucking run-on for the battle that’s felt like it’s run-on for this entire college marathon. In fact, it’s the Iron Man, and I am Cody Ko… ENERGY IS EVERYTHING.
And the energy here is face-on, all the time. Most facey place I’ve ever known aside from my hometown gym on Thanksgiving break (oh it’s bad). You never know who you’re near, where they are working next year, where their older sister works, and whether you will smile at each other on your next encounter or turn away abruptly.
When we walk into the main Ross building for class, club meetings, meeting friends, or networking, we step into the Winter Garden. Contrary to the name, it does not feature much foliage. Rather, it’s the centerpiece of the Ross building where we study, grab a drink from the infamous Starbucks, run late to class, hold meetings (talk into the professor's mic), and most importantly reconnect with the people we know. Classes all let out, and a sea of people swallows the usual crowd of early releases and constant arrivals — yes, it’s an operations problem for some of us. Business frats’ tables rejoice as their brothers return from class and beam to see them. Every table is always packed with students. The plush-looking, yet hard-on-your-ass leather chairs are where networking moguls (or new club members with requirements) sit and ‘coffee chat’ — coffee not required. Usually, 20–40 minutes of assorted small talk until someone “has to run!” somewhere else (they have been avoiding silence for at least 10 minutes).
Looking upstairs, we watch people shuffle between classes through the crystal clear glass that frames each floor and lines the staircases — like hamsters running between tubes and bumping into each other. Around the corners, you’ll notice people who do their assignments without ChatGPT and MBA students stressing about coffee chats or re-recruiting despite their high job prospects — and the likelihood they signed a corporate contract for reimbursement to come to Ross. All you need to know about the MBAs is they are whiny corporate babies coming for their work vacation. I am proud of you for being so committed that you would work on your time off, please stop stressing about the coffee chat you have later or your natural charisma will fade. I don’t get how they compete like that.
My introductions to life
As a student at Ross, I’m constantly reminded of how I come from the ‘best of the best’. I am lucky to be there, and they, of course, are lucky to have me. Sure, I might be one of the best, but I’m not sure I sprang from the same soil as some of my peers. I am not competitive from years of childhood sports or well-connected through my parents’ friends and work connections. To grasp why I feel this way, I need you to understand where I sit in class and how it’s shaped my Ross experience.
I grew up as a kid who, I would even dare to say, loved school. My 1st-grade homework packets were a sacred ritual to me. On the first day they were handed out, I spent time diligently filling out the problems and checking them twice like Santa. The next day, I would take my obnoxiously large set of 64 crayons to color seasonally-themed rings of color around the teddy bear clip art. Week by week, I turned them in at least two days early complete with the special cover. I’d probably cry happy tears during my lunch break if I saw that as a teacher. I knew it made them happy.
My parents worked hard to move us closer to good public schools, majority-white schools in a middle-class Maryland suburb. On my end of the bargain, I kept my hard work up throughout the years in hopes of going to an Ivy League or maybe law school. Before life burnt me out, I was a brainiac who loved to read and genuinely listen during class. I firmly believe school would be intrinsic for me without grades.
During college decision season, a handful of my high school peers speculated my top acceptances were largely due to my minority status. It’s true, I’m not white. What they didn’t know is I’ll be first in my immediate family with a 4-year degree, and second in my extended family. If I wanted to justify my outrageous classmates, I would say something like: “We were taught more than down South about the history of this country, but critical race theory and antiracism are topics I didn’t encounter until college. I was never entirely sure what else was being done about racism in the modern age until 2020 with Black Lives Matter and COVID. Keeping in mind that affirmative action was still in place, sure, all things considered, it’s a potential factor contributing to my acceptance.”
But… why the FUCK would you say that to anyone, enough for it to get back to me? There’s a reason it’s not to my face.
I like to think I am an honest person and that business school has brushed up my communication in a way that’s firm yet mindful. I am learning how to stand up for what I believe in, which requires realizing that not everyone will listen or understand. In these majority-led spaces, I encounter a strange resistance when trying to connect with my minority identity. I feel enraged and incomplete from being misunderstood as a product of my environment. For one, we live in a world where the people I network with often don’t look like me or relate to my experiences. Picturing myself working in an office of entirely white men day-trading or something: menacingly terrifying reality. Same as in high school, the opportunities of the middle-class, high-achieving lifestyle my parents pushed me to achieve won’t solve how I feel about myself in the grander scheme of things, how my classmates feel about me.
My mom got her Associate’s degree from our local community college. We grew up around the same area in Montgomery County, Maryland, and this was always an option she brought up to my brother — yet not me. It’s always fascinating to me how parents can raise their kids so differently. My dad is an immigrant from El Salvador who graduated high school, a product of Catholic schools’ strict discipline. As an immigrant reformed to believe in the tune of the American dream, he believes in hard work and not paying for your children’s college… because school isn’t real work. It’s a mere requirement to get there. I am scared of how many other people see it that way, even in the halls of Ross.
Most immigrant parents will push their kids like this. They fought through hardships for their American dream, so you must do well in school and finish things off. So I tried hard and got into my top universities, and even that isn’t always enough for the modern top-25 school student. I needed someone to foot the steep tuition bill, an ‘in’ to a Fortune 500 would be ideal, and, if I could go back in time, an older sibling who could help with my accounting homework.
Like all humans, I always regret not doing more. But when it comes to working much harder than my peers to get where they started, I’m not sure how to feel except frustration. What makes it the most frustrating is that people don’t always understand why the minority experience is any different from the majority one. It shouldn’t matter that my parents couldn’t support me through the college process; we have the same school counselors (now, advisors) and resources. It’s always been my responsibility to catch up with everyone else, and I never batted an eye, not wanting to look weak, until it became too much.
My family doesn’t understand a fragment of the work that I do. Although, it’s the pressure more so than the work that gets to me. Either way, it doesn’t compare to the hardships they went through to get me to this point, so it’s marked off as easy. They see the expensive paper at the end, and the green paper I’ll get should take the edge off. The work will be difficult, but I will be genuinely successful– with a paper to prove it. Parents want for you what they didn’t have. When you’re degreeless, all you see are degrees (sounding like Ye’s college dropout right now). Sure, my parents can call putting my health and happiness on the chopping block ‘hard work’. When I work to please others over myself, work loses passion and fails to make me happy whatsoever. But gotta work to find that work. Ugh.
A harsh introduction
Every year, I receive an email telling me to thank the scholarship donors who so generously spare about half of my tuition every year. A small fraction of their donation to Ross and the university at large drops into my account semesterly. As a sort of exchange, I am expected to thank them through about seven 150–200 word minimum prompts thanking them for all of the money…and subsequent opportunities. The email reads as this:
Dear Diana,
Congratulations on receiving the [xx] Scholarship! Attached to this email you will find more information about the donors who contributed to your award.
Please note that your general scholarship from the Michigan Ross Admissions Office is offsetted by this donor funded scholarship. These funds help contribute to the tuition support award given to you. With that, we would like your help to express your gratitude to the donors of your scholarship(s)!
To thank your donor(s) and share the impact of their generous financial support, just follow the link below to complete a simple questionnaire, which serves as your scholar profile.
I’ve filled it out every year, and I’ve met my donors once online. This would be less disappointing if this email wasn’t the precursor for the Ross Donors and Scholars Event, which I am technically not pushed to attend unless my donors are there (a kind way to say: you are not invited for the Ross catering). My freshman year, the reception was held on Zoom; our one meeting. I entered a call of about 75–150 faces spanning all ages: donors, undergraduates, and graduate students I presumed. Being a sappy realist, I still idolized my donors despite never meeting them. Money speaks loud.
As they bickered over Zoom, my donor power couple seemed friendly — and cute in an old-person way. It sounded like one of their first times logging on. I had become a pro at Zoom over my first semester. I confidently beamed as the virtual reception began as if my face could be the one pinned to their screen at any moment. Because, of course, it was. I entered a breakout room with them and about six other students. A previous Dean was also coincidentally in the call — needed to put my best foot forward with every move (so walking with one foot..?).
Most of the students had no relation to my donors — just put in the call because either they were misassigned by the Zoom host or their donor was a no-show. I can’t remember how it felt to introduce myself at that time because I used to get mind-numbingly nervous with anyone who felt more serious than a professor. Oh, how awkward it feels to interject on Zoom, let alone to drone on about yourself. Now, it’s just second nature, something I do day-to-day in my academic, professional, and social lives.
My donors invited us all to introduce ourselves. Looking back, I remember being one of the youngest in the call. Also, one of the only people of color in my breakout room despite my scholarship being for underrepresented minorities at Ross. I’m not sure I knew that important detail or if it came with the more recent emails, but it didn’t click that day. This was just the beginning of a collection of ‘othering’ experiences that caused me to question my place in this big business, dog-eat-dog, corporate-sellout Ross world.
Coming to Michigan, I meet people who are the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th child in their family to go to college. It’s not unfamiliar to me given where I grew up, but it’s become the norm. It’s more prominent in my Ross classes where we see the same people… where small talk lives. Lots of older siblings, lots of parents who went to Michigan, went to Michigan Business School, got their MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, they grew up in Ann Arbor, it goes until you can’t match the face to their Michigan fun fact anymore — but, again, it’s become the norm. I know a majority of them can’t relate to what I experienced in this call, nor do they write forced letters of appreciation each semester. It must feel amazing going to college that way. How can I possibly compete with them?
Ross Starbucks (est pickup 30 mins)
At the overpacked Starbucks, I’m sure some people are thinking: I am so tired and hungover and craving a pumpkin foam coffee. I’ll get to Ross 30 minutes early, so I might just be able to get my coffee in time! (or don’t care about being late and dropping to the bottom of the attendance grade curve — others DO show up to class every day by some supernatural force).
AM I JOKING? There are definitely Ross kids who think like this. Why would you not walk 5 minutes to South U? Well, not directly FROM school, and I hate the LSA kids. (((GUYS, A JOKE!!! Your antics are out of hand! )))
I can’t drop the joke here because this is one of the most frightening places on the University of Michigan campus from both sides of the extremely dull rainbow, no pots of gold included. I’ve heard horror stories from the people who work there. I have watched TikToks and other Starbucks partner media of university Starbucks veterans. Like 2000 drinks sitting on a counter with about 20 assorted Michaels and Katies? NO.
When someone asks me who protects me on campus, I say God and my Ross Starbucks coffee because there is NO way in HOLY HELL that the men, women, and/or gender non-conforming partners behind that counter don’t say a prayer before handing off my drink. Their silent nods and sullen faces speak louder than Die-Anna (which is sadly not how you pronounce my name, truly welcome to my world, readers). This is the seventh circle, all because of some people who love being fashionably late and touting their Starbucks drink in their “everything is awesome!” capitalist-regime-building Lego-grip hands. Getting a drink from the Ross Starbucks is a feat, congratulations.
It’s a pent-up-rage type of place where you could flip the stools behind the counter by the capitalist steel-frame paintings on the wall, like a rage room but your place of employment. You won’t, though, because the million people waiting and sipping would immensely judge your lack of composure. Never caught dead having a temper tantrum in a public setting past the age of 18, BBAs sit around drinking their artificially orange foamy drinks in their grande and venti cups like they own the place (their parents likely own a part of campus or two, or rent the Ross alum suite during a weekend in Ann Arbor to escape their empty nest — sorry for the realism, Mothers).
I’m only mad because I ordered a cold brew, and I’ve been waiting 20 minutes in line and 30 minutes for my drink… but I only have 5 minutes (ONLY 5!!!!) before my first 2:30 class of the day. I got here so early…literally for what
– oh finally ready!!
College is now more than just class
Everyone finds their nook. I try to avoid the building generally, but I have a few commitments that keep me there. Aside from being a Ross student, I don’t participate in other parts of the school as much as my peers. A hallmark of Michigan student life, Ross clubs are overly competitive, too-often-discussed-at-parties, and a mysterious phenomenon to the non-Ross students who can’t join.
I shopped around Zoom info sessions, speed dating, and interviews, and I was met with what I felt was fluff. Joining in a COVID year meant people were presenting themselves live online. It’s like a zoo animal live stream, but instead, it’s bored club members clicking through their shopping tabs (the real work in our first online semester). I understand the disengagement due to the unprecedented times. Opposingly, I never understood how the rigorous admissions process typically accounts for not only experience but social engagement, resulting in disengagement. Interviews typically vary between two to three rounds, like a standard job these days. Just as painstaking, too.
I only went through interviews my initial year before I joined clubs outside of Ross. It was tough to forget how intimidated and unsupported I felt during my interviews, my very first business interviews. Because I left them feeling like a clueless fool, I was apprehensive about returning to the clubs, even though that’s what I’ve learned they like to see.
The new clubs I joined after my COVID-y freshman year didn’t require that you come with experience and complete knowledge of any subject. I won’t say the other clubs I’ve joined at Michigan, outside Ross, aren’t competitive, but they typically give off less rigor and encourage learning. They promise to teach you to do things well instead of expecting a freshman consultant.
In Ross, we often talk about the difference between equality and equity applied to business, and everyone in class raises their hand for this question. Not because they necessarily care about the cause — their participation for sure though. Equality v. equity is a core part of our Business Administration (similar to leadership), Organizations, and communications courses that emphasize diversity and supportive actions. In an equitable club, applicants without as much experience might not be given the same expectations, like casing. Doesn’t matter, Ross clubs want the best of the best of the best, and equity won’t do that justice.
The older and more self-aware I’ve gotten, the more I realize a lot of my classmates aren’t there yet. Or they’re just getting there. Life is starting to get real for us, but people are caught up in the delusions of club bureaucracy instead. What all of us Ross students have in common, across all classes and levels, is that we are high achievers, competitive by nature or force, and have a sink-or-swim mentality. It’s necessary to stay on top of the class, and the top of the Ross class is chock-full of academic socialites.
A story on the other side of grades
A mutual friend of mine came rushing up to me saying they meant to text me how they heard a younger student say to their friends in the Winter Garden something along the lines of “That Diana Hernandez bitch gave me and my group a low grade again.”
I received one email after that cycle of assignments “demanding” a better grade for their group. I would never use this type of language in an email to anyone at Ross…again (after a personal virtual run-in). To this demand, I responded with “I am an admin, and I don’t make the grades.”
I'm a course assistant (Ross needed to rebrand teaching assistant/TA, of course) for a class during the Ross Integrative Semester (RIS), a “Signature Learning Experience” of 10.5 required credits for first-semester juniors. For people recruiting finance like me, this semester coincidentally aligns with recruiting (oops! -Ross ❤). Even if you’re not recruiting, the semester is still known as a hellscape of endless class and group project work.
Group projects are one of the most difficult parts of business school, yet applicable since I have to deal with BS for more time than I’d like before getting a chance to be ‘big man’. After meeting your group members (or emailing them off a spreadsheet), you‘re encouraged to become close through graded exercises intended to facilitate camaraderie and psychological safety. Yet the exercises fall short when we fall back on being business students. We want to get things done efficiently…and look presentable, the work and ourselves.
I had a group for each of my five RIS classes, and we met weekly to do work. Just in case you want to see your group members more than you already do, you get tasked with “The Entrepreneurial Challenge”: RIS classes stop for two weeks, and students participate in a blown-up case competition. Within the quick turnaround time, each group should create an entrepreneurial venture and connect concepts across various classes to build out their business plan and its feasibility.
So I wasn’t angry about what transpired in the middle of the Winter Garden. I empathized with whoever called me a bitch because I would probably do the fucking same. I get it. The assignment was graded out of 2 points, so I’m not sure how low her grade could’ve possibly been considering she is presumably an active participant in Ross culture (Exhibit A: sitting in Winter Garden, Exhibit B: gossiping). From memory, the lowest grade was 0.7/2. Even that grade doesn’t seem too bad for an assignment out of 2, and besides, her group probably earned higher.
Yadda yadda yadda.
People can paint business school to be easy, and parts of it can be. However, I was often confused when alumni I was networking with would tell me to ‘take it easy’ or ‘not worry too much’ when turning the discussion toward my upcoming RIS semester. It wasn’t too difficult to take this advice and chill out that semester. But like I’ve told you, I tend to look back and wish I did more (poor dead horse, being beaten). I know many people, even in Ross, feel the same, yet we usually end up not caring at all. At the end of the day, we are clawing to get a job. That’s priority #1.
My networking calls clarify that it’s historically been this way, but I’d be willing to bet competitiveness was amplified my year. To console us students about the pandemic, we’ve been graded on something called “the Ross curve”, an inflated and highly forgiving grading scale to protect the precious GPAs of investment bankers. Son, look no further; the scale goes A+ to B-. Being SO REAL, the lowest grade I can receive for an honest effort is a B-.
Don’t go applying too quickly. It ends this year, and business students are panicking as they gear up for their projected tank in GPA and heightened competition. Fueling grade competitiveness more than the curve: our assigned a peer cohort, who we take all required classes with. To prevent us from becoming too friendly, we are distributed on a grading curve only against each other.
I remember how stuck I felt in my group full of people who, first, cared about topping the curve and, once the going got rough, only cared about getting the rubric down. I could tell we dreaded working on our poorly planned idea, but it was too late to change it. When I think about my group members and our future job prospects as Ross students, I am often surprised by our combined work quality (not a good way). I can’t even be bothered to fix it sometimes. I pretended to stand for an idea I didn’t understand, and I reached burnout pretending to care about competing against my peers’ business ideas for even one second.
Still, I worry I didn’t take advantage of it. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I had the time or skills yet. A new me came to realize this wasn’t the only time I felt hyper-competitive; it’s all the time. Before Ross, I wasn’t competitive whatsoever, except with myself — which seems more like esteem than competition, huh. Ross drove me to feel like I needed to try harder even though I sacrifice enough time for my groups, let alone myself and my own mental and physical health.
I couldn’t possibly feel that way anymore… after I’ve had a full 3 years to marinate in self-loathing and study excessively alone, with friends, and both to no avail. I study for some exams for days and do better than the ones I hardly study for. This lead to what demotivates me at Ross: like whether I’m interested in what my professor says; the exam is too easy and everyone does well, or opposingly, the exam is too hard and everyone fails while a few brainiacs figure it out; and the fact that, with certainty, I’ll likely get a B or higher given my decent attendance record.
My mediocre grades here make me realize I’m stuck as the median (or close enough) of a tightly clustered dataset of the ‘top minds’. All in all, my grades in college feel completely randomized, out of my control. Bigger than that, I fear competition will steepen on my corporate path. Next, grades swapped for performance reviews.
While I like to be challenged and even constructively criticized, I don’t know how I feel about being beaten down.
An Entry from September 2022, on my macbook (written around 10pm, a break from homework)
i will never fuck another person who goes to the ross school of business.
145 million fucking dollars and 270 fucking thousand square feet so that the little feet of America’s future C-suite can see their crush from 3 floors over. and they’ll look damn good doing it.
i, on the other hand, look hella pissed everywhere i walk and only spot my adversaries from the stairs above the winter garden.
spot or be spotted?
there’s something about the open concept of the modern office space, the one they’re trying to emulate with the glass railways and ample seating. it’s a place for collaboration amongst peers. but not the kind i talked about in the beginning.
i’ve been back at school for about a month now, and i can confidently say i might be ready to collaborate again; ready to be a selfless partner, devoted to my team; ready to try again.
[omissions]
who i’m really in love with, though, this semester is the person i’m becoming. the girl i can see coming out of her shell during small successes: the ones where i’m spotting myself getting that email and gasping, having someone ask to sit with me, going to jimmy johns w/ [x] for the 3rd time, and going to [x’s] room to tell her i love her.
i’m starting to love myself again …
Where we are & where we want to be are two different places
Entries like this one highlight (dumb meme reference incoming) two wolves inside of me: the me who wants to be a successful businessperson, and the me who wants to be me..maybe in business. However, it’s taken more out of me than I thought to sit through these four years. Business school is competitive, but now that I have a job (escape plan), it objectively doesn’t take much out of me at the end of the day. After my first semester junior year, when I got my summer internship with one of those man-name banks, I began to glide through the motions of catching up on slides, and somewhat listening to class while doing other work.
A part of me doesn’t want to become what I see across from me, and a part of me does it every day through my passive existence. Given how it looks, it’s a little too late for me to say that (and I have my hands up). I guess I hope that, deep down, I am well-intentioned and so are some of the other people I see with this act. I say I’m not one of them, but at my core I am. I was happy and liked myself because I finally felt complete for once in my academic career, hitting a [spout? bout] of success
I’m not sure of where I see the general future of Ross going. I keep complaining about how the students I tutor are in a class teaching business statistics and don’t actually know what a z-distribution or t-distribution is. It’s hurtfully intriguing how they reject attempts to teach them this background knowledge. I include it for students who care, of course. But I just wonder: if I felt like I learned so little in classes that were harder when I took them, how does this next generation of business people feel?
From what I hear, the competition is stifling: in school, for job interviews, even getting a networking call. I didn’t even have to hear it to know it; they ask me personal questions almost exclusively about my job and how hard it was to get there…whether what they’re learning matters. I know they don’t care about doing business yet. As a starry-eyed college kid like I used to be, they each want a high-paying job, and business is practical. One wants to be a dentist but hates her chem classes and needs a GPA boost, another I question whether she likes attending college at all, and another talks about being from downtown Atlanta and the failures of the public school system when our professors claim we should know basic algebra.
I wonder if we’ll even all end up as business people. Hell, I didn’t think I would be here, and even if I do this business gig for a little, I’m not so sure it’s where I want to be long-term. This paper and the almost-final semester of college have me questioning what I’m prepared for, if I need to stay here a little longer (radical thought), and whether business is truly the right path for me.
My non-Ross friends want the cushy consulting jobs I mentioned us having domain over. Or they want jobs in corporate sustainability, diversity and inclusion roles, etc. I know because, for some, I was their introduction to business and professionalism as their VP of Professional Development (what a resume builder it’s been). I taught them about LinkedIn through my slightly anti-Ross (lol, y’all) sustainability org on campus. And I’ve introduced a handful of them to my connections because I want more of these types of people in the business world with me.
I meet so many go-getters with true passions for people and lines of business outside Ross, and I wonder why they’re not there with me. They’re luckier than us, they claim to have truly, organically fallen in love with business. Not like us stinky Ross pre-admits. It seems everyone outside Ross is beginning to merge their forged path with business: I want to work at the intersection of x and business, they say. When we get the same job, I begin to wonder: What the fuck does that even mean…? Is Ross doing business right? More importantly, am I doing business right?
To give you an answer, maybe. To give you some background, I’ve mostly gotten to know BBAs, with a couple of opportunities to work with or eavesdrop on MBA students. I’ve come to a few general conclusions from the networking calls, excited commitment announcements on Linkedin, and the silently intimidating competitiveness I’m surrounded by:
I’m still unsure if I was cut out for this world. I feel a little tricked into it. I’m not competitive, but I have immense drive. Thinking again about Ross’ vision for better business, I feel more tricked than originally yet also more driven to be a part of that reality.
Incrementally, I am a better business student than those of 20 years ago. Profit-maximizing and shareholder primacy served drove business goals prior to the establishment of stakeholder primacy, which looks at all results of a business rather than solely profits or stock valuation. Yet a lot of us still seek to maximize profits and measure our success that way too.
We are experts at growing our network. We are the amalgamation of the best ladder-climbing, attention-seeking qualities of the people at the top of corporate America: faking it to make it, ass-kissing, and more. It’s a matter of looking at all the sides, and choosing to use our net worth for good.
The world gets bigger from here & Michigan Ross is a part of my identity.
School is a major conversation for me everywhere I go. The further down south I’ve gone for my two summer internships, the more people at work get excited (and shocked) to meet someone from Michigan. Yee haw, I guess.
I’ll never forget the first week of my first head-inflating, corporate-world internship. Like my life was a fucking sitcom, training wasn’t even halfway through, and I was meeting the CEO and shaking his hand. Other than the basic things you try to know (memorize) about the CEO in case you find yourself in the elevator with them, I brought up how his alma mater’s school horse…
— gotcha, I didn’t know much about him.
I knew his name and that he was looking for me one or two days prior. It’s a joking hypothetical scenario we use for practice, so cut me some slack. The day before, I missed his big visit because of my brother’s graduation. So I never got to hear his live introduction, but I knew for sure from a friend that the CEO was looking for ‘the Michigan student’. I was the first ever hired there. I spat out my quickest introduction before letting him know
I’m the Michigan student.
Scaling up to a bigger firm with people from schools primarily outside the DMV, more people wanted to know where I hailed from. Almost everyone knows the University of Michigan, and a large subset of those in the corporate world know about the reputation of Michigan Ross. Tons of college students see it as unattainable. Students rejected from Michigan so Ross was a blowout; people intimidated by the steep price; and my fellow Wolverines with salty Ross rejected pasts.
They look at me like I used to look at the Ross website. Peering over at what appears to be a sea of reflection, what Ross could make them, in the little puddle below. I always want to tell the people who want to know what it’s like that they don’t want to know. Instead, I just say it’s what you expect at Michigan and I try to take some other classes too (hopefully they’ll ask about those instead). They assume that means it’s hard, and it does, but not in the classic this is linear algebra. It’s hard in a way that’s mentally challenging and equally exhausting. I do fake made-up math the same way someone decided -9.8 represents gravity — actually, even more fake than that. Like, ‘I have this many cranberries and this many trucks to dump cranberries from every x hours’ fake.
Even though Ross can be cutthroat, I will miss the safety shield it provides from reality. It’s easier to compete in the orange building, where the work is contained and without repercussions — aside from Professor comments. I fear once I relinquish the title of learning, being a student, and being new to the job, I will no longer be safe from the gravity of work problems and their repercussions. I will have to maintain a strong and unwavering outward presence; make good choices, and be taken seriously.
It’s what I fear as I enter my corporate life, contracted to a desk and known more for my performance indicators than my name. When weighing the side effects of my competitive education, they‘re usually overshadowed by success. The caveat of this whole competition is the winning prize of more work. It's a giant puzzle that I piece together day by day. One piece I am sure of is that Michigan Ross is a new part of my identity, and I will never leave behind… feeling like a fucking Rosshole
And I am doing what some would consider my best
Someone outside of this business world would say I’m doing my best. I do my best to check off all my boxes for school, for my family, for my friends, and myself. For some reason, I don’t feel accomplished for these things. I’ve always felt singled out for them. And, I know I should rewire this part of my brain (therapy moment), but I connect this to shame.
I keep circling around what the shame is connected to. Because I’ve already told you, I wish I worked harder than I do already. It’s not like impostor syndrome where I feel like I’m not meant to be here. I know I’m a hard worker, but I don’t know where to draw the stopping line. I’ve always thought about how I apply hard work and competition all wrong.
Hard work is just a principle of being me, ish. Obviously, I’m working on how I think about it. The conclusions I originally came to in therapy included that hard work looks good, people like hard workers, and I want to be a hard worker. This seems like a fine conclusion if you‘re mentally ill like me. So I’m a people pleaser? I’m joking, it’s a horribly bad conclusion.
In juggling being competitive and being myself, I made the obvious to many but not-so-obvious to me realization that hard work goes hand in hand with competition once you externalize everything. The same way we are told to apply criticism to the work rather than the person, I am learning to keep my work and self separate. Issue is I like hard work, which can be dangerous around competition. As I learn and grow, I remove my real self from the situation, so my competitive stunt double can come in.
To hammer the nail one last time, I am not competitive. Competitive tasks prove impossible without some internal stake when I’m on the verge of constant burnout . No, the potential of winning it all isn’t enough. Try as you might think, I will laugh and help you up if you fall. I will never care about winning in video games, board games, or forced corporate Top Golf.
Identities like my culture, my womanhood, and my Rosshole-ness have warranted hard work. I want to make my family proud, lead by example for other strong women, and land a position where there’s some better business going on. I don’t just think I want to be a hard worker and that people like them, I am one. I am a hard worker, and I hope you somewhat like me after reading this. Even if you don’t, I’m definitely proud of myself — and my stunt double — as I finally conclude this post. Ross (almost) out.