Looking Slightly Away: How Time Away From the GSB Brought Me More Fully In

When I imagined the summer between MBA1 and MBA2 years, I did not picture myself crawling on my hands and knees in a cornfield in Iowa. Yet there I was in late August, looking for earthworm trails beside Lance, a fourth generation farmer and my host.

The author Jonathan Safron Foer once wrote, “If you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it.” That’s what I did out there in rural Iowa, looked slightly away from the GSB for a few weeks, to enhance my understanding of the world. Looking slightly away can:

• Improve our engagement in the moment;
• Imbue us with gratitude for and understanding of the growth we’ve experienced;
• Enable us to spot patterns more effectively and tangibly.

On Engaging More Fully: Is the Key to Look Away?

Last year, as an MBA1, I took the opposite approach of looking away. I focused all of my energy in one direction with the goal of developing new tools to help me achieve my personal and professional aspirations.

My first few months at the GSB were vibrant and full, but also difficult. I didn’t speak much in class, preferring the role of observer. I also saw my previous experiences as insufficient compared with those of my peers, and I was afraid that classmates could not relate to my perspective. I told myself that I needed to assimilate, immerse and quickly become fluent in a new language at the GSB. I worked to shed old habits and pushed myself to be worthy of my 15 seconds of air time in Sorenson’s Strategy class.

This shedding and assimilation period was necessary, and the emotions that accompanied it (stress, insecurity, curiosity) were important bookmarks for incredible learning. That process of pushing aside what’s known to more fully focus on the unknown is conducive to growth, certainly. And it’s also exhausting. I now realize that it needs to be matched with an integration of what came before.

After many hours of studying accounting until the words blurred together, I finished fall quarter. In transitioning to winter quarter, I turned a new leaf and began to return to my original interests. I enrolled in Lean Launchpad to work on an agricultural challenge with a friend. I started to participate more in class, pulling from my previous experiences and interests in agriculture, climate change and environmental impact. I started to wonder about how I could shape class projects around problems I’d seen in my previous job.

By allowing myself to look away from the GSB, even if just barely, I started to develop more confidence, more engagement with classes, more creativity and better ideas. I began to realize with greater certainty the value that the GSB experience was bringing me. By removing the pressure I put on myself to be a “good” business student, I became a more engaged, happier student and a more confident expert on the issues and topics I’m passionate about.

On Leaving and Returning: Appreciating How Far We’ve Come

It’s one of life’s humbling plot twists that as you begin to excel in one environment, you must leave it. And so last June, I and more than 400 Stanford MBA1s spread our wings and flew out to new horizons at our summer internships. For many, the summer would prove invigorating. For others, it would be frustrating. For me, it taught me how far I’d come.

One reason the “look away” axiom rings so true is that it’s often difficult to evaluate your situation when you’re in the thick of it. That’s why we journal, take vacations, travel the world and seek new experiences. In addition to being novel and providing expansion into new realms of thinking and interacting with the world, new experiences provide perspective on what’s familiar.

This summer, I returned to a relatively familiar environment. While the sector was familiar to me (agriculture), my manner of looking at the same problems and issues had changed. I felt competent, confident, focused and energized. I was like Peter Parker after getting bitten by the radioactive spider in “Spider-Man” — the result is similar, but enhanced.

I didn’t realize before the summer how much I’d learned at the GSB. I just “trusted the process.” By immersing myself into a familiar landscape, I realized how much I’d grown. I felt grateful.

On Pattern Recognition: How Curiosity and Focus Create Opportunities

By having a focus outside the GSB — personally or professionally — we can make the lessons taught in our classrooms more salient.

I’ll give you an example: In an investing class this fall, a private equity investor spoke of the ideal investment scenario.

I had zero exposure to private equity. But I was surprised that rather than growing disengaged with a foreign topic, I engaged with what the speaker was saying.

As he was talking about the right capital structure for a private equity investment, I found myself thinking back to Lance’s farm, which I’d visited only a few weeks prior. Would his farm, as a business, be able to sustain an influx of debt if someone wanted to buy it? What kind of return could be expected from acquiring a farm as an investor? What kind of improvements would you have to make? How could Lance use some of the strategies that private market investors use to evaluate investment opportunities to evaluate business opportunities on his own farm? How does that thinking scale? And are there secrets in risk management that investors know that farmers could benefit from knowing, too?

These thoughts circled my brain alongside images of Lance and his wife walking through corn stubble in their sturdy work pants. It was quite a contrast to the crisp-suited speaker. But thinking about Lance’s farm helped me engage and exposed me to new ways of thinking, new patterns, that I hope one day I can use in my career to drive solutions back to the customers and shareholders I’ll serve.

Looking away is an opportunity to gain perspective. My “away” this past summer happened to be a farm in Iowa. Where will yours be?

Sami Tellatin, from Springfield, Missouri is an MBA2 and also a master’s student in Environment and Resources who hopes to help the agricultural sector bridge the gap between stewardship and profitability.