Social Anxiety at Stanford Business School
Do social dynamics at the GSB remind you of high school? If so, you’re not alone.
“Who else is coming?”
This question bothers some at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). A fellow GSB classmate described how he feels when others ask him that question after he invites them to an outing: He would think to himself, “Am I not good enough for you?” Worries about how others perceive him at the GSB soon followed.
This is social anxiety. There’s a Social Anxiety Institute; it defines social anxiety as “the fear of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people” and usually leading to “feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, self-consciousness, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression.”
Social anxiety seems to pervade the GSB, but for a community proud of being vulnerable, few feel comfortable talking about it. If we do discuss it, we’ll do so only with our close friends.
To help break the stigma, I investigated what social anxiety looks like at the GSB. Here’s what I found.
After speaking with a dozen of our classmates about it, consistent moments came up. GSB-related social anxiety sounds like the following: “What am I missing out on this weekend?” “What travel (or WhatsApp) groups have I not been invited to? Why not?” “Will my social status suffer if I don’t stay with so-and-so in the same Airbnb?” “Is what I wrote on Slack too brash? If so, should I edit it?” “Should I join The League?” “What does she really think about me?” And, of course, “Should I be wearing Patagonia?”
These troubles can seem trivial. Wars rage abroad; displacement threatens our neighbors in East Palo Alto; RVs line the campus on Camino Real. Yet, even reminding myself about the hardships people outside the GSB bubble endure can be difficult at times. Something about being here has a way of making us feel divorced from the realities of people who aren’t super privileged. After all, “Business school is an all-encompassing experience,” says Samantha Ealy (MBA ’19). “You can’t help but become fully wrapped up in it. It’s so easy to become disconnected from what’s going on outside the GSB or the VC world or who’s teaching what class,” she adds.
But what’s causing the social anxiety? One theory is that, at the GSB, where ambitious people congregate and place a high premium on networking, there’s a tendency to optimize for social relationships — even more so than academic performance — for professional purposes down the line. (And, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this tendency, but there are costs associated with it.)
As a result, the social dimension here becomes amplified, and we end up becoming worked up by it. That’s why making friends can feel hyper competitive at the GSB. Moreover, the social pressure to be nice to one another can leave us wondering what others truly think about us or which interactions stem from a desire to be close to someone for the sake of being close versus strategic social positioning for a future benefit. For all these reasons, socializing at the GSB can feel performative and exhausting.
Besides the social angst, however, do we pay any other toll by optimizing our approach to socializing so we may, one day, draw on our social capital to “change lives, change organizations, change the world”? According to Casey Oswald (MBA ’19), “We lose out on the sacred ‘shire’ life amidst our desire to optimize so we can scale our impact.” I realize he’s referring to the Hobbits’ settlement in The Lord of the Rings. “I have family. I have friendships. I have community. They are my shire. Don’t forget that shire,” he adds with a chuckle.
Casey may be on to something. The longest study on happiness concludes that “good relationships keep us happier and healthier.” Robert Waldinger, the director of the study, claims that “people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier, they’re physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.” Waldinger also highlights that “it’s the quality of your close relationships that matters,” as opposed to the number of friends you may have or whether you’re in a committed relationship. Finally, he stresses that the people in the 75-year study who were happiest in retirement were not those who prioritized fame, wealth, and high achievement throughout their lives, but those who “leaned into relationships with family, with friends, with community.”
In summary, at the GSB, networking may cause us to neglect nourishing the relationships we’ve already built and that matter most to us — relationships we forged long before arriving here, for example, or even our relationship with ourselves. And the resulting anxiety over manufactured social problems may cause us to lose sight of the life-or-death struggles unfolding beyond our nook of the woods.
As for solutions, I don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer. But I believe that shared experiences help us feel closer to and less anxiety around one another. Often, however, such experiences, like ski trips to Utah, are inaccessible to a sizable number of students for various reasons — one big reason being financial cost. Thus, it would be great if the GSB administration and student government collaborated to provide highly subsidized, if not free, optional activities for students who can’t attend an exclusive or expensive student-organized event. For example, why not offer a free weekend retreat for MBA1s during Week Zero?
Back to the question, “who else is coming?” There may be numerous reasons we ask this question. For instance, perhaps we have a crush on someone else who may be attending the excursion, and, therefore, we want to know whether we should look extra dapper. Or, we want to maximize our social utility, and so, we compare this outing against another one to which we have been invited. And, again, even if our intention is the latter, that’s okay. Let us just not forget our shire.
