Well folks, it’s official…your boy is finished with graduate school. The Stanford GSB grad ceremony was on Saturday afternoon and the School of Education one took place yesterday. Now, i’ve got both the MBA and MA in Education degrees in hand and it feels good to know that it’s all over. I still can’t believe that it’s only been three years since I made my decision to apply to business school and only two years since I put in my final notice at my pre-MBA employer. Time flies so quickly when you’re too busy hitting the books to pay attention.
I had a big group of people come out to Palo Alto to support me for my GSB graduation on Saturday. My parents, one of my sisters, a friend of hers, and my great-aunt came out from Virginia, my best friend from college came from DC, his mom came from New Orleans, and another one of my friends came in from NYC. I swear that I had a whole crew of folks who had my back for this event. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wanted to make us all sweat during Saturday’s festivities and I didn’t know if I’d make it. The temperature probably averaged in the mid to upper 80′s and the skies were clear all day, which meant that the sun was BEAMING down on us hard. The first ceremony of the day was the Stanford-wide graduate student commencement. usually, the undergrads and grad students have a single overall commencement, but the football stadium is being renovated this year, so they split the groups. The speaker was a Stanford undergrad and PhD alum named Vartan Gregorian who had a long career in academia before heading up the Carnegie Foundation, where he works now. After gregorian’s speech, President Hennessey introduced the deans of each of the graduate schools, who were charged with introducing their school’s graduates. Everything was relatively calm until the second to last dean was introduced…the GSB’s own Dean Bob Joss. As soon as he stood up, the GSB contingent started getting loud and boisterous. It was like something out of a movie and, when he finally introduced us, we cheered our heads off and started chanting “GSB! GSB!” That was one of the most memorable moments of the entire weekend for me. It was also cool to be able to stand twice, once for the School of Education and once for the GSB. When the MBA/MA.Ed joint degree students in my class stood, our classmates went buckwild for us and it seemed like the GSB crowd was louder for the School of Ed section was when Dean Stipek introduced the Ed students. By the time the ceremony ended, I was on the verge of a heat stroke and still had the GSB graduation coming up later in the afternoon.
The GSB ceremony took place at Frost Ampitheatre at 4pm and, to my surprise, it hadn’t gotten any cooler by that time. Wearing that black grad gown, it felt like my body was at over 100 degrees. Frost Ampitheatre is a natural ampitheatre that was built out of a huge crater right behind the GSB on campus. As part of our entering processional, we had to walk down a large flight of steps to get to our seats and, the entire time, i was afraid that I’d collapse from the heat and embarrass myself at the event I’d been waiting two years for. Fortunately, the GSB folks seemed to know that we’d be dying in that heat because they made the program as efficient as possible. The only speech was a short address given by our dean and then the degrees were awarded. With around 360 MBAs in attendance in addition tot he PhD’s and Sloans, the awarding of degrees took a long time, but it felt good to hear all of those classmates’ names called and to see the excitement in their faces…that was the kind of excitement that you just can’t buy in a store. As it turns out, I didn’t end up winning the Arbuckle Award at the ceremony and, when i heard the winner’s name called, I must admit that it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I guess I’m fine now, but I definitely got some valuable lessons out of the Arbuckle Award experience about social capital, time management, and managing expectations. Looks like the learning didn’t end when classes ended a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the GSB graduation, I couldn’t wait to get home, where my 4 roomies and I had a huge dinner at our house for all of our families. Seeing five young Black men who had just picked up their Stanford MBAs and the pride that our families had for us would have been a great way to close out a film about how people can work hard to reach the highest of acheivements.
By the time the Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) ceremony came yesterday, my family and out-of-town friends had already left, so my GF was my only guest there. Surprisingly, only three out of the ~15 joint degree students attended the SUSE graduation, so the three of us felt like outsiders there. I won’t go into details, but the ceremony was nice, despite some things that seemed less prepared than what I saw at the GSB graduation. The thing that stuck out the most about the SUSE graduation was that the Ed. students exhibited the same passion that amazed me whenever I saw it in my Education classes. They were cheering for each other and the cheers got especially loud when the PhDs went on stage to get their hoods and officially finish their programs. A strange part of the ceremony was that they had the directors of the SUSE Master’s programs hood each of the Master’s graduates on stage, an action that was reserved for only the PhD students in the GSB graduation the day before. Upon completion of the processional after the awarding of degrees, I felt a sense of relief come over me because I knew that it was all finished. It was an incredibly long weekend of running around trying to coordinate my visitors, attend ceremonies, and make deadlines and it felt great to know that I made it through it all.
I’m not going to write up a long drawn up conclusion to this entry like most of the other MBA student bloggers have been doing lately because this isn’t going to be my final blog entry. I know that most people end theirs upon graduation, but it seems like there is still so much more for me to write about in terms of what it’s like to prepare for a re-entry into the Real World. Many people have asked me when I’m planning on stopping this blog and I honestly don’t know what to tell them at this point. I’ll definitely keep it going through the end of the summer when i start at McKinsey, but, after that, I don’t know if I’d have enough pertinent things to say to keep people reading. Whatever happens, I’ll make sure that I make the most out of the entries that I write this summer just in case they end up being my final ones.
Ok, time for me to get back to packing up my room. I told the MBA1′s who are taking over my house that I’d be out by tomorrow night and I have a LONG way to go…
I had a big group of people come out to Palo Alto to support me for my GSB graduation on Saturday. My parents, one of my sisters, a friend of hers, and my great-aunt came out from Virginia, my best friend from college came from DC, his mom came from New Orleans, and another one of my friends came in from NYC. I swear that I had a whole crew of folks who had my back for this event. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wanted to make us all sweat during Saturday’s festivities and I didn’t know if I’d make it. The temperature probably averaged in the mid to upper 80′s and the skies were clear all day, which meant that the sun was BEAMING down on us hard. The first ceremony of the day was the Stanford-wide graduate student commencement. usually, the undergrads and grad students have a single overall commencement, but the football stadium is being renovated this year, so they split the groups. The speaker was a Stanford undergrad and PhD alum named Vartan Gregorian who had a long career in academia before heading up the Carnegie Foundation, where he works now. After gregorian’s speech, President Hennessey introduced the deans of each of the graduate schools, who were charged with introducing their school’s graduates. Everything was relatively calm until the second to last dean was introduced…the GSB’s own Dean Bob Joss. As soon as he stood up, the GSB contingent started getting loud and boisterous. It was like something out of a movie and, when he finally introduced us, we cheered our heads off and started chanting “GSB! GSB!” That was one of the most memorable moments of the entire weekend for me. It was also cool to be able to stand twice, once for the School of Education and once for the GSB. When the MBA/MA.Ed joint degree students in my class stood, our classmates went buckwild for us and it seemed like the GSB crowd was louder for the School of Ed section was when Dean Stipek introduced the Ed students. By the time the ceremony ended, I was on the verge of a heat stroke and still had the GSB graduation coming up later in the afternoon.
The GSB ceremony took place at Frost Ampitheatre at 4pm and, to my surprise, it hadn’t gotten any cooler by that time. Wearing that black grad gown, it felt like my body was at over 100 degrees. Frost Ampitheatre is a natural ampitheatre that was built out of a huge crater right behind the GSB on campus. As part of our entering processional, we had to walk down a large flight of steps to get to our seats and, the entire time, i was afraid that I’d collapse from the heat and embarrass myself at the event I’d been waiting two years for. Fortunately, the GSB folks seemed to know that we’d be dying in that heat because they made the program as efficient as possible. The only speech was a short address given by our dean and then the degrees were awarded. With around 360 MBAs in attendance in addition tot he PhD’s and Sloans, the awarding of degrees took a long time, but it felt good to hear all of those classmates’ names called and to see the excitement in their faces…that was the kind of excitement that you just can’t buy in a store. As it turns out, I didn’t end up winning the Arbuckle Award at the ceremony and, when i heard the winner’s name called, I must admit that it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I guess I’m fine now, but I definitely got some valuable lessons out of the Arbuckle Award experience about social capital, time management, and managing expectations. Looks like the learning didn’t end when classes ended a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the GSB graduation, I couldn’t wait to get home, where my 4 roomies and I had a huge dinner at our house for all of our families. Seeing five young Black men who had just picked up their Stanford MBAs and the pride that our families had for us would have been a great way to close out a film about how people can work hard to reach the highest of acheivements.
By the time the Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) ceremony came yesterday, my family and out-of-town friends had already left, so my GF was my only guest there. Surprisingly, only three out of the ~15 joint degree students attended the SUSE graduation, so the three of us felt like outsiders there. I won’t go into details, but the ceremony was nice, despite some things that seemed less prepared than what I saw at the GSB graduation. The thing that stuck out the most about the SUSE graduation was that the Ed. students exhibited the same passion that amazed me whenever I saw it in my Education classes. They were cheering for each other and the cheers got especially loud when the PhDs went on stage to get their hoods and officially finish their programs. A strange part of the ceremony was that they had the directors of the SUSE Master’s programs hood each of the Master’s graduates on stage, an action that was reserved for only the PhD students in the GSB graduation the day before. Upon completion of the processional after the awarding of degrees, I felt a sense of relief come over me because I knew that it was all finished. It was an incredibly long weekend of running around trying to coordinate my visitors, attend ceremonies, and make deadlines and it felt great to know that I made it through it all.
I’m not going to write up a long drawn up conclusion to this entry like most of the other MBA student bloggers have been doing lately because this isn’t going to be my final blog entry. I know that most people end theirs upon graduation, but it seems like there is still so much more for me to write about in terms of what it’s like to prepare for a re-entry into the Real World. Many people have asked me when I’m planning on stopping this blog and I honestly don’t know what to tell them at this point. I’ll definitely keep it going through the end of the summer when i start at McKinsey, but, after that, I don’t know if I’d have enough pertinent things to say to keep people reading. Whatever happens, I’ll make sure that I make the most out of the entries that I write this summer just in case they end up being my final ones.
Ok, time for me to get back to packing up my room. I told the MBA1′s who are taking over my house that I’d be out by tomorrow night and I have a LONG way to go…
that was a candid description, and i am sorry abt the Arbuckle award not working out.
i was also surprised why someone could have asked you to stop the blog. i for one would love to see you keep writing.
FG, Thanks for the shout out, man. I think I might have mistyped something if it sounded like I said that someone asked me to stop the blog. I meant to say that people asked me whether I was planning to stop the blog.
Marquis, you need to know that you rock.
I voted for you for Arbuckle, and there’s no question in my mind that you deserved it, even though I was pretty sure that the other person would end up winning. That’s just the way things go down sometimes. In 20 years, though, I’m still going to remember all the things you did for our class, and I’m probably not going to remember who won Arbuckle. It’s who you are that counts, not what awards you win.
Anonymous,
Dang, I wish i knew who you were so I could thank you personally for your kind words. I pretty much knew how the vote would shake out because of the dynamics within the class, but there’s nothing that can be done about it now. In the future, I’ll just follow Prof. Ellis’ advice to be as ruthless as possible with my time and then i’ll let everything else fall how it will.
-Marquis
congrats man!!! good luck at mckinsey. thanks again for the help in the process. i’ll be freezing my @$$ of on the east coast for the next 2 yrs, but appreciated all of your insight into the gsb. this blog was invaluable as well.
EG, NYC
Thanks for the shout out, EG. I wish you’d have chosen the GSB, but I know you’ll do well at HBS. Good luck with your MBA journey and I’ll have to check you out at the HBS Black student association conference this year.