When a literary-type enrolls in an executive MBA program, an evaluative eye naturally remains open. I may be doing my best to learn, but a part of my brain remains open, judging, assessing, characterizing what is happening around me. And though the seriousness of it, the workload and the nature of what we're doing, consumes my energy, I still want to write about it.
Here, I am faced with a dilemma that is at least ethical, but goes beyond that. Writing publicly about my experience in the EMBA program is tricky. I think the blog is the perfect forum because it allows me to debate things openly. Not only do I want to write about my experience, but I also want to get into what is being covered in the courses. As well as what is going on in the real world.
My instinct for self-preservation tells me this is risky. Writing critically about the program, the faculty, or other students might get in trouble. It's not as if my name isn't all over this blog. If I fail to mention the name of the college, or the name of any other student or professor that at least might help me avoid any pesky Google searches.
So, I'll tread lightly, I suppose.
Coming into an MBA with such an obviously objective/skeptical mind (I highly doubt you'll ever truly drink the MBA Kool-aid), there's no way you'll be able to make comments here that won't get you in trouble. So I suggest you start a second, anonymous blog as a venting outlet.
ReplyDeleteI went to grad school in the early 1990s (not only pre-blog but even pre-WWW) and quickly realized there was so much official idiocy going on there that I simply had to comment on it publicly. So I self-published an underground newspaper/pamphlet that skewered everyone whom I thought deserved skewering - all of it completely anonymous. Even my best friends didn't know it was me who wrote it. Had anyone known, it would have inevitably gotten back to the professors and the administration, and I definitely would have gotten in trouble for expressing my views. If I was doing the same thing today, obviously I'd do so with an anonymous blog instead of a printed pamphlet, which is what I suggest you do.
You'll never be able to write completely freely about things that bother you about the program unless you keep it anonymous. That way, there's no need to tread lightly. You can say exactly what you want to say.