Everything I learned at MIT and HBS

I  recently got my Harvard MBA attended some classes at Harvard Business School. Because I bore easily,  I also got an engineering degree at went to some classes at MIT. I may have been wearing the cutest outfit in the room but these people are so damn smart they didn’t notice. These people think so fast and are so smart, I found myself silent in ways I so seldom am. When I realized they could also be charming and funny, I considered jumping off a bridge. Hey, that’s my thing. You are not allowed to have all. 

mit-nancy

acting like you belong is 9/10ths of the law

We rode bikes along the Charles to class (I felt 20!), had breakfast and lunch with both alumni and current students and went to lectures. I had desperate and enduring regret that I did not work as hard at 20 as I do now.  I also somewhat regret begging my grade 10 Math teacher to give me a 51- Pass me and you will never see me again. That was the end of my caustic relationship with numbers.

I was in an incredible city, with a very smart guy and hundreds of smartypants people. I had the great fortune of revisiting many good lessons-

 

1. Work hard. When you think you have worked your hardest, dial it up another notch.

2. Act bigger than you are.

3. Kaleidoscope thinking is better than outside of the box thinking. You take the problem, look at it differently, shake it, look at it through a different lens.

4. Everything can look like failure in the middle.

5. Do something completely out of character from time to time.

6. It’s not ‘find yourself’ it’s ‘find your purpose’.

7. Constantly raise the bar for yourself.

8. Never live inside any paradigm

9. Keep your goals and windows open.

10. Do your big ideas by connecting.

11. Keep that sense of wonder.

 

A brilliant woman of science, with so many letters after her name it was like alphabet soup, opened her lecture with something gorgeous-

When I am having a really bad day, I try to remember that I was once just a single cell. That’s quite a trajectory.

Take that one with you. Have a beautiful day.

HBS just try not to get a big head

HBS -just try not to get a big head

 

2 thoughts on “Everything I learned at MIT and HBS

    • isn’t it the best? Keeps us thinking we are pretty marvellous when times are tough. xox

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