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How To Spend Second Year

One question on everyone’s mind these days is what are you going to do when you graduate? Have you decided on your summer offer yet? What geography are you going to live in? No matter how hard many of us try to avoid the question, at some point soon many of us are going to have to answer. Especially now. As job postings are starting to expire on the Career Website. And as interviews are just a few weeks away. In the end, this makes many of us wonder how the second year experience will actually end up playing out. Will it be fun? Or will it be a lot more work than expected?

Overall, everyone hears that second year is supposed to be a lot of fun. No more core classes. No more morning classes. Not overwhelmed with extracurricular activities. And hopefully job security at the beginning of the year.

For most, the summer was a bit of a wake up call. That no matter what job we had – even if was our dream job – work was still work. And no matter how bad school might seem in the moment, it’s still usually a lot more enjoyable than work. The bankers and consultants definitely understand the concept after the number of hours they worked this summer. That eventually, the “two year vacation” will come to an end so they have to make the most of it in the second year. Likewise, career changers are also nervous about embarking on a new career and seeing what will be in store for them.

For everyone, in school, we spend two years looking at the world through eyes of the CEO and through the lense of the investor. But after the second year is over, then many of us are back to the trenches. To do the due diligence. Run the analysis. Edit the documents. Create the slides. And travel back and forth between clients.

In that sense, the Kellogg environment, and the Evanston bubble, is pretty nice. We get to be more academic and get to have more fun for a two year period. But soon enough, we’ll have to change again. We’ll have to perform again. We have to get reviews again. As a result, many people are thinking a lot about how they want to spend their second year. How much they want to recruit for the job of their dreams. When to give in and accept an offer. How hard to work in class. And how to take advantage of everything they didn’t get to do before school.

In sum, they wonder how to spend their second year. How would you spend your second year in business school?