Jess: Welcome back to another episode of How to Twenty-Something, with me your host Jess and a very special guest and good friend of mine, Carlos!

Where today we’re going to talk about whether or not you should go back to school to further your education.

Now, everyone’s reasoning is going to be different, so this is just one perspective for you to consider when trying to make your decision.

And if this is something you’re really torn between with whether or not you should go back and what that means for your current and future life and goals, then please know this is what I help support twenty-somethings with!

So as a reminder, go head to the show notes and click the let’s chat link and schedule a day and time that works for you so I can help you feel confident about the decision you’re going to make and a plan to get you going.

This is not a decision you should be making lightly, as it does require some thought, and everyone’s back-to-school experience is going to look very different too. For example, I have clients and friends who went back this year and still work their full-time jobs, I have friends who completely quit their jobs and are a full-time student, and I have clients who are part-time in school and full-time working.

Regardless of the decision you make, you need to know how to best prepare for the lifestyle and the sacrifices that accompany this decision, and that’s what we’re here to help you gain some insight towards today. And hopefully, by the end of this episode you’ll know whether or not this back-to-school life is for you.

And while you head to the show notes, go ahead and sign up for my next workshop called Find My Friends — it’s a free one-hour Zoom call on Wednesday, September 25th at 7:30pm EST, and it’s for young adults who want to know how to move an acquaintance along the friendship scale to best friend / core person level. Because meeting people is easy, but meeting your people is hard.

Again you can find that link in the show notes or at jessdiamondcoaching.com/friends, but you have to sign up in order to receive the Zoom link, the replay, and the worksheet.

But back to the show — I’m going to first introduce who you’ll be listening to and then we’ll get right into it.

Carlos Piedrahita is a rising second year at Harvard Business School pursuing his MBA. After originally finishing his undergrad degree at the University of Florida with Jess, he worked at Deloitte Consulting in customer strategy and later on with Grubhub doing sales strategy.

He spends his limited free time traveling, many times solo, playing team sports like rugby, and attending as many speaker events as possible. Carlos hopes to use his MBA to pivot into the intersection of media & technology in some capacity.

Hi Carlos, welcome to How to Twenty-Something.

Carlos: Thanks, Jess, I’d love to be here.

Jess: Now I want to start with the most pressing question and then we’ll get into more of the nitty gritty details later on — but what sparked this motivation to return back to school after being in the working world for a few years? Or did you always know you would go back to school and further your degree?

Carlos: Yeah, so on that latter piece, I always thought I’d want to further my education. I think education is something that people can never take away from you. And I had started studying for my GMAT, which is the testing you take to go back to business school. And I wasn’t taking it super seriously. And it wasn’t until I had just moved to San Diego — I was enjoying my time there, but I felt like pretty stagnant. My career, it was just putting in the hours day in and day out, but I didn’t have a direction, something I was working towards. And I started to wonder, what am I passionate about? What am I trying to do? And after I gave it some more thought, I realized I wanted to pivot industries, and an MBA is a really good way to do that. So once I had that idea, I started brainstorming — all right, what’s my actual story, what’s my why behind getting an MBA. And once it started to make sense that an MBA made sense for me, then I had a direction. And using that direction, I was able to study and do everything I needed to do to finally make it to graduate school.

Jess: Throughout this entire process — studying, applying, accepting, and now attending — do you ever worry that this was all for nothing, that you’re going to change industries and feel that same lack of direction?

Carlos: Thanks for bringing up some anxieties again. I think that fear is always going to be there. I think very few people in the world get lucky enough where they know exactly what they want to do and are able to find opportunity to do so. I think at the end of the day, sometimes work is just work, and you find fulfillment through other means. But I think the idea with getting my MBA was to at least attempt to get closer to my passion in my everyday career. And I do worry after I graduate that we’re going to go back to square one — perhaps in a different position, perhaps in a different industry, and maybe again I’m just aimlessly putting in my hours day in and day out and not working towards something. But I think an MBA is a really good way to kind of take some time off, learn about different careers, different industries, different classes, meet different people who come from different walks of life. And through that you’re able to identify, all right, this is kind of what I like — I’ve never even heard of this career, maybe this is something I want to pursue. And maybe I’m not one of the lucky ones and I figure out what I want to do after these two years, or maybe I am. But I don’t regret it — I think this was a great eye-opening opportunity for me to understand what’s out there.

Jess: Yeah — because even if you do end up back at square one, you’re never really at square one because you’ve been in this situation before, only now you have additional knowledge as to what you can do this time, so you get a different outcome. And I know I would rather live a life of “I did’s” and not “what ifs,” so if you didn’t even go — if you didn’t try to go back to school — you would have constantly been thinking to yourself, “but what if I did,” and it’s that fear of regret that helps drive the scary and risky decisions we make.

Was there a moment when you were like, “yep, this was definitely the right decision for me?”

Carlos: My high school quote in my high school yearbook is “you regret more the things that you didn’t do than the things that you did.” And you’re right — I’d always have that nagging feeling of what if — what if I did my MBA, where would I be in the world today? And since this was a goal of mine, I’m happy to do it, and no matter the outcome, I’m proud of myself.

Jess: Are you allowed to name drop who your favorite speakers have been? I hope it’s not classified — I don’t think it would be — but who have been some of your favorites?

Carlos: Yeah, so besides the feeling that I had a direction, and besides being able to very humbly get into Harvard, which is something I never thought I’d be able to say — once I got onto campus, just being surrounded by so many ambitious people, my peers, everyone comes from very impressive career backgrounds, everyone’s working at a startup or they want to go into finance or whatever — all that was very exciting. But it wasn’t until the speakers that came to campus that I was like, okay, I made it, this is super cool. I think I’m very blessed to have the opportunity where some of the greatest minds, some of the most accomplished people, come to Harvard Business School campus, and then very randomly on another week it’ll be like, yeah, the founder of this very notable company will be here, or this famous sports star will be here, or so-and-so is talking about how they started their billion-dollar business.

I think I’m allowed to name drop — what’s cool about the campus is they use a case method to teach the class. The case method usually has a protagonist, and a lot of the time they’ll bring in the protagonist and they’ll say, “you guys had a really great discussion, this is what I actually did and this is what the outcome was.” It’s such a cool way to actually learn from the people who did it. We had Kevin O’Leary — he hosted a Shark Tank special where startups pitched to him. Each of the clubs has industry-related speakers too — the retail luxury club has brought in the CEO of Lululemon, the CEO of North America for Louis Vuitton, stuff like that. My personal favorite — I’m part of the entertainment and media club, actually on the board now — they brought in Michael Jackson’s lawyer, and that was super interesting because he had stories you’re not going to find online. It’s just the most random thing, like on a Tuesday it’s “Michael Jackson’s lawyer is in town, let’s see what he has to say for 60 minutes,” and it’s super cool.

Jess: Oh that’s pretty cool — and you mentioned that you’re in a club now, and I remember when I visited you there was a little stress about meeting people, but we also know how powerful networking and building connections is. I would even say it’s one of the many reasons people do decide to go back to school. Can you talk about how you have been able to network for yourself, or any tips for my listeners about networking when it comes to going back to school?

Carlos: Absolutely — networking is one of the main things, if not probably the main thing, a lot of people say going back to school is good for. Unfortunately academics is probably not even top three on that list. But you need to be very intentional with it. If you go to a top MBA, the brand name is going to carry some weight no matter where you go in your career. There’s an alumni network that wants to support other people within that network — even we both went to University of Florida, and there are alumni further along in their careers who want to help fellow Gators. Same idea with MBA programs, except some of these alumni are maybe very well connected in certain industries that can open doors for you.

I think the intentional part is: when you’re a student, you can get away with so many things. Sure, when you graduate, other Harvard people might help you out, but as a student you can go and literally LinkedIn-message the CEO of some company and they probably won’t respond — but you’d be surprised at the response rate you do get. Everyone wants to help students, because everyone remembers their time in school fondly. And that’s something the school really emphasizes: use these two years, use the time when you have a .edu email, to reach out to alumni, learn about the industry, get all the information you need — because after you graduate, sometimes it becomes irrelevant.

And going back to the speakers point — the clubs are completely student-run. It’s not the school administration bringing these speakers in, it’s students reaching out to the CEOs of these companies or notable speakers saying, “would you want to speak at our club meeting?” And you’d be very surprised at the response rate you get. I put on the media entertainment conference and part of my job was reaching out to speakers, and I was surprised at the response I was getting on cold emails — just because I had an HBS email address.

Jess: I didn’t even think about the email address and how valuable having a .edu is. But I want to fast forward to right now, because as I mentioned when I was introducing you, you are a rising second year, meaning you just completed your first year and have a break over the summer where you got an internship in New York City. Did you go about finding this internship yourself, or is it required to graduate from your MBA?

Carlos: So the MBA programs are generally a two-year program — there are accelerated programs that are only a year, generally the international MBA programs are a year and the US programs are generally two years. With the two-year program there’s a summer between the two years — obviously that’s where we are right now — and an internship is actually a required part of your curriculum. It can take many different forms — it doesn’t have to be a traditional internship at a company, which is what I’m doing right now in New York. I have friends who are working at other startups in Boston. All you gotta say is, “this is my startup, this is what I’m working on,” and HBS will provide resources and take that as a credit. You can even help your fellow classmates’ startups. As long as you’re working on something over the summer, then they’re okay with it. The idea is you’re not taking the summer just to travel and take a break — you’re taking the summer to have a free schedule of classes but further whatever career and interests you have.

Jess: Ok so you need your internship to graduate. One of the things I regret about my undergrad was they sort of required an internship — the summer between your junior and senior year you had an internship credit you needed to complete, and only during that time could you go study abroad, with your study abroad counting towards that internship credit. I don’t regret studying abroad at all, but it did make it a lot more challenging for the five of us who chose that option to land a job after graduation. Now from a financial perspective, are all of these internships paid, or does it not matter?

Carlos: My internship is paid. If you want more context on the breakdown — I have friends getting paid at a very high scale, going from big professional service firms, finance, consulting, you name it. I have friends who are more in a general corporate function, still getting paid, but perhaps not at a very high scale. And then I have friends who’ve reached out to startups saying, “hey, I want to intern for you,” and the startup says, “well, we can’t pay you,” and they say, “you don’t need to pay me, I just want to intern for you.” Something that’s really great at HBS — and I’m sure other MBA programs do this too — there’s a fellowship for the summer where if you want to work for a startup that’s bootstrapped and can’t afford to pay you, the school will give you a stipend or work with the company to match whatever they can pay. So maybe you’re not getting paid at the top of the scale of your peers, but you have some sort of income for the summer to sustain your living.

Jess: I love that Harvard does that, and I also want to clarify that every time Carlos says HBS, that stands for Harvard Business School.

Carlos: Yeah, that’s what it stands for. You might have to put a disclaimer at the beginning — Harvard Business School equals HBS — because I’m sure I’ve already used that a lot.

Jess: Yes, thank you for clarifying, haha. Now I know a large part of making this decision is knowing you have the support from the people you care about. How did your friends and family react when you told them you were quitting your job to go back to school? I know my reaction was “wait, you’re smart” — but what about other people?

Carlos: Yeah, it’s crazy, because depending on your background, the schools you went to, the careers you had, the whole graduate school / MBA world is kind of shrouded in mystery for a lot of people. A lot of my friends, people I grew up with, don’t really understand the MBA world — people get “that’s a degree,” but a lot of people do it part-time or online to save money. The very consistent reaction I got from my friends was, “why are you quitting your job? Why don’t you just do this on the weekend?” A lot of people look at it almost like a certification. But the way these top full-time MBA programs work, it’s less about just getting a certification on your resume — that’s honestly not even a top-five reason. It’s about the networking, being fully ingrained with your peers for two years, ingrained with alumni and speakers, taking classes Monday through Friday, going to clubs, doing recruiting full-time — getting the full experience that you don’t get if you do it online or on the weekend. And you can only get your MBA once, so if I’m going to do it, I decided I’m going to do it correctly.

My family is similar — they haven’t gotten their MBAs, they don’t really understand that world either. I think they were just happy for me to do what I wanted to do. At first they were confused about the finances — once I explained how much it actually costs, they were kind of surprised I would do it, since I had a good career coming out of undergrad and was on a good trajectory. But once I explained it and showed how passionate I was, they were happy for me. And one thing that really calmed their nerves — I look at it as a bet on myself. So instead of investing my money in the market, I’m investing my money in me, in education, in opening these doors and opportunities. Maybe it pans out, maybe it doesn’t, but if I’m going to bet money anywhere, I bet it on me. My parents were really happy with that mentality, so hopefully I can live up to it.

That said, my friends still don’t fully understand some of it — how I’m taking out loans, paying for school — they’ll see my Instagram stories and don’t even think I’m at school. That’s probably a topic for later. But that was generally the consensus.

Jess: Yeah, I am definitely in that group that is thinking “this guy is just back in his college glory days off partying and traveling, is he even getting any work done.” But I am glad you brought up finances when it comes to paying for school, and I think the fear of debt is what prevents a lot of people from following through, because this is a big financial decision. How did you prepare yourself financially for this path? Is there anything you wish you did differently or maybe hadn’t considered?

Carlos: So what I did to prepare — what a lot of people don’t understand is if you really put in the effort, depending on what schools you apply to, you’re not paying sticker price for these schools. It’s very daunting, the price for a graduate program, and I completely understand that — however a lot of schools offer financial aid and scholarships. I applied to maybe too many schools, honestly, because I didn’t know where I’d land, and I was very fortunate to get multiple scholarships, and HBS was able to offer me some financial aid as well, so I’m not paying sticker price. That said, it’s not a novel amount of money I need to pay for school, and on top of that you’re giving up your income for two years — you still have to pay living expenses, and if you want to be part of the networking, that involves paying for trips, dinners — some of the hidden expenses of an MBA that people don’t really talk about, and it’s not on the list the school gives you.

What I did differently: I had savings — I like to think I was pretty fiscally responsible in the few years I was working before my MBA. I wanted to minimize the amount of loans I’d take, so I went through my savings, liquidated my non-retirement stock portfolio to pay everything off, and then took some loans — less than if I hadn’t done all that. Unfortunately the market’s been pretty hot the past year, so the returns people got in the market pretty heavily outweigh the interest rate on the loan I took out — but you can never predict the market, maybe it would’ve gone the other way and I’d have been the smart one either way. That said, the loans I’m taking out would make people hesitant for sure, and maybe this isn’t the most novel advice, but “scared money don’t make money.” Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s opening up all these doors.

Jess: And I think there are two key things you just mentioned — one is that this was not a decision you made lightly, you had the savings and are willing to put in the work so you aren’t eyeball-deep in debt by the time you graduate, and secondly you’re investing. It’s an investment that looks different than a Roth IRA or something, but I always say the best investment you can ever make is in yourself.

Carlos: Hopefully the money I’m taking out now, the debt I’m taking out now, is a drop in the bucket 20 years down the line. And if you look at some of the people who come through Harvard Business School — those are the people who become CEOs of companies, startup founders, all this stuff — these student loans I’m taking out are nothing big in the future. And I’m a very risky person, I like to think I’m not risk-averse, so I’m willing to take this risk, willing to bet on myself even at the daunting vision of loans, to open up doors in the future.

The way they framed it: it’s a 20-year decision, not just a few-year decision. If you do the math — if I continue making my income and get whatever raise every year, it might not make sense to pay this money and lose two years of income. And you know what, maybe it doesn’t make sense for you if this is the industry you want to be in — that’s fair. But for me personally, I saw the ROI over a span of a 20, 30-year career, as opposed to just looking at it in a few-year span.

Jess: Yeah, and you were able to save because you had a few years of work under your belt — the downside of that is because you were in the working world for a few years, you’re out of practice at being a student. Was it difficult for you to get back into the habit of studying after taking so much time off?

Carlos: Yeah, I was actually very excited for it. I know a lot of people don’t like school — that was me for a little while too — but back at University of Florida I actually got my MS, a master’s in international business, a common program people do there in conjunction with their undergrad. I took grad-level courses when I was there and really enjoyed them compared to undergrad. Undergrad courses, at least for me at the time, felt like I had to memorize information and regurgitate it for an exam, forget it, move on. The grad-level courses were more like intellectual conversations, thinking at a higher level, less about the grade and more about learning, hearing from people who’ve done it, practicing with others interested in the topics. I really enjoyed those, and similarly when I got to campus here I’ve really enjoyed the courses too.

I’ll say HBS is probably one of the more academic-focused MBA programs compared to some peer schools — there’s a lot of homework, a lot of reading, classes Monday through Friday, multiple hours a day, so it gets exhausting on top of everything else. Even if a class is only two and a half to four hours, plus homework for the next day, plus socializing, plus recruiting, plus networking — it all adds up and it’s exhausting. There’s no “you finish work, close your laptop, you’re done” — you’re kind of on all the time. But I will say it’s champagne problems — whenever I catch myself complaining I look down at my case, it says Harvard Business School on it, and I feel so grateful to be in the position I’m in.

Jess: Which makes sense, because you are choosing to be there — it’s something you’re wanting to do for yourself, so you’re going to care more, it’s going to be higher-level conversations, deeper subject matter, and not just regurgitating information for an exam. And your time is more intentional — my coach likes to call it a high-class problem when you don’t have a lot of time on your hands and maybe feel stressed about it all, but it’s because that time is being spent well. It’s the sports, the building connections, the studying, the class time — it all adds up, but it’s adding up for you to reach your next level.

Carlos: Thank you, I’ve been practicing my active listening skills.

Jess: Yeah, being self-employed is my investment in myself, and it comes with similar time management and financial planning — what have been some of the biggest challenges behind making this transition from work back to academic life?

Carlos: I think that was a perfect analysis of what we just discussed — A+ for you, Jess. I think undergrad is kind of an extension of high school, even though it’s not compulsory — you’re not really focused on what you’re trying to accomplish, mostly, not for everyone. And I can’t imagine what it’s like being a self-employed business owner like you — I’m sure it’s stressful, I have peers who do the same thing, where if you don’t put in the work you’re not getting paid, there’s no career trajectory, no one’s going to promote you. Your success is directly tied to you, which is scary but also extremely fulfilling.

Biggest challenges — I think a big one is, two years may seem like a long time, but it really flies by. I’m more than halfway done at this point, and you only get one shot at this. You have this expectation — you’re using this degree, paying all this money to fulfill whatever goals you have going in — and if you don’t get it done in two years, you feel like maybe you were a failure, maybe you didn’t take advantage of all the opportunity you had. Even now I feel this way a bit — maybe I could’ve done more the first year to explore other industries, network more, or maybe I should’ve started a business. Luckily I have one more year and feel pretty energized getting back to school, but there’s this very high expectation that going to HBS, or any MBA program, means you’re going to accomplish all these things, and people have expectations for you.

Besides that, transition-wise, there’s a lot of travel in MBA programs — I’m not a stranger to travel, so that part was new but not overwhelming. My class is 900 people, which is a ton, over two years of classes — other MBA programs are smaller. You’re surrounded by people generally in the same age range, generally new to each other — it’s like a mini high school or mini undergrad again, where you’re surrounded by all these social scenes, want to make lifelong friends, but also want to get everything else done. Fitting into that whole social dynamic can be overwhelming, especially if you’re more introverted.

A lot of people at this point also have partners to think of — managing long-distance relationships, or their partner moved for them, and you have to balance your career, your classmates, and a partner. There’s just a lot to take in all at once, very overwhelming. I’m lucky, or maybe unlucky, to have come in single, so I was able to just focus on myself, as opposed to classmates who have children and are trying to be a parent while doing everything else business school has to offer.

Jess: Yeah it is a big time commitment, and if you have other obligations you need to be able to factor that in — maybe that means going very part-time or online, or knowing you’ll need to put your life on hold so you can propel yourself forward later, again bringing it back to that bigger-picture mindset. I think the way you’re doing it is smart, so you can fully invest your time and energy into this one thing and not stress about juggling so many things at once. Now I want to jump back to networking but under the topic of friends, because I mentioned earlier that I went to visit you — I think just as the semester was starting, since I was in town for my grandfather’s 90th birthday — and you didn’t even have a bed frame yet, your stuff was still in boxes (laugh), hopefully you have a bed frame now. But how was it for you with making friends? I know you to be pretty extroverted, so I want to add to that and ask if you can talk about what you’ve observed with other people’s experiences, and if you’ve noticed anyone falling behind in the friend department.

Carlos: This is great, thanks, Jess. You needed that info — I have a bed frame.

It’s been a year now and I’ve been lucky enough to make some awesome friends. But even now, there’s this dynamic where you don’t know where to invest your time. At the very beginning, everyone emphasizes networking, so you want to make friends with everyone, meet as many people as possible — you invested all this money, you don’t know where these people are going to be in the future, maybe they’re your future coworkers, can help your career, or just be good friends. But that’s not feasible for 900 people. How HBS does it — and a lot of MBA programs do something similar — they break the broader class into smaller cohorts. At HBS they call it a section, about 90 people. You’re able to make deeper bonds because it’s more condensed — you take your classes with these people every day, so you get closer to them. But 90 people is still a lot, so even then you’ve got to find your group within the section. Some people love their section and do everything there, others find their vibe elsewhere, through other sections, trips, clubs.

It’s tough because you get put in this bubble and want to be accepted by your peers, want your social groups, want to be invited to things — and it’s not feasible to be friends with everyone. Some people are a bit lucky, or more naturally extroverted, and develop friend groups quicker than others, and the people who are lagging can get upset seeing their peers make those connections. It’s very much luck of the draw, but also effort — you’ve got to be meaningful with the people you reach out to and build deeper bonds with, not just go broad to the big events. You also have to do the smaller, more intimate things too. People do struggle even a year in, but a lot of people have found their groups now, and made some really deep friendships.

Jess: Yeah I made an episode on introverts vs. extroverts a few weeks ago, and it can be tough to make friends — it’s also why this is a good time to remind those of you listening to sign up for my next workshop, Find My Friends. If you’re listening to this episode on or before Wednesday, September 25th, you can still sign up and receive the Zoom link, worksheet, and replay access. It’s for those of you, whether you’re in grad school or a new city or just don’t know how to make good lasting friendships — you should really join me on that call. It’s free, on Zoom at 7:30pm EST, only an hour — go to the show notes or jessdiamondcoaching.com/friends to claim your spot. Because friends are important, as Carlos was sharing, and it’s stressful when you don’t have your own squad to lean on.

But Carlos, back to you — you’ve mentioned rugby, media club, keeping up with your studies, making friends, and traveling. How do you balance your quality of life with everything you’re doing?

Carlos: I’m not sleeping — which is like half a joke, but I could definitely work on my sleep schedule right now. It’s hard, I’m telling you. I think a common piece of advice a lot of people get before an MBA program is you really have to be focused on what you want to accomplish. If you want to start a startup, you have to understand you’ll sacrifice other parts of your MBA. What they say is, there’s academics, career recruiting, and social — and generally you only have time for two of the three. That’s the broad advice. You’ve got to pick which one’s the back burner. This isn’t me saying don’t do academics — obviously you have to put some effort in — but maybe you’re not there to take the most interesting classes and engage as much with the material, and that’s okay. Maybe you’re there to start a startup, maybe to really focus on transitioning into finance recruiting even though you know nothing about finance. Maybe you know exactly what you want to do, going back to a family business, and you’re there just to meet as many people as possible. All of that’s completely acceptable.

You have to come in with what you want to get, what you want to accomplish, and then once you get there, you’ll get swept up by the sea of activities, and you revert back to what everyone else is doing. That happened to me in the fall semester. You really have to check in with yourself — am I accomplishing the goals I set out to accomplish? Have those goals adapted after learning what I’ve learned here? Fall was tough, but spring I was really able to revert and focus more on the things I wanted to get done, and find a balance.

Jess: No no, don’t listen to him — terrible advice, my listeners know that sleep is the number one priority.

Carlos: Team sports is something I haven’t been able to do in a while, so sometimes I’ll replace that with a gym session for fitness. I try to read all the cases as much as possible — shout out to my professors, anyone who ever hears this — since I’m paying a lot of money to be there, I like to at least engage with class. I know people who don’t, and that works for them, but I try to find balance by maximizing the things I’m interested in.

Jess: Yeah, and that’s going to be anything in life — you have to know what you’re working towards so you don’t get caught up in what other people are doing and what you’re not doing as a result. What would you tell someone considering going back to school but teeters between “is it worth it or not”?

Carlos: Exactly what you just said — I think a lot of people see it as a novelty, and I looked at it as a novelty too, “yeah I’ll get my MBA, seems like a good path.” Not that it isn’t, but you’ve got to know why you’re getting your MBA — this isn’t a decision to be taken lightly, it’s two years of your life and a lot of money. Maybe it doesn’t make sense right now, maybe it makes sense later. But you’ve got to understand why. Are you hoping to pivot? Progressing your career? Trying to start a business? What are you trying to get out of it? When you apply to MBA programs, that’s a common question in essays and interviews — application reviewers get thousands of essays, they know when you’re BS-ing it — if you don’t have a genuine why, they can sniff it out from a mile away. Having a genuine why helps both your application and the fulfillment you get out of the program, as opposed to wandering and watching other people fulfill their goals while you’re not feeling as fulfilled.

Jess: Yeah, that’s really good advice — it might not be time for you to go to grad school right after undergrad, or maybe you go back in your thirties or forties. I personally believe right now, in your twenties, you’re going to have the most time on your hands than you will at any point in at least the next three decades. That doesn’t mean I’m pushing you to rush the decision, but I am telling you that if you know you want to go back and get a master’s or whatever it may be, I highly recommend you look into doing so sooner rather than later. Can you talk about how you found your why, and what that process looked like for you?

Carlos: It’s like a chicken-and-egg story — which one came first. A lot of people view going back to school as helping you discover what you want to accomplish, and that’s not wrong, you can absolutely use school to discover that. The thing is, you should come in with an idea, a direction — you don’t need to know exactly what you want to do, but you need to know what you like doing, what your passion is, what direction you’re heading in. Some people completely change — you get to school, follow a thesis, try it out, realize you actually hate it, and that’s okay. I found out about other career paths through my peers that I had no idea about — not pursuing those right now, but find them interesting, might pursue them in the future.

I’ll give you my story — when I was trying to understand my why, I went to my local library while I was in San Diego, got a notebook, and wrote down things I’m good at, not good at, things I like doing, what energizes me, what my passion is. I texted friends asking them to describe my personality in a few words. I had it all written down like that numbers meme where everything’s scattered and you’re trying to figure out what it means. And after a while I had almost an epiphany — I feel really energized doing storytelling. You can probably remember back to our undergrad days, the things that would happen on the weekend, on a Monday I’d just love telling those stories. I don’t think there’s generally a professional career explicitly for “storytelling,” but storytelling comes in a lot of different forms, and media and entertainment is kind of the industry I’m generally trying to head towards. That was my direction — I don’t know specifically what career path I’ll go down, but I know I’m passionate about storytelling, and media and entertainment is the business of storytelling, whether that’s movies, films, books, comedy, or music.

Jess: That is a really smart way to do that, and I do think you’re a good storyteller — you’re very captivating when you share something. But what we’re saying is you need a reason behind making this decision — it doesn’t necessarily need to be the exact reason, but it’s the intentionality behind making the decision, and releasing what happens next — releasing the five-year plan for after grad school, or planning out exactly how this time is supposed to go. You only need a reason for committing to the journey in the first place.

Carlos: And I felt my thesis coming into school was: if I can at least work in this industry of media and entertainment, whether I’m enhancing the experience for other people to enjoy stories, or providing tools for storytellers to tell their stories in new ways, then I feel much more fulfilled by the impact I’m putting in day in, day out, rather than the industries I was impacting previously.

Jess: Yeah, your direction and not losing sight of what that is. Now I have two more questions left for you — the first one is, knowing what you know now, do you wish you went back to school sooner?

Carlos: So originally I thought that answer would be yes — because if you want to maximize for career trajectory, for example, once you get your MBA you get put in the same position as whoever else is coming out of their MBA, regardless of age. There are people in my program who are 24, and people who are 35, and they’ll both recruit for the same industry and come out in the same position. You might compare yourself and think, “wow, I’m so far behind this kid, he’s nine years younger than me,” and that doesn’t feel great — but comparison is the thief of joy.

The reason I’d actually say no: MBA programs generally require at least two years of work experience — you can’t go straight from undergrad or a master’s. There are a few reasons for that. One, you want to learn from your peers, and it’s hard to learn from peers with no work experience. I’m surrounded by peers from the finance world, the retail world, things I know nothing about, and I’m learning a lot from them because of their work experience — you wouldn’t get that without a few years in the working world.

But the most important part — you don’t know what you want until you go experience it out in the world. I was very happy with my career coming out of undergrad, did that for a few years, and realized I wasn’t actually super passionate about it. I wouldn’t have known that without those years, and then trying a different position at another company, interesting enough. That’s something I’m very passionate about now. You need to go have these different experiences — it’s just like dating, really, you need to have these experiences to understand what you like and don’t like. So when you do go to an MBA, you’re more focused, you know what you want to do, as opposed to doing something just because you did it for a year or two. You won’t know until you’re older, more refined, with a better refined vision.

If someone went right after undergrad, without that seasoning, you’ll just be stressed — you’ll get there under a time crunch, figuring out what you have to do with only two years, and depending what you’re recruiting for, people start recruiting early for competitive career paths. The people who are super passionate about whatever they’re in have a better advantage, and you might feel like you have to settle — throw your name in the consulting hat just because recruiting started early, even if it’s not really what you wanted. You start getting lost. There’s so much going on in an MBA program, and you get swept away if you don’t have your North Star, your direction, your purpose for what you’re heading towards.

Jess: Okay, I didn’t know that you had to work for at least two years before you could go get your MBA — learning something new over here. But wow, this was great, I know you’ve already provided a ton of good insight and information to my audience. Is there any final piece of advice or words to the wise that you want to give the other twenty-somethings listening?

Carlos: I mean, I guess we’ll take the humble compliment.

Yeah, I think we got a lot of good snippets here that are generally the advice I’d give, but I think maybe something we haven’t touched on: when I was studying for my MBA, studying for the GMAT, working on my essays, whatever it may be — I was at my desk in my room, and above my desk I had a piece of paper that said, “why not me?” And essentially the message I’m trying to get across is a lot of people self-select out. A lot of people think, “I’m not smart enough to do this,” or “I’m not talented enough,” whatever it may be — you self-select out and you never gave it a shot, and you won’t know unless you try. That ties back to the point we made at the very beginning: just try it, see if it works out. Maybe you don’t get into the program, or maybe you do. I applied to a lot of schools because I never in a million years thought I’d get into Harvard, but I figured, why not just give it a shot? You and me, we came from a state school, we don’t come from the pedigree of an Ivy League maybe — but maybe I have a good story, maybe I’m intelligent enough to get by on this exam, so let’s just give it a shot and see how it goes. I was very fortunate enough to land where I am, and you won’t know until you do it. It’s better to try something and fail than always wondering about that “what if” — and for people in our age demographic, this is the perfect time to take those risks. It’s only going to get harder to take risks like this the older we get.

Jess: Hey, don’t knock the Gators like that — our friend Kylie used to tell everyone it’s the “Harvard of the South.” Although it is the top public university right now, so go Gators. But wow, thank you Carlos so much for coming on and discussing your experience with going to grad school. I’m excited to see where this adventure takes you. Where can people find you if they want to follow your journey or ask you questions about being a full-time student?

Carlos: It’s a great school — go Gators.

If you have some more professional questions, you can just find me on LinkedIn — I’m somewhat active there, just my name. And if you want to see more of a day in the life of a Harvard Business School student, I post pretty frequently on Instagram, at least my stories — I do a lot of travel, can attest to that, so you can see what the social environment is like, the balance between being a student and enjoying some of the more fun parts of it. My handle — I don’t think I’ve ever said this before — is @carlitos_pie. Maybe I should change that now, I don’t know. But maybe one day I’ll be a personality in the media entertainment industry. We’ll see, this is the start. I’ll get on TikTok soon enough.

Jess: Yup, and that will be linked in the show notes per usual — but this does wrap up another episode of How to Twenty-Something. If you liked what you heard, if you or someone you know is contemplating going back to school and what that means for your life, then please pass this episode along or share it on social media and tag me when you do.

And as a reminder, if you need help with this decision, you know where to find me — all of my information is in the show notes for you to access.

Otherwise, this does conclude another episode of How to Twenty-Something. I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode.