Maximizing Your Student Experience

Eric Herbert, a student in the Evening MBA program and engineer at STV Inc., recently participated in a panel on Maximizing Your Student Experience. Here, he shares his advice on juggling work, life and school and maximizing your time at Booth.

Tell us about yourself

I started Booth summer 2017 and came from a civil engineering background. My original idea was to advance within the engineering industry but I really got my horizon expanded when I started at Booth and am now looking at consulting. I’m a member of five different Booth groups- I co-chair the Booth Consulting Club, MBA Field Day events, am on the Student Advisory Council and am in the Running Club and Wine Club. I’m married and with a full-time job and school, it’s busy!

What advice do you have for incoming students?

At first, when you get here, for anything that comes in your email inbox, just start saying yes, go to the event and overwhelm yourself at first. You’re not always going to have the stamina for that. So say yes upfront- you’ll start to figure out where you want to spend your time in order to maximize your experience.

Your experience can be much more than just an education. You get a chance to look at yourself and the life you want to live. You can look at the pure financials, but this experience is priceless in my opinion. The ability to come in, examine yourself, and try on new hats in a safe environment, is invaluable.

It’s all about making priorities. You won’t have time for everything. You’re going to have to choose things that get pushed aside so make your choices as to what’s important and move forward with them. If you’re not looking for the whole experience that Booth offers, if you just want to go to classes and check that box you can do that, but you’ll be missing out on a lot that the experience has to offer.

How about advice for current students?

I recommend they take advantage of the community of their launch groups. These are the people who are going to be going through the program very similarly to yourself. You will have a lot of contact with them and can really rely on them to help you when needed. My launch group is like family at this point.

How do you juggle family, career and school?

Google Calendar! If it’s not in my calendar, it doesn’t exist to me. It forces you to be diligent about events and carve the time out.

Communication: Talk with your boss about what’s going on, discuss the adjustments you might need to make something work. I am very fortunate to have a boss who understands how valuable this time is for me, and he’s been extremely understanding while I’ve been in school.

Choose your groups wisely: Make sure you’re good with your groups. A lot of our work is group work. If you build good relationships and rapport, when something does come up and you can’t contribute as much, your teammates should know that you’ll make it up another week. Being able to raise your hand and say you need help is important.

Why Booth?

I wanted to get an MBA in order to advance my career. I knew that Booth was the right place because of the mindset and rigorous, analytical and data driven methodology around inquiry, insight, and impact. This is the way that I want to approach problems in the future.