In 1991/1992 I did a Part Time MBA at Cranfield Institute of Technology, now called Cranfield University.
The Part Time MBA is called an EMBA, an Executive MBA. It was a very intensive two years and we were put into groups of 6 or 7.
Our group had an economist, a computer scientist (me), an accountant, a librarian (from another business school), an operations manager at a pharmaceutical company and a senior project manager from one of the world's biggest consulting engineering companies, the kind of people who build oil refineries, etc.
We met every second week on a Friday morning at 8am for a discussion before classes started at 9am. Two people were always late. One was 20 minutes late. So one day, I decided to be late on purpose.
I sat in the car park and watched the people arriving and after the second person arrived, I waited 5 minutes and then joined the group.
They asked me why I was late. I said that I was doing an experiment to see how the 2 late people felt when someone was later than them.
We never discussed this!
What happened is that the pharmaceutical lady said "were you experimenting on us?", and a discussion ensued where I was thrown out of my group.
A couple of hours later, as word spread, I was called into my Supervisor's office. He was the Information Systems Professor and he was the man who interviewed me after I passed the Cranfield entrance exam. He wanted me to succeed, but he was honest with me. He said:
"David: you know that the groups are structured with people from different functional areas of business and you have a huge workload. You know that each person takes responsibility every 2 weeks for part of that workload, and whilst everyone works on every project, someone takes responsibility for managing the work and handing it in. You also know that you have 6 WAC's (Written Assessment of Cases) per year, and you are now in the second half of the first year with 3 WACS to go and you can't do this by yourself. I suggest that you drop out of the course!"
I said "Thank you for this advice. You are right that it is a lot of work. But I would rather fail than drop out. My parents are paying for me, and my employer has given me paid and unpaid leave to get this done, and I don't want to drop out. I want to give it a try and see what happens."
My Supervisor said: "I understand. I respect your decision. Let me know if you need anything."
I said thank you and when I got home after the Friday and Saturday I had to make some decisions, together with my first wife. (She didn't leave me because of the stress I placed her under. It was something else. Perhaps a different story).
I decided that I needed to get 50% for everything. An assignment. A WAC. An exam. I decided that I needed to decide in advance how much time I would spend on everything. I decided that I would read the book that the professor or teacher had prescribed (usually written by them) and I would also read a book on the same subject by a different person.
So I would spend 3 hours on something or even decide during those 3 hours that I had done enough for 50% and then I would stop working on it!
Reading two books by two different authors on a subject sounds like a lot of work. But studying one text is time consuming. And if you read two texts, you might find something you don't understand explained in a different way by the other author. This saves a lot of learning time. And most importantly, in an exam or a WAC, you can say "Author "X" (our teacher) says "a"; Author "Y' says "b"; I think "c". And then you start getting 100% for things. Your teachers see that you are reading widely, getting a better understanding of their subjects, that you are interested in what's going on, and you get rewarded in unexpected ways. You don't end up with a 50% average for the year, but perhaps a 70% average, and you did everything "alone" with the help of your wife, who had to take over running the house, and your boss, who had to agree to let you work "working-hours" during this time, and not do overtime, which was generally a part of a consultant's life, especially at 27 years old.
I passed the first year!
I arrived for class in the second year, and my classmates were gobsmacked!
Several groups asked me to join them. My group asked me to join them. They said that they forgave me. They said that they had acted rashly. They said that they had dealt with the two people who came late and they were never late again. They wanted me back!
I went back to my group and had an incredible second year of my MBA.
I learnt forgiveness. My undergrad university motto was "if you don't try you won't know", and I tried and it worked. I learnt to be self-sufficient. I learnt that when the odds are against you, you can work out a new way of working.
I was already an avid reader, but after that I started reading even more, as I had become a faster reader. Today I read books on Kindle, Paperback, Hard Cover, and Audible.
Never give up, until you've tried everything that is within your grasp. Understand that sometimes you need to end a particular job or specialisation because it isn't working for you, but that isn't giving up, it's deciding to end something. There's a big difference.
Happy to talk: david at itneurosurgeon.com; +27 74 119 3246