Does an MBA really help with burnout?
My life has been the caricature path of target -> 2 years at EB -> 2 years MF PE -> UMM PE/Growth. I am now at the senior associate level, about to make VP, and I am very very burned out. Nothing about this job or industry excites me anymore, and the thought of doing this for another few decades is quite painful to imagine.
When I tell my friends about this, they all unanimously say something like "that's what an MBA is for". I have a 760 GMAT I took which is about to expire so my window of application is soon.
This got my gears turning. I very much get the appeal of student life for 2 years, which sounds like a ton of fun. Sure it's a lot of money but it's 100% worth it if it really will answer all my needs. But what I don't understand is whether B School actually does the trick for burnout - Is the promise of B School actually real? How will one single 2-year break at 27 years old mentally equip me for the the 10-20 year career ahead of me? Won't I just get burned out again a few years after B School? Is there something permanently therapeutic about the B School experience which will allow me to stomach being a corporate drone for the next 20 years?
Would appreciate thoughts from people who had the same experience and then went to B School primarily for the vacation/fun/nursing burnout benefit of it.
What do you want to use your MBA for beyond a break for a couple years? It sounds like you don't want to do PE or growth investing anymore. Do you have any ideas about what you do want to do? Do you have any mentor, career coach, or therapist who can help you think this through? Getting an MBA is great for a career pivot but I don't think it's particularly good for doing career exploration since recruiting starts pretty quickly after getting on campus. MBA is a means to an end - but you should do some up-front work on what you want the end to be and that doesn't come through from your post.
Said more succinctly, what kind of work might get you excited to get out of bed in the morning, or at least what might be satisfactory? What do you value in your life?
I was in the same boat with the traditional path. I want to try out the start-up / tech route – of course I could recruit immediately and get the same job without going to school, but the prospect of just jumping to doing any job immediately after PE is daunting because of burnout. 2 years of fun student life is 2 years that you won't really get again, especially not where you come out with a bigger network and a degree afterwards.
a MBA would definitely help if you're trying to pivot industries to open up opportunities you couldn't have but it is costly to just go to not have burn out. maybe you could look at roles in the startup world that could excite you. im in my first year of banking but curious about your take about your journey. was it worth it to go to the best companies EB --> MF PE -> UMM growth? sometimes i feel like im missing out if i dont lateral or follow that path
You gain the simple value of free time to reflect and plan.
Most people are too risk-averse to do this by quitting.
Business school exists as a sort of petri dish of smart, motivated people who all have different goals and different ideas about how to achieve them. So for a candidate like you, it's 18 months of a step down in terms of total daily difficulty (the people who talk about it being 'a lot' tend to be the ones coming from easier-lifestyle industries; for you it will be a cakewalk) + a bunch of interesting people and events and trips and educational items + more free time than you've had in at least six years.
You have the gold-plated resume and will probably spend a fifth of the time the majority do on switching from a not-great-paying industry to a better-paying one.
You will inevitably think about what you like, dislike, are good at, are bad at, have experienced enough of, want to experience more of, have never experienced and are okay with, have never experienced and eagerly want to, and so on.
Now you have the benefit of actual life experience. You aren't 20. You're approaching 30 and have proven yourself to yourself.
The exercise of school is not permanently therapeutic. It's a lull in the battle that grants you space to decide whether the fight you're in is one you want to be in, and separate from that, if you're using the weapons and tools that fit you best.
Yes, you will get burned out again if you just grimly hand-over-hand your way up a ladder you never stopped to question. If you use the time to decide whether you're best built for a ladder, pick and crampons, rope, or jetpack as a means of progress, you can shape something for yourself that minimizes the factors that create burnout.
School doesn't work this way for everyone because not everyone is intentional. You can be.
Sorry to hear how dull everything has become. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. You don't even need school to change that.
Good luck.
F, good post but this makes me really regret skipping b school.
Just browsing all of APAE's knowledge bombs and would like to re-echo this was exactly my experience coming from an IB / PE background. Tried everything I wanted to try, crystallized what motivates me in my career into clear and actionable answers, and now can go back to finance in a much better position both mentally and (I hope) with better long-term results.
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