September 09, 2007 
How do I Integrate an Online MBA into my Everyday Life?
When you go off to study full time on an on-campus MBA, your departure marks a clear stage in your life – one day you’re your old self, the next you’re an MBA student. Your main pre-occupation from that day on will (or should be) studying. For many distance-learning students, the day they matriculate with the awarding body marks the first important stepping stone. There’s no physical ’setting off on a voyage’, just an emotional journey.
However, when you enrol on an online MBA, it’s likely that most people around you won’t even notice the event. The fact that you’ve put an MBA online program top of your agenda makes no difference to them, they’ll just expect you to carry on doing what you’ve always done. You’ll notice though and you’ll need to make some changes! Just how you deal with the necessary changes will depend very much on your circumstances and, in particular, on your relationships with the people around you. Just how much you reveal of your plans should be your decision and yours alone. You may be treading gently to see if you can handle a particular programme or if you like it – before telling the world. It’s important to think out carefully what you tell to whom. Joan Watson, in an earlier book, outlined the following approaches you may take when spreading the word:
STRONG AND SILENT
Get on with things secretly. It will certainly help, the fact that you’re undertaking an MBA correspondence course, there’s only the textbooks, MP3 lectures, etc, which will pop through the door. You’ll just need to find a dark place to study and hide away there. With this approach, you’ll simply leave everyone to guess what’s going on – and they will guess all sorts of things! This is a great approach if you really are the strong and silent type. Can you really carry the load of extra pressure and not look for someone to share it with?
CONFESSIONAL
This is the open approach. You’ll tell everyone everything. It’s a fine course of action if you’re a really self-confident person and can handle whatever happens on your course. Do remember that not everyone is as understanding when it comes to understanding other people’s decisions and actions so be cautious. If you do feel uncertain that you will stay the course, tell those around you of your fears, it’s great to share the uncertainty. Then, once they’re in the know, enlist their help, with schedules, with clearing time for your work generally, making it possible for you to study.
DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS
Reveal as much as you wish, when you wish. Stay in control. This selective approach will allow you to tell who you wish and, when it suits you. Do remember that you don’t have a duty to tell everyone everything but you will need to rely on the discretion of those you do tell if the selective policy is the one you choose. ‘They’ could, indeed, find out about your study when you invite them to your graduation ceremony!
LOOK FOR A FLEXIBLE COURSE
The more flexible the course you undertake, the better able you will be to integrate it smoothly into your everyday life as e-learning becomes available when you turn it on and waits for you after you’ve turned it off. There is a number of questions which you could well ask about the course you propose to undertake:
Can I start when I wish?
Can I take a break from study and resume at any time?
Are there examinations which I have to attend?
Is there a rigid timetable for assessments?
Do I have to undertake periods of study on-campus, weekends or summer schools or whatever?
All online MBA’s advertise their flexibilities but many are surprisingly inflexible. They may offer an online distance MBA but still have regular starting dates, for example. You need to ask whether the start date signal the start of the treadmill – once on and there’s no getting off? In part the inflexibilities come from a fixation with the old ways of doing things and a desire to make online offerings as similar as possible to the on-campus variety. From very early on enormous efforts have been made to create virtual classrooms from which a single tutor can deliver a live presentation to a dispersed class. However, when that class is dispersed all over the globe and working and sleeping different hours, the single delivery becomes a burdensome chore for many students. The net result is no different from the days when you had to sit in a crowded lecture theatre or attend seminars on set days at set times.
The act of getting students together in a group for a summer school is a great motivator as they interact and learn from one another but, once again the nature of global education mitigates against this.
THE JUMP ON, JUMP OFF MODEL
When away at college, courses progress at their own steady pace. However, when mixing everyday life with a distance learning MBA, crises will arise from time to time. When this happens, you will need to be able to jump off for a week or two, or even longer and to be safe in the knowledge that the structure of the course allows you to do this with out any penalty and that it is prepared to make allowances when you return. Check this possibility out before you sign up. Even though you’re motivated and happy to work hard on your online MBA, it’s important to take a break every now and then. Just as with a full-time job, an evening off now and then, a weekend off or even a larger period away will enable you to recharge your batteries. Take care, though, to plan your breaks. Make them just as much a part of your study plan as reading the recommended text. Importantly, use them as part of the process of maintaining your family or social life through the period of heavy study. With a really-flexible MBA, you should have your professors on tap all the time and a faculty which is available at the other end of the internet. Remember that the best college MBA for you is unlikely to be Number 1 in any survey. It’s your personal circumstances which matter and not the ones chosen by some hot-shot journalist writing for the Financial Times or the Wall street Journal!
YES, YOU CAN INTEGRATE STUDY WITH NORMAL LIVING
Indeed it is possible to take on a distance learning MBA and to continue with a version of the life which you led before. The new educational opportunities available in the online world are indeed breaking down the rigid old patterns of study. However, before you do set off on your new distance learning MBA, you will need to think about those around you and the extent to which you will confide in them, consult them and, even integrate them into your study. You will also need to spend some time looking closely at the college MBA online courses which you are considering in order to find the one which best matches your circumstances.
Best Wishes with Your Study,
Rhiannon
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